Here it comes, I thought.
“The condition was, Curtis first had to provide the whalers with a complete human mummy and 11 human skulls. To their surprise, Curtis took them up on their offer.”
I shook my head, amazed.
The chief went on. “One night, along with W.E. Myers, his right-hand man, Curtis paddled to a cemetery island up near Fort Rupert. Grave robbing is a big no-no—people have been hanged for it. Curtis and Myers had to keep things secret. When they reached the cemetery they found plenty of coffins and skeletons, but no mummies—the climate in those parts is too cold, too damp. Corpses up there rarely mummify. The skulls Curtis did find were still connected to backbones. Curtis had some respect for the dead. He was leery about chopping skulls from their skeletons. After a long scary search, Curtis and Myers collected only two loose skulls before daylight, when they called things off.
“But the next night, they were back at it. They were poking around in a grave underneath a big cedar when a wind blew up. According to Curtis, he and Myers were suddenly showered with skeletons and coffins, falling down from the branches above their heads. Like magic, they had all the skulls they needed. But still no mummy.” Chief Alphonse took a sip of his now-cold tea, grimaced and set it back down.
“Myers had done all the cemetery searching he could stomach by then, but Curtis was determined to go whaling and wouldn’t quit. After some doings, Curtis was introduced to George Hunt’s wife. A woman named Loon. Loon told Curtis she knew of a mummy on an island about 30 miles from Alert Bay.
“Curtis, Myers and Loon paddled a dugout canoe across Queen Charlotte Strait to this island, taking trouble not to be seen. When they got there, Myers stayed back to mind the canoe. Curtis and Loon went ashore together. They opened up several coffins until they found what Curtis described as”—Chief Alphonse paused to recollect the exact description—“‘a beautiful mummy of the female species.’ Curtis never knew if it was Loon’s relative, but it might have been. Loon called the mummy by name and had a long one-sided conversation with it. Loon also told the mummy about the honour it was going to receive.”
My mouth was dry. I’d seen some of Curtis’s mummy pictures, and “beautiful” is not the word I’d use to describe ancient desiccated corpses bent double with knees drawn up to their chins.
I dumped out the chief’s cold tea, took the pot from the stove and refilled our cups. Chief Alphonse was slumped down in his chair, gazing at the ceiling. He cleared his throat and continued, “Curtis delivered a mummified female body and 11 human skulls to the whale hunters. The Kwakiutls were amazed. Still, Curtis had kept his part of the bargain, so they were honour-bound to keep theirs. Curtis got to participate in a Kwakiutl whaling ritual, as well as an actual hunt.”
The chief stared at me, nibbling his lip, then added, “Kwakiutl pre-whaling ritual is a heavy secret. All that’s known is, it included mummy-eating.”
Air escaped my lips in a long, unbidden sigh.
“The rituals took place and Curtis photographed bits of it. He was a full party to everything that happened. For the rest of his days, Curtis refused to answer people who asked him if he’d tasted mummy himself. All Curtis ever said was that cannibalism had been outlawed by the British. Mummy-eating was cannibalism, and the penalties were harsh.”
Embers settled inside my stove with a soft thud. The chief rose slowly and ponderously from his seat and went to the door. I picked up our cups and placed them by the sink. The chief put on his hat and coat. “Your next step is to see Chief Numcamais. He’s expecting you.”
≈ ≈ ≈
Freddy Albert had given up commercial fishing because of some visions he’d experienced during a sweat-lodge session. He was starting to see white people as witches who used magic to sow illness and malevolence among the First Nations. Now, instead of trolling for salmon in the fresh air, Freddy spent most of his time in sweat lodges or Internet chat rooms. He’d joined the American Indian Movement, was studying Coast Salish mythology and telling anyone who’d listen that soon North America’s Native peoples would rise up and smite the white man, hip and thigh. They would sweep palefaces from the earth, along with alcohol, drugs, telephones and SUVs. In Freddy’s coming new age, giant firs and cedars would replenish sacred forests. Immense herds of buffalo and elk would repopulate the Great Plains, trample the whites’ palaces and slums, bars and jails. In other words, Freddy had become a tiresome crank. But I needed a favour.
