by Thomas Hopp
Leading us to the far end of the longhouse, Tleena paused where a doorway between two carved cedar plank walls was covered by a cattail curtain with an intricately painted bear face. “Father?” she called.
“Tleena!” the old man replied. “Come in.”
She pulled the curtain aside and motioned for us to follow her inside a square room about twenty feet on a side, where the second hearth glowed with banked embers. The space was edged by cedar-wood benches placed against the three walls facing the door. Behind the bench on the left was a large cedar plank decorated with an image of a soaring Thunderbird. On the right wall was an image of Bear with grinning fangs. On the far wall was the largest plank of all, bearing an image that sent a ripple of adrenaline through me - the twin-headed serpent.
Gordon Steel sat crosslegged on cattail matting on the bench below the serpent mural. He was dressed only in a loincloth of cedar-bark fibers with a coverlet in front with woven-in images of canoes and whales on it. His scrawny dark brown arms and legs were bare and his bony chest was naked except for a small ivory amulet carved in the shape of the two-headed serpent, hung around his neck by a thin rawhide strap. He had been weaving a rope from plant fibers when we entered. He looked up from his work and his warm greeting smile vanished when he saw McKean and me.
“Hello, Father,” Tleena said.
He grunted, glowering at McKean and me. “What do they want?”
“They’ve come to ask for your help.”
He went back to his rope-winding task, ignoring us.
“Father - ” she began again but he interrupted her, demanding of McKean in an imperious voice, “Tell me where you’re from, DNA man!”
“Seattle,” McKean replied.
The old man shook his head. “Seattle is a place. Tell me you’re ancestors’ names.”
McKean hesitated. “Well, I - “
“No one - !” Steel growled, keeping his eyes locked on McKean’s, ” - enters my house without telling who he is and who his ancestors are. This house is sacred. You come here with respect for our traditions or you don’t come at all!”
McKean began again. “I am a scientist. I was raised in West Seattle. My father was a printer and my mother was a pharmacy clerk. I know less about my grandparents. They were homesteaders and children of immigrants from England and Ireland and Germany.”
“Immigrants!” Steel muttered. “You babalthuds are like dumb animals. You don’t know where you come from or where you’re going!”
He glared at me. “And you?”
“I am a medical news reporter. I was raised in South Chicago. I think my family came from England and maybe Scotland. I know I had an uncle named Phineus Costas, who was supposedly part Greek. I don’t know much more.”
“Don’t know much at all,” Steel mumbled. “I know my ancestors have lived here since the beginning of time. My ancestors are Devilfish, the great shaman, and Young Doctor, the savior of our culture.” He sat scowling for a moment and then his scowl lifted. He turned to Tleena. “How’s Johnny?”
“He’s much better. They say he’ll be on his feet in a couple of days.”
“Seattle’s a bad place,” Steel grunted. He stared into the fire embers for a moment, his face a mask of impassivity. Then he cocked his head and grinned up at McKean sidelong. “Some more babalthuds getting sick, are they?”
“You’ve heard?” asked McKean.
Steel nodded. “People talk. I’ve got ears.”
“Then you know it’s a dangerous condition and it may be spreading.”
A hint of perverse smile wrinkled Steel’s wire-mustached mouth. “Spreading among babalthuds.” He reached beside him on the cattail mat and picked up a wooden rattle carved in the image of a raven. He aimed the beaked end of it at McKean and shook it twice. He set the rattle aside and eyed McKean sharply. “Ask your questions, man with no ancestors.”
“Who was Devilfish?” McKean began.
“Been reading about him, lately?”
“I’ve learned that he lived in the time of the Spaniards, and that he had a cure - “
“He had a daughter that was raped,” Steel interrupted testily.
“Unfortunate history,” McKean acknowledged. “But the cure - “
“The Spanish!” Steel interrupted again, “came in big boats like longhouses on the ocean, and that’s why we named Europeans babalthuds, house-on-water people. The Spanish were a wonder to Makahs. We greeted them as friends, just like others who came to trade at our village. Our chiefs made a potlatch and gave them great riches, otter and seal furs, and carved boxes. The Spaniards gave us metal knives and shiny pots and said they wanted little from us, only some land to build a fort against their English enemies. These rights were granted and the Spanish lived among us in their wooden stockade.”
