The Devil's Making
Page 42
‘I’m not afraid of the Americans,’ Begbie said. ‘Whether Europeans or Jews or even Negroes, they are our cousins. But I think only a British Columbia could include us and our friends the Indians in the same society. Not a Utopia! But there’s land enough for all of us here: we don’t need to despise God’s children for the colour of their skins. I wish for your sake and your wife’s that the impossible could come to pass. But I’m getting too old to leave here, and if we must be Americans or Canadians I know myself well enough to predict that I shall make the best of it.’
We reached the clearing where we had left our horses in the care of a Songhees to whom Begbie gave a dollar. Before mounting his horse, Begbie stood as if looking back towards the river, but he was obviously thinking of something else.
‘One thing, Hobbes, I’d like to ask you. But I’d like you to forget about it once you have answered it. This whole sordid affair of the alienist McCrory is very disturbing. I’ve heard rumours that so-and-so or so-and-so were patients of his. Do you know who was, in fact?
‘He kept no records. I’m sure of that. But yes, I know who most of his patients were.’
‘Could you tell me, was Mrs Blum among them?’
Begbie was looking at me almost haughtily, but the question rendered him totally vulnerable. He was said to have recently fallen in love with this Mrs Blum, a married woman. The nature of their relationship was shadowy, although as I saw Begbie now, I could guess what it was.
‘I can tell you truthfully that her name was never mentioned to me in connection with the alienist.’
‘Thank you.’
We mounted and rode off along a muddy track, parallel to the river and hemmed in by mountainous walls of moss-covered rock, on which the sun’s rays never fell, presenting a scene which might fashionably have been called a ‘romantic prospect’, but which in reality was one of utter gloom.
* * *
I had resigned from the police after the seven day leave Pemberton had given me. I was too heart-sick to continue, and Lukswaas and I needed each other. I had been able to rent Orchard Farm, at a pittance, from Mrs Quattrini. The Joneses had left to settle on Saltspring Island. Lukswaas was pregnant – probably from one of our first encounters in the forest. But I had managed to bring in and sell the fruit harvest which I regarded as Aemilia’s. We would be all right for the winter. I had bought a few pigs. This was far from romantic, but practical. Mrs Pemberton had told me that in Ireland a pig was known as ‘the gentleman that pays the rent.’ And this horse I was riding, as well as another, had come with the farm.
By the time we had arrived, the wind had become more blustery, and behind us in the West the sky was blackening. It was good to enter the house in which Lukswaas and I, in spite of all that had happened, had been so happy that light seemed to leap out of the walls. There was a roaring fire in the sitting room grate, and Begbie and I sat ourselves in front of it, Begbie wearing a pair of my slippers, while Lukswaas prepared hot toddies of spiced cider and brandy. Begbie had learned enough Tsimshian from the Interior branches of the tribe to pay her some gallant compliment which had made her smile.
She brought the hot toddies and sat down close to me, but I got up for a moment to fetch the two letters for Begbie to read: Darwin’s, and the other.
Lukswaas and I sat looking into the fire, holding hands. We were at peace with each other. This did not change even when I went on to think about the salmon dying on the rocks of the stream. Lukswaas and I had circled each other many times like the salmon in their dance, but it had been granted to us to live a while longer before the beaks of the gulls pecked out our eyes … Like the eyes of Wiladzap, Aemilia, and their little boy, of sturdy Waaks, gloomy Tsamti, and gentle Wan.
Begbie had read Darwin’s letter, and was now reading the other one which I knew by heart:
‘Dear Mr Hobbes:
It has taken time for me to get back to you with this, but the life of a U.S. Indian agent is very busy, and I wanted to make this a long enough letter to explain to you fully these barbarous events which, as you write, deprived you at one blow of your dearest friends.