I found him on the Warrior beach, chanting ancient songs and wearing a Thunderbird mask decorated with eagle feathers. He was utterly engrossed in ritual and it took a while before I got his attention. I asked if I could borrow his troller for a couple of days. “Go ahead,” he said. “Just don’t forget to fill her tanks when you’re done.”
≈ ≈ ≈
After being delivered to the brink of extinction by nineteenth-century hunters, British Columbia’s sea otters are staging a slow comeback. Three of the sleek endangered animals were resting on the floats when I went down to the Warrior Reserve wharf that afternoon. Its wooden planks were slippery with slush and otter shit. The friendly creatures, big as harbour seals, waited until I got within about 10 feet of them, then lazily flipped themselves into the water with a sinuous twisting motion that left their whiskers dry and their heads facing me.
I boarded Freddy’s troller and checked its bilges, fuel tanks, engine oil and coolant levels. They were okay, but Freddy’s radar wasn’t working. He didn’t have a GPS either—I’d have to navigate the old-fashioned way. The troller’s diesel started easily. I kept an eye on the oil and battery and temperature gauges until they stabilized. When the engine had warmed to 210 degrees, I unhitched the mooring lines and headed out. The curious otters followed me for a while. Beyond the harbour’s stone breakwater I encountered six-foot waves. The troller bucked a bit till I throttled back to about four knots; then she rode nicely. Fisgard Lighthouse fell astern. Waterfront houses nestled at the foot of tree-covered slopes.
A fishing boat dragged its lines off William Head. I could see a man in a yellow slicker cleaning fish in the stern. Seagulls surrounded his boat, in a circling halo of wings, ready to dive for discarded scraps. Bald eagles soared high above, patrolling the frigid waters between two rocky headlands.
Victoria faded behind me as I headed northwest. As I put distance between civilization and myself, I stopped thinking about mummies and tried to put the facts that I’d learned about Isaac Schwartz and Mrs. Tranter into some sort of pattern. I didn’t get very far. If there was a pattern, it wasn’t obvious to me at that time.
My mind slipped into irrational mode—I thought about spirit whales, and witches. Sixteen years of formal education and a degree in anthropology has not completely eradicated my Coast Salish belief system, so perhaps it was First Woman who moderated the ocean winds for my benefit. Seas were almost calm when I cleared Race Rocks an hour later, eased inshore and sighted the flashing navigation beacon I was looking for. Six years had passed since I had last visited this place. I sailed parallel with the coast until I spotted a familiar pyramid-shaped rock marking the entrance to a sheltered bay. With about two feet of water between my keel and the bottom, I crossed a sandbar into a safe anchorage.
Freddy’s winch was jammed; I lowered the hook by hand. When it bottomed I let out another 10 fathoms of heavy chain. After another struggle I manhandled the dory over the side, rowed it ashore and dragged it up the beach. A trail up to Chief Numcamais’s place seemed narrower and steeper this time. It was late afternoon when I scrambled uphill, feeling my way across tree roots, deadfalls and rocks. In the fading light, an owl hooted. I heard something else and stopped in a clearing to listen and look. Fifty feet away, a pair of wide-set eyes was watching me. The eyes disappeared as the animal turned its head. I saw another pair of eyes, then they too disappeared. I shivered, hearing twigs and fallen leaves crunching beneath broad footpads as the wolves moved unhurriedly away.
The cabin I sought stood alone among
the trees. Built of split-cedar boards that had silvered with age, it blended into the landscape as naturally as trees and rocks and green moss. Dim lamplight shone from the small four-paned windows. After hailing the house, I let my echoes die and listened, but there was no answer. I pushed the cabin door open.
Numcamais, a chief of five names, was working at a table lit by an oil lamp. Entering, I heard the swift flutter of feathers. A raven with one trailing wing perched in the shadows above one window. The raven fixed me with one eye, turned its glossy head to look at me with the other, and then opened its heavy bill and made a few strangled cries.
Chief Numcamais had not moved or acknowledged my presence. I settled myself on a chair near the stove and waited.
The old chief was carving a coffin lid with a curved, steel carving knife, its razor-sharp blade resembling a spoon with sharpened edges. He was incising the shape of an eagle’s head. The lid was nearly finished. Below the eagle were bear, raven, frog and killer whale—the carver’s family tree. Mine, too.
