by Seán Haldane
I swung myself over the fence and landed just in front of her. ‘Aemilia. I want you to tell me everything. The whole story,’
‘Why should I?’
‘For one thing because Wiladzap – your friend Wiladzap – is still in jail.’
Suddenly she looked as if she might cry. She bit her lip. ‘What happened?’ She said tightly.
‘I arrived in time, that’s all. Waaks and Tsamti were lurking outside but I got in past them. Lukswaas and Wan had almost suborned the jailer, but the procedure was not complete. I had a good talk with Wiladzap who in the excitement of it all blurted out a few words of English. I sent the Indians back to camp, except for Lukswaas who is now with friends of mine in town. The name “Aemilia” created a strong effect, I noticed in Wiladzap. But he would answer no questions about you. Very gentlemanly of him. I said I’d ask you. So here I am.’
‘I have nothing to say.’
‘Yes you do. You must, in fact. There’s a murderer on the loose and the only way to get your friend Wiladzap out by legitimate means, is to find him. And you can help.’
‘But who is the murderer?’ Aemilia said angrily.
‘You don’t know?’
‘God knows! I don’t. There are several people I might suspect. Everybody who knew McCrory ended up hating him.’
‘You too?’
‘No one more than I.’
‘Perhaps you killed him.’
‘Don’t be silly. Chad, if you know no more than this, stop playing cat and mouse with me. Stop this torment. Just go away.’
‘I could arrest you, as a matter of fact, for conspiring to break a prisoner out of jail.’
‘Do you like this power, Chad? You’re becoming a brute.’
‘I’m reluctant to be completely honest with you, because even then I’m not sure you’ll be honest with me.’
She thought for a moment. ‘Let’s be honest, then. But please don’t use what I say as evidence against me.’
‘As a matter of fact the law requires that I must – if for example you were tried for an offence. I cannot undertake not to. But so far, I have kept the jailbreak incident quiet, and I doubt it will come to the fore. My own aim, in fact, is to get Wiladzap out. I think I know who the murderer is too. I’ll tell you shortly. But please, I want your story: about you and the Indians.’
‘All right.’ She turned and went over to the shade of one of the apple trees, and sat down on the dry grass. I followed and sat near her. I realized, unhappily, that my feelings toward her were still strong. I was very much aware that I had embraced her the day before, and I felt a kind of desire – for caressing her but not for the moment of consummation itself. That belonged to Lukswaas. I was not experienced enough to be able to label such an ambivalent feeling in any but naïve terms. I told myself that I ‘liked’ Aemilia, even sensually, but did not ‘love’ her.
‘Lukswaas will have told you,’ Aemilia said, as if wanting to put off her story.
‘I didn’t press her to.’
Aemilia looked puzzled. ‘Are you in love with that girl?’
‘I am.’
‘That explains a lot. You might have been just cynically using her, as so many white men use “squaws.” But I couldn’t quite believe it of you. And she was terribly gone on you. She said she had given herself to you, like a crazy woman, and then later she learned you had thought she was Wiladzap’s wife!’ Aemilia laughed harshly. ‘You’re given a cherry to pluck, and you assume it’s an over-ripe plum! I’m the plum, not she.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m his wife.’
This went so much further than my suspicions that I was speechless. I waved a hand to tell her to continue.
‘Starting from the beginning: I was fourteen years old. Daddy was killed, as I described, by a filthy Comox. I was with him. We were both some way from the village. The Comox, several of them, grabbed me and took me away. Needless to say they decapitated Daddy. I’ve told this before, so I don’t cry about it now. It’s history. The Comox tinkered around with me a bit but did not violate me, as they would have an Indian girl. They were in fact very frightened. Most Indian violence is committed out of sheer terror, I think. Perhaps white violence too? Anyway, this particular band set off fast, with me, to the territory of the neighbouring Kwagiutl. They had, I think – I didn’t speak Comox, which is a kind of Salishan – decided to sell me as a high quality virgin slave. I was too dangerous for them to keep, but the Kwagiutl are the most bloodthirsty tribe along the upper Straits so perhaps they would have the power to take me on. At any rate, as I later heard, the HMS Trident had arrived and shelled the Comox village, which was a pity since women and children were killed, and the culprits had got away.