‘First, the Clallam. The name means “the strong people”, and they are indeed big and warlike. They are a Salishan tribe, unfriendly cousins to your Sooke and Saanich and Cowichan. I say unfriendly because even now a Clallam canoe will occasionally head North and return with a cargo of their cousins’ heads. These expeditions are carried out with the utmost stealth, and I dare say they creep up on their victims unawares. To my knowledge, the Salish in general avoid pitched battles (although they used to fight them at sea, from canoes) preferring sudden assassinations and ambushes. Their villages, set back from the long sandy beaches we have here, were often fronted with rows of sun-bleached skulls set on stakes, and these can occasionally still be seen. The Clallam are now in a precarious state of half-civilisation. Some of the older ones when young, prior to 1849, became great favourites of your British sailors, who gave them names which they still keep, such as: Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, the Earl of Clarence, and the Duke of York. They are amiable old rogues for the most part. The younger ones find themselves caught between the old ways and the new, unable to prove themselves in feats of hunting and blood feuds, since the Territory is filling up very fast with settlers and, unlike in British Columbia, they are heavily outnumbered.
‘As to what happened at Dungeness Spit. This is, as the name suggests, a long curving peninsula of sand and shingle, covered with only a few low bushes, which juts out Northward into the Sound. It is the obvious stopping place for any Indians arriving from the North, wishing to camp for the night and then move on without contact with local Indians. However in this case the Tsimshian party, which arrived an hour or two before sunset, was spotted by some Clallam who recognized them as Tsimshian by the size and shape of their canoe, and the designs on its prow. And here is the nub of the story: some fifteen years ago, as precisely as I can ascertain, a party of Tsimshian passing through these parts abducted two Clallam women and brought them North from where they have never, needless to say, returned. Now for the Clallam, all Tsimshian are the same, though I understand they occupy some two hundred miles of coast and consist of many different tribes. So at the sight of these travellers, the Clallam began instantly plotting revenge. Messengers were sent out to the villages where relations of the abducted women lived. By midnight a war party of twenty five young men was gathered at Tsiskat, the Clallam village at the base of the spit. This presented, in fact, a long awaited opportunity for them to prove their valor, although not everyone would call a night attack on a party of sleeping people an act of valor.
‘The day had been very clear and at this time of year, on the Straits and in the entrance to the sound, such a day is usually followed by heavy fog. Sure enough this had come rolling in and covered the spit, so that a man could not see much farther than the end of his arm, but the Clallam knew the spit well, having dug clams there all their lives. They were armed with the guns they use for hunting – long barrelled rifles for the most part – and knives. They set out in canoes and paddled up the West or outer side of the spit, landing quietly at a point somewhat below where the Tsimshian had camped on the Eastern or inner side. At this point they seem to have lost their nerve. Some urged turning back, for fear of punishment by the U.S. government (through its agent, myself, whom they hold in some fear). Then someone suggested they build a small fire and blacken their faces with the charred wood. In the excitement of this, they got their resolution back again. They re-embarked in their canoes and paddled silently up to a point just opposite the Tsimshian camp. They waited on the shore while two scouts made their way across the narrow spit to survey the camp. It was a makeshift affair of mats spread from stakes and logs, under which the entire party was lying. There was a large fire which gave some light through the fog. The scouts could see that there were many more women than men, which was encouraging. One woman got up to replenish the fire, searching around for driftwood, and almost stum
bled into one of the scouts as he lay on the ground. This unnerved him, and when she had lain down again, he was so impatient for his comrades to come up from behind and attack that he fired his gun at the sleeping Tsimshian.
‘The Tsimshian of course jumped up and seized their own weapons, but in the light of their own fire and looking out into the night and the fog they must have been at a great disadvantage. Almost at once the entire Clallam party was up at the level of the scouts and they poured bullets into the Tsimshian until all were dead. In the old days, the Clallam would have taken women and children as slaves, but since slavery is now illegal, they had already decided to spare no one. Such are the workings of the savage mind! To replace one crime by another even worse!