“But it ended poorly,” said McKean.
“One of them raped the girl. So Devilfish sang a song asking Raven for vengeance. And Raven, the trickster, flew to the mountains and brought back Pukwubis, the Wild Man Spirit. Whenever Pukwubis saw a Spaniard, he sneaked up behind him and sucked the man’s soul out his ear. Then the man would wander the woods naked and scratched and bleeding. Then he would die like a mad dog. After enough Spaniards died from losing their souls, the rest left Neah Bay. They burnt their fort so the English couldn’t claim it and they sailed away. No one ever saw them again.”
“A colorful story,” said McKean. “It matches what I’ve learned so far about this disease. Of course, it’s embellished with folklore.”
“It’s all true,” the old man said. “Told to me by my father and my father’s father. You calling them liars?”
“No. Most certainly not. But Devilfish is said to have cured the last of the Spaniards, according to a parchment found in the coffin.”
“I saw that parchment,” Steel murmured. “I didn’t touch it.”
“It mentions medicines.”
“Makah medicines?”
“Yes. That is what I hoped you could help me with. They are described vaguely. Klochtap is one of them.”
Steel laughed. “It’s right here.” He picked up a small bentwood cedar box about the size of a cigar box from the floor near where he sat, and opened it. Inside was a tangle of small blackish dried leaves and pea-like pods. He fingered the rustling leaves and grinned. “Smoke this and you get higher than marijuana.” And then his smile vanished. “Only use klochtap with yellow flowers. Use white or pink and you’re dead.” He broke into his gap-toothed grin again and laughed loudly. Then he turned from McKean and eyed me sternly. “You got any questions for me, newsman?”
I pointed at the two-headed serpent carving on the wall. “Can you tell me about that creature?”
Steel turned and studied the sculpted panel for a moment. “My great-grandfather, Young Doctor, taught me about it when he was very old and I was just a little boy. I forgot most of what he told me. Why do you care?”
“Your son carved an image of it. He’s still working on it in the hospital.”
The old man’s expression darkened and he stared into the fire’s coals. “John’s got a lot of troubles these days. He’s trying to get himself straight with the serpent’s help. There’s a lot of power in it. Up north they call it Sisiutl. Down south in Quinault they call it Tamallay. I call it Quykatsayak, the medicine snake. He can cure you or kill you, just like klochtap. They found a carving of him buried in a five hundred-year-old mudslide down at Ozette village. Great-grandfather said the two heads are the balance between good and evil, day and night, men and women, health and sickness, tide-goes-in, tide-goes-out. Like the Tsuyess River runs both ways with the tides, twisting and turning across the land - snake crawls this way, snake crawls that way.”
“A world in balance,” McKean suggested.
Steel nodded. “Or out of balance when the two heads don’t see eye to eye. That’s when people get sick. People die.” His smile faded. “Like Makahs died when the American babalthuds brought smallpox here in the Caucasian I
nvasion. Everything went out of balance. Still is. Quykatsayak’s angry about that.”
“You can’t blame the Americans for everything - ” I began, but Steel cut me off with a shout.
“Blame them? I do more than blame them. I hate them. Whose courts stopped us from hunting whales for years? Babalthuds! Whose protestors broke Billy Clayfoot’s wrist? Babalthuds! Indian Wars are still going on in Neah Bay and we’re still losing. Just like Indians everywhere did.”
I offered a conciliatory thought. “It isn’t like you’re going to starve without whale meat. You can go to any grocery store and get beef - “
“No beef! No pork!” Steel shouted. “That’s babalthud food! Makahs eat whale, seal, salmon. You know something, newsman? Right now, Makahs die younger than white Americans. We got more trouble with alcohol and drugs. We got more diabetes and cancer. And a lot of our kids don’t do so well in school.”