The raven hopped down from its perch, alighted on Chief Numcamais’s shoulder and stretched its bill inside the chief’s breast pocket. Smiling, the chief took seeds from the pocket and scattered them on the table. The bird pecked away, clearing wood shavings with its feet as it ate.
Still without looking at me, the old man spoke. English wasn’t his first language, or even his second, and his greeting was in Coast Salish—words of welcome in a tongue slowly dying on this coast.
Switching to English, he said, “Raven came here in the late snow, a long time ago. He’s got one broken wing so he can’t find himself any more lady loves. Raven and me, we’re growing old together. Sometimes I tell him stories, and he listens. Sometimes he tells me stories.”
The chief had seen nearly a hundred winters. Now he was almost blind—he was carving that coffin lid more by feel than sight. Long ago, he had slept in a longhouse with famous hunters. Numcamais had sailed in 80-foot war canoes. Once, he’d paddled from the Queen Charlotte Islands to Victoria wearing nothing but a cedarbark cloak and a woven hat.
Chief Numcamais called me Silas, pronouncing my name in the old way. I’d recently inherited a new name, and I expected him to ask if I was wealthy enough to spring for a potlatch, but he didn’t.
“This is bad weather for Spirit Quest,” Chief Numcamais said. “Let’s hope nobody gets frostbite. It’s hard, dancing without toes.”
He reached for a round tobacco tin, took out a handful of sweetgrass, placed it in a skillet and lit it with a sliver of wood from the stove. In a minute, the sweetgrass was smoking nicely. The chief did some hand medicine over the pan and wafted smoke over his head and face and shoulders. I did the same.
“Maybe this year’s spirit questers won’t find their tamahnous the first time out,” the chief said. “I didn’t. My first time out, all I got was dirty. Next time I went looking for tamahnous it was the year’s oldest moon. Bitter cold. My uncles had told me I should go without food for three days first, so that’s what I did. Went three whole days without anything except water before I set out. Three days after that I’m sitting on a beach, calling for tamahnous to come to me. I’m starving and miserable. I was ready to quit again when Spirit told me to eat raw octopus, build my strength up.
“What I did, Silas, I got a long stick and went into the sea near some rocks. Octopus love crabs and clams. Any time you see a pile of empty clamshells underwater, you’re probably near an octopus burrow. What you do is, you poke around with your stick, trying to get Mrs. Octopus mad at you. If she gets mad enough she’ll come out of her burrow and move someplace else. That time I’m talking about, I found some empty shells, poked for a bit, then waited. After a while I saw the tip of an octopus tentacle come out from a little cave. Then a bit more. What you do is, when you think you’re ready, you reach down, grab a tentacle and throw Mrs. Octopus onto the beach. But you’ve got to do it right. It takes a bit of practice to be a good octopus catcher. That time I reached down into the water, grabbed a tentacle and tried to throw her ashore. But Mrs. Octopus’s other arms were wrapped around some rocks. I couldn’t budge her. Next thing I know she’s all over me, pecking away at my chest with her sharp beak. Those tentacles were like strong rubber ropes. I was helpless. She’s pulling me under, cold seawater is breaking over my head. I thought: It’s all over, I might as well stop struggling.”
The old chief was really caught up in his story now.
“I went right under but I couldn’t see a thing because Mrs. Octopus shot black ink in the water. I guess we went half a mile before she let go of me. I was in the underwater spirit world by then. It’s not as cold as you might think. I didn’t see many fish. No wrecks. I got used to being down there.
“Well, I still had my tamahnous to find so I climbed into a land of ice where I met Raven. He give me bannock soaked in oolichan oil. When Raven asked me what I was doing there, I told him. ‘I’m looking for my tamahnous,’ I said.
“Raven said, ‘Seeking your tamahnous? Where?’
“I pointed uphill to the highest peak.
“Raven said, ‘Don’t go near it. Baxbakwalanuxsiwae lives there. Man-Eater-at-the-North-End-of-the-World lives there.’
“Raven took his wings off and laid them on the ground. Dark fog spread over the mountains. Raven just wanted to stop me going up there, that’s all, but by then I’d earned a bit of tamahnous and I got rid of Raven darkness with fire from my medicine bag. I was pretending to be brave, but I was scared when I wandered into that strange part of the spirit world.