‘They then rushed in and decapitated the men. Since there were only ten heads to go round among twenty five Clallam, they began to yell at each other and quarrel over them, some indulging in an indecent tug of war for their possession. In this rage they went around the other bodies, mutilating them, and cutting off ears and fingers where there were rings. Then someone discovered that a body he found and was about to decapitate was that of one of his companions. This Clallam had been killed apparently by a pistol shot, which makes a different wound from a rifle. There was a terrific quarrel. These men who had massacred thirty five men, women and children were heartbroken and furious at the death of one of their own. They came to blows, the scout who had fired the first shots being blamed for his recklessness. Then in another of those sudden losses of nerve which afflict them, they decided to embark for home, leaving their trophies, by which I mean the heads, on the beach although carrying off a fair amount of trinkets and silver jewellery, along with the body of their fallen companion.
‘The next day the matter came to my attention and since the elders of the Clallam, those named after your English Dukes and Earls, live in great fear of the U.S. Government, all twenty four of the remaining offenders were swiftly handed over to me. I have put them to work on the Snohomish Reservation, secured with ball and chain, cutting trees and pulling out stumps from dawn to dusk, which I assure you is back-breaking work. But I regret to tell you that I will have to release them after some months. U.S. law is not fussy about one Indian killing another. These are viewed as domestic altercations, and left alone. The life of an Indian is not viewed in the same way as that of an American. I do not know if the same view is held in British Columbia.
‘So there the matter rests, and an ugly story it is. I hope you find this account satisfactory.
Yours truly, William King, U.S. Indian Agent, Port Angeles, W.T.
‘P.S. the bodies of the Tsimshian were terribly cut up, and I had the Clallam bury them at once. It was remarked to me that one woman looked pale for an Indian. But then the Northern Indians are lighter skinned anyway, so I did not give the matter any attention. No doubt this was the woman you mention, who had married the Tyee, God help her. But rest assured, in the state of things, you would not have wanted to retrieve the body.’
Begbie put down the letter with a sigh. The three of us remained looking into the flames, listening to the gusts of the November storm outside ripping the last leaves from the trees around the house and bringing in squalls of rain from the West. After a while, Lukswaas took my hand and placed it against her belly where I could feel the kicking of our child, impatient, so I imagined, to be born.
AFTERWORD
Many of the characters of this story, apart from the obvious ones like Charles Darwin and John Humphrey Noyes, are in the historical record: Judge Begbie, Augustus Pemberton, Captain Delacombe, Lieutenant Epstein, William King the Indian agent, and even Chief Freezy. Begbie and Pemberton have streets named after them in Victoria.
Aemilia’s remark about animals not experiencing repentance or remorse comes from a critique of Darwin by his friend Frances Power Cobbe.
The various sexual therapies practised by McCrory – even the ‘electric testicules’ – are well documented in 19th century North America and Europe.
British Columbia joined Canada in 1872, on the promise of a railway from the East to the Pacific coast, which was eventually built, and a causeway to Victoria, which was not. Amor de Cosmos became Premier of the new province, was so corrupt that he fell into disgrace, and died insane and almost forgotten. Judge Begbie soldiered on, adapting to Canada, and died peacefully in his beloved Victoria, but his dream of justice for the Indians was not realized. By the end of the century the Tsimshian and other coastal tribes, their populations halved by epidemics, were reduced to poverty and working in salmon canneries.
An account of the massacre of the Tsimshian on Dungeness Spit in 1869 can be found in Edward Curtis, The North American Indian, Volume ix, 1913. Curtis’s informant was Naehum, the scout who fired the first shot, ‘now an old man and a devotee of the Shaker religion. After this confession he fell into a violent fit of “shaking”, prayed volubly, and asked God for pardon, all the while ringing a bell and weeping copiously.’
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK FOR MINOTAUR BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
THE DEVIL’S MAKING. Copyright © 2013 by Seán Haldane. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.minotaurbooks.com
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.
First published in Canada by Stone Flower Press and distributed in Europe by Rún Press.
First U.S. Edition: May 2015
eISBN 9781466878129
First eBook edition: March 2015