“But how can eating a whale help - ?”
Steel thumped his fist against his chest. “This body - ” he growled, ” - is made to eat whale. From the time of the creation we were meant to eat whale. You can’t change that.”
“Over time,” I said, “Makahs could lose their need for whale meat, couldn’t they?” I looked to McKean for support but he remained silent.
Steel’s eyes flared. “How are we supposed to lose our need for whale?”
I shrugged. “Evolve?”
The old man stared at me hard. “Newsman,” he said. “Didn’t you pay attention in biology class? You can’t change your DNA. The only way for Makahs to lose their need for whale is for those who need whale meat to die. Ain’t that right, DNA man?”
“True,” McKean reluctantly agreed. “That’s how evolution works. The fittest survive while the unfit die off.”
“Die off!” Steel fumed, glaring into my eyes. “So you’re telling me you want Makah babies to die off?”
“I didn’t say that!”
“Yes, you did, newsman. You said we should evolve. But the only way to evolve is to let the ones who aren’t fit to eat American food die off. Isn’t that right, DNA man?” He glared at Peyton McKean, who reluctantly nodded his concurrence.
“What Gordon is alluding to,” McKean explained to me, “is that Makahs have adapted to a diet of whale over many generations, especially to the oils that are unique to whales. Most of those are poorly understood by modern science. But it’s logical that a Makah’s diet might be deficient without whale meat.”
“Vitamin W,” said Steel. “It’s something Makahs get from whale oil. Something we need in our diet, a vitamin that makes us strong.”
I resisted. “There’s no scientific basis for that idea, is there?”
McKean put up a hand. “Don’t rush to judgment, Fin. It’s easy to assume modern science knows all the answers, but I’m sure there’s never been a study regarding which foods are best for Makahs. The USDA publishes recommended daily allowances for Americans in general, but - “
“But Makahs,” Steel finished the thought, “aren’t people in general. We’re Makahs.”
McKean nodded. “You’ve existed on the meat of marine mammals for thousands of years, maybe tens of thousands. You’ve surely adapted to a whale-fat diet. You may well have a different metabolism from the rest of us. Even a need for whale meat.”
“That’s why I say the protestors are trying to kill us,” Steel muttered. “They’re taking healthy food away from the mouths of our babies. That’s why I hate them.”
“I would hate them too,” McKean agreed, “if they did anything to threaten the health of my son.”
“So, newsman,” Steel said, turning back to me, “you’re saying our children should die, or grow up sick if they can’t have whale meat?”
Mortified to be on the wrong side of such an argument, I conceded. “I would never say such a thing. But how can you know if Makah children really need whale meat or not?”
Steel grunted. “Let the protesters prove they don’t.” He sat back and there was a moment of quiet. “To Makahs,” he said more coolly, “those protesters are just the latest in a long line of babalthud outsiders trying to convert us like missionaries. They want us to quit our old ways and be just another kind of babalthud. But Makahs can’t change our DNA. Our trouble with alcohol proves we’re different. Every doctor knows we can’t handle alcohol. So what makes you so sure we’re going to be healthy eating cheeseburgers? Let the babalthuds stay at home and drink their wine and eat their beef and leave us alone out here to eat our whale meat. How dare they come here telling us to quit eating food that made Makahs strong since the beginning of time? If they keep it up, I’m gonna think they’re trying to kill me. Do you get it?”
I acquiesced. For the first time I saw a light of great wisdom in Gordon Steel’s dark eyes.
“Another thing,” he muttered. “Babalthud congressmen passed the MMPA law, didn’t they?”
“MMPA?” I puzzled.
McKean clarified, “The Marine Mammal Protection Act.”
Steel hawked up a throat-full of phlegm and spat it emphatically in the fire, making the coals hiss. “That’s what I think of the MMPA. MMPA says no one kills whales. Says no one can even go near them. But Makahs already had a treaty saying we could hunt whales till kingdom come. So, where’s the government get off making a new law that says we can’t? Which is it, yes or no? Because if it’s no, then I say to hell with the USA. Our treaty with them said we could hunt whales. So, I guess the treaty’s null and void now. We became a sovereign nation again on the day they passed the MMPA.”