‘We went toward the Kwagiutl territory by canoe. But we didn’t meet the Kwagiutl. Instead we encountered a really grisly sight: a huge canoe full of Tsimshian who had come hundreds of miles down the coast for a raid on the Kwagiutl. Their canoe had eleven, as I recall, Kwagiutl heads stuck on poles down the middle. There were thirty or so Tsimshian men, and three Kwagiutl girls they had taken as slaves. All this, by the way, is rare now. That was in 1860, only nine years ago, but much has changed. Anyway, my Comox literally befouled themselves with fright. As the other canoe swept up, they made me stand up and they called out in Chinook that they had a beautiful white girl to sell. The canoes wallowed side by side. And Wiladzap, who was only twenty one but who had done particularly well in their raid – he had killed four Kwagiutl – bought me. For the entire stock of his personal booty from the Kwagiutl – skins, argillite, blankets … You should understand, this was a very high price. He could have simply cut the throats of the Comox. I wish he had! There were only five of them. But it was a question of pride, and largesse. The canoes grappled together. The goods were handed over to the Comox, and I to the Tsimshian.
‘Then they brought me to Tsalak. The journey took two weeks, camping on shore at night. They treated me very well, all of them. Wiladzap did not even molest me. He was waiting to show me to his mother, as it happened. But after several days I became suddenly ill. A reaction, I suppose, to my father’s death. I had been stoical, but I collapsed into tears and trembling which wouldn’t stop. Wiladzap had the journey delayed for two days so that we could stay encamped. First he disappeared for a whole day into the forest to collect herbs, but also to ask the spirits for guidance. He came back with herbs for an infusion, which I drank. But he also came back with a ‘vision’. He said my father (the Comox had told him my father had been killed) had appeared to him: he described him very accurately. My father had told him that my mother and my sister were safe – the vision seemed to condense my two sisters into one. Wiladzap said he would take care of me, and nobody would harm me: he had promised that to my father. All this was soothing, although I was as if paralysed, trembling like a caught rabbit, and weeping. Then he held my head very gently and put his mouth against it, on top, and for a long while seemed to breathe into my skull. Then he took each foot in turn and breathed for a while into the sole. I was too weak to resist him, and I’m glad I didn’t because I suddenly went into convulsions and found myself screaming. Then I slept and woke up feeling clear and almost happy. It was night, and Wiladzap was sitting beside me in the firelight. I saw him and I fell in love with him – just like that. He could see it. He told me later that he had known it would happen: there were only two alternatives – I would die of grief, or I would love him. He treated this as a responsibility above all, but he truly loved me, I knew. He still did nothing improper. He wrapped me in a blanket and I slept again.
‘Tsalaks is quite an impressive place, up from the mouth of a river on a very large island – Princess Royal – well placed for coastal and interior trade up in the mainland rivers, and very prosperous. Big plank houses along the river bank, with totem poles in front. About four hundred people, in four clans – Eagles, Ravens, Backfish, and Wolf. Wiladzap is an eagle. This comes through his mother who is now, I’m sorry
to hear, dead. The women in tribes down here are, as you know, treated like dirt, although I dare say they have the kind of secret influence that women always do. The Tsimshian are what I believe the new science of ethnology calls “matrilineal”. That means property descends from mother to daughter, or from uncle to nephew – meaning to a man from his mother’s brother. It doesn’t mean the women rule. It’s not what I believe the more romantic ethnologists call a “matriarchy”. As always the men rule, though the women know everything. But women can accumulate reputation. They can even inherit certain names. Do you know, it makes me think of Ivanhoe or other novels of Walter Scott. The Tsalak are by our standards medieval. Their concerns are reputation, courage, and chivalry. And the amassing of material wealth, of course.