“I stepped over the skeletons of otters and wolves as I came to Stone House. Red birds with beaks like knives flapped all around. Inside Stone House, magic crystals were raised up on a platform. Some crystals were white, others blue. They made loud humming noises and they moved in circles like dancers. When crystals touched each other, sparks flew like bolts of lightning. Then I saw Man-Eater.”
Chief Numcamais was suddenly quiet.
I’d grown up listening to Man-Eater stories. Man-Eater the shaman king, a creature with an immense dog-like body covered with gnashing mouths. I knew about Man-Eater’s horrifying wife and her female slaves who hunt constantly to feed Man-Eater’s insatiable appetite. Every Salish kid knows about Man-Eater’s corpse-littered domain, about the giant cranes and ravens ranging up and down outside his mountain cave, feasting on men’s eyes.
Chief Numcamais said, “Man-Eater touched my hands and it put me asleep. Tamahnous came to me in a dream and gave me Thunderbird Song. In my dream I picked four quartz crystals, put them in my medicine bag, then I went straight to the longhouse and did my first hamatsa dance.”
I spent the night in Chief Numcamais’s house. The next morning after breakfast, we took some supplies and went for a ride together in Freddy’s boat.
≈ ≈ ≈
The hidden cove was half an hour from Chief Numcamais’s place. We anchored in the lee of a densely treed island and launched Freddy’s dory. The chief navigated, and I manned the oars. It was low tide and heavy surf pounded the shore. Flotsam whirled in a savage riptide. Finally we rounded a spit and came upon a strip of sheltered beach about 50 feet across. A slightly higher tide would have submerged the beach entirely. As it was, our dory grounded on sand about 20 feet offshore. We got a bit damp pulling the dory high and dry. The chief was a tough old bird and seemed none the worse from his wetting. I think he was actually enjoying himself. He eyed little jets of water spurting intermittently from holes in the sand and said, “This always was a good clamming place.” Then he pointed.
A steep, unscalable cliff faced us, its bottom 10 feet coated with barnacles and mussels and the rest of it rising another 30 or 40 feet to forested overhang. I followed a movement with my eyes and saw a mink scamper behind a driftwood log. A bald eagle coasted overhead, accompanied by her chick. But at that moment Numcamais wasn’t interested in wildlife. He kept pointing ahead. I couldn’t see what he wanted me to see, and told him so.
“Good
,” he said. “The secret is still safe.”
We’d brought dry kindling and a small tent—one of those hemispherical units stiffened by flexible rods—with no floor to it. While the chief dug clams, I lit a fire on a nearby shelf of rock. When the fire was burning nicely, I built it up with driftwood and added some stones collected from the beach. After a while the fire burned to embers and the stones were very hot. We positioned the tent above the heated stones and had an instant sauna. We went inside and warmed up.
“A long time ago, a young Coast Salish warrior was on this beach, seeking his tamahnous,” the chief said. “That young warrior ended up in the sea. Somehow or other, he got tangled up with a big octopus. She yanked him underwater, but she was kind-hearted, not cruel. Instead of drowning him, she dragged him along an underwater passage into a dry cave.”
He put clams on the fire, then led me outside the tent. The beach was now totally submerged on a rising tide. He pointed to a crack in the cliff face and said, “The entrance to that underwater cave is across the beach, right there.” Grinning mightily, he added, “If you want to have a look inside it, you better take your clothes off.”
I got undressed and waded across to the cliff. I took a deep breath and dived in before I could change my mind.
The chief had directed me to an underwater tunnel about 10 feet long. I emerged in a domed limestone cave, roughly 70 feet in diameter, with a dry sandy floor. Diffused light emanated from above, providing just enough light for me to see about 50 carved wooden figures, approximately life-sized, arranged in a circle 20 feet across. At the foot of each figure lay human skulls. Other skulls were impaled on stakes. Dozens of whale ribs were propped upright against the walls, like Gothic arches. Water, dripping from stalactites, fell onto a little cedar house at the back of the cave before draining away around the cave’s circumference. A dozen carved and painted cedar coffins lay here and there on the sand.
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