Tleena intervened. “But Doctor McKean didn’t write the MMPA.”
“His people did,” snapped Steel. “Babalthuds. And then the protesters and their money men and their lawyers took us to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco and enforced the MMPA on us. They tricked the court. They said we were going to kill off the resident gray whales.”
“Resident whales?” I keyed on the unexpected term. “What are those?”
Tleena explained. “They’re said to be a group of gray whales that don’t migrate from Mexico to Alaska. They supposedly stay here in our waters all the time.”
“Damn protesters!” Steel grumbled. “They made up a story. They told the judges these resident whales are an extra-endangered bunch compared to the rest of the gray whales, which aren’t even on the endangered species list anymore because there’s too many of them.” He paused a moment, and then he laughed bitterly. “Newsman,” he said to me. “Do you know the old Makah word for a resident gray whale?”
“No,” I said. “What is it?
“Dinner!” He broke into a hoarse laugh. “Somebody ought to tell your Ninth Circuit Court that the environmental impact of eating them is zero. You know why? Because they’re not real. Our ancestors already ate them a long time ago. So now your protesters want to bring them back, even though they’re phony. They’re just a babalthud trick to get the courts to go along with the protesters. That’s the reason we couldn’t go whaling for years - a bunch of lies from a bunch of damn tricky lawyers and rich people in a courtroom in San Francisco. Hell with them, I say. I know a greater trickster, and that’s Raven. They want to get tricky with resident whales? Well, let them get tricky with the Lost Souls disease. Raven has answered my prayers.”
There was a long silence and then old Steel gestured at the benches. “Have a seat,” he sighed forbearingly. “What else do you want to know?”
McKean sat on Steel’s left and Tleena and I sat on his right. “That leaf, klochtap,” said McKean. “You say it is a powerful hallucinogen, but according to the parchment it is also useful for treating the Lost Souls disease. Can you describe how it is used?”
Steel shook his head. “My family’s recipes are secret.”
McKean turned his palms upward in a supplicating gesture. “Couldn’t you tell us just this one? The disease appears to be very contagious. If it keeps spreading we may have a substantial epidemic on our hands.”
&
nbsp; Steel shook his head. “Sick babalthuds are your problem, not mine. Klitsukhads - Indians - we’ve got our own problems.”
“But if I could get just a little of each herb that goes in the recipe,” McKean pleaded. “To study - “
“No studies, DNA man. No more studies.”
Tleena leaned close to him. “Father please. People are dying.”
“Babalthuds are dying.”
“People!” she exclaimed, suddenly angry. “No matter what you think of them.”
He looked into her face and anger lit his eyes. “What do babalthuds think of me? And what do they care for you?” His wizened old body trembled with renewed rage. “If I save them, will they lift their ban on whaling? Will they take away the curse of laba’uts babalthdik?”
“Of what’” I asked.
“The white man’s whiskey,” Tleena translated.
“Alcohol,” Steel muttered as if tasting bile. “It nearly killed me. I lost myself in a bottle for ten years. Couldn’t keep a job because of it. When I sobered up, they still called me stinking redskin.”
“Some did,” McKean corrected. “Not all.”
“Enough,” muttered Steel. “Plenty of ‘em would spit in my eye, and Tleena’s, too.’
“I sympathize - ” McKean began, but Steel interrupted with bitter laughter.
“Sympathy? I don’t want your sympathy. You go pity someone else. I think time is running out for babalthuds.”
McKean sighed as if realizing the futility of further conversation. “Can I at least take a sample of that vine for analysis?”
Steel picked up the box and emptied its contents onto the fire embers. McKean bent and reached for the vine but it flared and he pulled his hand back. Steel pointed a gnarled finger at McKean. “You go back home, DNA man. You go back to your own kind. Maybe you’ll see as much suffering as I have.”