‘At any rate, Wiladzap was already a “chief” – although this is a flexible term since a chief has to live up to his title. Even women can be of the chiefly class, and they must be industrious and well behaved – as with us! Wiladzap was also what they call a “halayeet”, what we might vulgarly call a medicine man. But that was not by choice, it was more a sort of inspiration. He had been possessed several times by a “spirit illness” which they value very highly, and almost died, and in the weakness of this, had brought out songs which could be used as formulas for curing illness. So he was already a very special sort of man. He was, of course, also brutal when it suited him. You must not romanticize these people. They completely lack conscience about the taking of human life. The only thing that might stop them from killing someone would be the material consequences – a bloody feud, revenge, and so on. They can be prudent. But not what we would call moral. They are however fairly moral about sexual relations between members of the same social class – which I suppose comes under prudence. Wiladzap freely enjoyed the embraces of one of the new slaves, in the first few days of our journey – before his cure of me, after which he remained chaste. But even he would not feel free to have relations with a girl of his own class. If he did, demands for marriage, exchange of property and so on, from her brothers, would follow. This is hard on the girls, of course. Unlike their brothers they can’t enjoy fornicating with slaves and social inferiors. It’s the same as among us! But worse for them, since they are not kept sheltered but are constantly stimulated by nakedness, sexual talk, and romantic stories which do not stop short, as ours do, before the crucial moment. But I’m digressing – thinking of Lukswaas.
‘Wiladzap consulted his mother about me. The nearest thing you can imagine to her would be the sort of “dowager duchess” type you find in English novels, although she was not very old, perhaps the same age as Mamma is now. She had an eight year old daughter, Lukswaas, who was even then very pretty and thoughtful. At any rate, the old lady – which is what I thought of her as – interviewed me as best she could, established by a discreet examination that I was a virgin, and said Wiladzap could take me as his first wife. I was, of course, not consulted on this, although Wiladzap was so enamoured of me that he swore there would never be a second wife, I would be the only one. They were all very kind. Becoming Wiladzap’s wife entailed no particular ceremony beyond dressing me as one of them, Wiladzap giving me fine clothes and ornaments, and my going to live with him in his area of the clan house. To tell the truth, the nearest comparison I can come to is that Wiladzap’s area was like a stall in a very large stable. Or perhaps the great hall of a medieval castle was like that?
‘Although the worst of my misery had gone, I had seen my father murdered. I had lost my mother and sisters. My heart ached. I felt violated by Wiladzap. He was not harsh with me, but I could not enjoy his demands on me. I found them disgusting in fact, much as I loved him – but it was a love full of ambivalence and conflict. I learned Tsimshian, and weaving, and all sorts of lore. Then after about six months I became pregnant. This changed things. I was filled with strange sensations. Morning sickness, of course. But then, of all things, intense desire. I became passionate for Wiladzap, and could not have enough of him. We would retreat to bed early, or lie out under the stars – it was summer – and make love and talk. I began to teach him English, which he regarded as a gift, learning it very quickly and talking it quite beautifully. This stage lasted about three months. I had become quite big. And I now had a sort of power over Wiladzap. Yet I could see that once I had the baby I would be one of the Tsalak for ever. I didn’t want to be. I had to do something, then or never, to get away.
‘Since I knew by then many of the things they believed in, I thought of the one way in which I could appeal to Wiladzap. Children have a more complicated status with them than with us. For him, for example, his greatest material responsibility would be to his nephews – the children of his sisters, Guyda (she’s still at Tsalaks, apparently), and the younger sister, Lukswaas. But there is often great love and affection between fathers and sons or daughters. So I told Wiladzap, and his mother, that if he did not take me back to my people at once I would poison the child in my womb and it would be either aborted too early to live, be stillborn, or horribly deformed. They understood this at once. They think, perhaps rightly, that the pregnant woman can kill her unborn child by evil thoughts, or by stilling what they call the breath of life in her body.
‘Wiladzap pleaded with me – insofar as he can plead – to stay. But I was determined. His pride and largesse were touched. You see, I was not a slave. It would be unthinkable for a man of Wiladzap’s renown to keep a wife against her will. If I needed to go back to my own people, well then Wiladzap would take me back. For a while only, to have the baby with my mother. That became the official reason.
‘It was autumn, and the weather was steady, though cold. Wiladzap and some of his men – and their women, to keep me company – brought me by canoe all the way back to Comox. They ran the gauntlet of the Kwagiutl who might have attacked them at any time. The Comox settlement had been abandoned. They brought me further South, to the first British settlement, North of Nanaimo. They left me there. My mother was sent for, from Victoria, and I came here.
‘I had said to Wiladzap that one day I would come back. But as we approached the white settlements he became very gloomy and said he had lost me for ever. If I did come back, I said, I could come in one of the Bay’s trading ships, when my baby was old enough to travel. But he must not try to come and get me. He said he would not. I cried when I said goodbye to him. I almost asked him to take me back! I wish I had! None of the present troubles would have happened. But then I was naïve. I was not old enough to understand what would happen to me.
‘My mother was of course happy I was still alive. She called it a miracle. But pregnant! She was her usual helpful self at the birth, as kind as could be. But it was all hushed up. And she found the Joneses to take little William. Wiladzap: William. Sometimes I call him my little Eagle. He’s such a fine little boy. But he thinks I’m his “Auntie”! It’s so painful. And this has suited everybody. I believe my mother has ‘forgotten’ even who William is. And my sisters practice the same deception. The little hypocrites. Can you understand all this?’
‘Of course.’ It was, in fact, predictable. Reputation was more important for ‘eligibles’ than life itself.
‘It has put me in the most horrible position. I’ve returned to the life of a blushing maiden. For nine years! But it’s a lie. I’ve not known how, in all conscience, I could even marry – the Indian marriage being a nothing in Christian terms. Not a respectable man, anyway. I have – as you know – the appetites of a married woman. At the same time I have the attributes of an old maid in the making. I like that too, in a way. I’m more interested in books and music and grafting apple trees than in most things. I can’t play the game my sisters can.’
‘Did you ever think of going back?’
‘Incessantly. But it would have broken Mamma’s heart. She too was living in agony. She too has the appetites of a woman – as I now know – and had lost her man. She couldn’t have Daddy back. Why should I have Wiladzap? Who was a painted savage anyway …
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‘At the same time there is much about the life of the Indians – even the Tsimshian – that repulses me. It’s not merely that they do not always wear clothes, that they do not play Handel, or eat seedcake at “tea”. Nor are they much dirtier than we are. They have no baths but they wash more often … But up at Tsalak it rains constantly and the clouds become stuck gloomily for weeks on end against the mountains. And it’s like living in a combined butcher’s and fish market. They are always bringing in animals they have killed, and chopping them up, and skinning otters, and gutting and cleaning fish. One is always washing off blood or fish scales. And it all stinks. It’s not the work. They work, especially the women, all day long, but some of it’s pleasant. I picked berries and crushed them into cakes, I cooked meat in skunk-cabbage leaves, I wove blankets. But it’s a constant harvest of living things. I prefer to work on my apple trees. This orchard was my idea, by the way, and I love grafting and pruning. Civilization seems to depend on agriculture, which the Indians just don’t have. Indeed they consider it ridiculous to cultivate plants. That’s why Indians are so unreliable as farm workers. Another thing is that they live in terror! Now the whites are more established up the coast I’ve heard there’s much less head hunting and raiding. Many of the Tsimshian – the so-called Kitkats, even, from near Tsalak – have even moved up to the missionary settlements. But I’m sure there are still the permanent revenge feuds that go on between tribes. They remember atrocities from decades back, and brood on them, then take action when they can. I shouldn’t want to go back there with my son – although, my God, I’d love to own the little dear – only to be butchered in some raid by the Haida.
‘Then, on the other hand, if raids are less common, if the Tsimshian are becoming less wild, I sometimes worry that they’ll become corrupted, like the Songhees, and degenerate. Although at other times I think they may not. They have more energy, and they are terrific traders. If we, the whites, will let them be! Lukswaas tells me the trading routes are being taken over by the HBC, and have been prohibited to Tsimshian. She says Wiladzap is afraid of becoming mangy and diseased like a bear in a cage. That’s why he’s worked up about this old fashioned quest of earning the Legex name. How could I go back to all that? Yet you know, when I saw them at Cormorant Point last week I cried with emotion and gratitude to be among them. Even talking about them now with you makes me want to be with them…’ Aemilia stopped talking, her face flushed and excited but her eyes abstracted.