Flying with the Eagle, Racing the Great Bear

by Joseph Bruchac

  Then Star Boy returned to the village. Everyone celebrated his great victory. When several moons had passed, however, Star Boy looked up into the sky and knew that he could stay no longer. He went one last time to his grand-mother’s teepee.

  “Grandmother,” Star Boy said, “I have done all I can do among my mother’s relatives. I have become a man here among the people of the Striped Arrows, but now I must go back to the land of my father.”

  With that, he began heading toward the east. He walked and walked until he was out of sight. And it is said that he traveled until he walked back up into the sky land. There, like his father, he became a star. Today he is the North Star and he can be seen every night, looking down from the center of the sky land on the camp circles of the Cheyenne.

  Salmon Boy

  Tlingit

  One day, in the village of Sitka, a boy asked his mother for some food. It had been a long time since the salmon run, so all that she had was some dry salmon, which she gave to the boy.

  “This is half-moldy,” the boy said. “I will not eat half-moldy fish.” He threw it on the ground and then stepped on it.

  “The salmon qwani do not like to be treated that way,” the mother said. “Whatever salmon we have to eat, we must be thankful for. We do not throw food away. If we throw food away, bad things may happen.”

  The boy, who was close to the time when he would be a young man, ignored her. He walked down to the water to try to catch some sea gulls with fish eggs on a small hook. He wrapped his line tightly around his wrist, baited his hook, and threw it into the water near the gulls.

  Suddenly a huge sea gull, bigger than any bird he had ever seen before, grabbed his line and pulled him into the water before he could cut himself free. He tried to swim to shore, but the current was strong and the cold water deep. He called for help, but none of the people was near the water and no one heard him.

  As he sank, a canoe full of strange-looking people came to him under the water. They were wearing clothing that shone as brightly as the scales of fish in the sun. It was the salmon qwani, the souls of the salmon that had died after swimming upstream to spawn. They pulled him into their canoe.

  “Half-Moldy Boy,” they said, laughing, “come with us.”

  Then the salmon people carried him out into the ocean to their village. The souls of the salmon looked just like people to the boy. Their village was much like his own village of Sitka. Although they called him Half-Moldy Boy, the salmon people treated him well.

  “You must stay here with us now,” they said. Then they showed him to a small house where he could stay. After a time, the boy became hungry. There was no food in the house. He looked all around the village.

  “I am hungry. What can I eat?” Half-Moldy Boy finally said to one of the salmon people.

  “You see those people there?” the salmon person said to him. “Just go over and say you want to wrestle with them. After a while, because you are strong, you will get a good hold and throw your opponent down. He will become food, which you may eat. Carry it away from the village and make a fire to cook it. But remember to burn all of the bones in that fire when you are through. Then come right back to our village and you will be surprised at what you see.”

  Half-Moldy Boy did as he was told. He wrestled with one of the young salmon men. When he threw that young man down, his opponent seemed to disappear. All that was left was a salmon at his feet. He carried it away, cooked it, and ate it. When he was done, Half-Moldy Boy was so eager to return to the village and see whatever it was that would surprise him that he hurriedly gathered the bones together and threw them quickly into the fire. When he arrived at the village, the young salmon man he had thrown down had already returned. But he was bent over, holding his back.

  “Ah,” the man, said, “my backbone is hurting me.”

  Then Half-Moldy Boy realized he had been in such a hurry that he had not been careful enough. He quickly ran back to where he had eaten the salmon. There he discovered one tiny bone he had missed and threw it into the fire. When he returned again to the village, he found that the man’s backache had disappeared.

  As the days passed, Half-Moldy Boy was taught many things by the salmon people. He learned that there were songs and prayers of thanksgiving that a good fisherman must know. He tried to memorize them all so he would be able to take them back to his people. With those prayers and songs, his people would be able to do much better when they went fishing for salmon.

  One day, many of the salmon people in the village started getting into their canoes.

  “Where are you going?” Half-Moldy Boy asked.

  “We are going to Copper River,” one group said.

  “We are going up to Dry Bay,” said another.

  So the salmon spoke, referring to each stream where there would be a salmon run. Finally one group said, “We are going to the little river by Sitka.”

  “I will come with you,” said Half-Moldy Boy. He climbed into a canoe and paddled with the others. All around him were many canoes filled with salmon returning home from the sea. The groups were going to the rivers where they had been born.

  As the group he was with approached their river, the salmon people spoke with excitement about the coming battle.

  “There will be forts in the river to stop us,” they said, and the boy realized they were speaking about fish traps.

  Every now and then, one of the salmon would tell another, “Ehaw! Stand up in the canoe and look around.” And the boy would realize that meant jumping up out of the stream.

  Soon they were in the river by Sitka. The boy saw his own mother there on the bank. He quickly stood up in the canoe, and his mother caught him as he leaped from the river.

  “Look at the fine fish I have caught,” she shouted to her husband. Then her husband noticed the copper necklace on the fish.

  “What does this mean?” he asked, pointing to the necklace. “This is the necklace our son wore.”

  “Ehaw!” Salmon Boy’s mother cried. “This is my son.”

  The two of them carried Salmon Boy home. They placed him on a shelf inside their house, surrounding him with eagle feathers. Then they called for the shaman. When the old man came in, he went straight to the shelf and examined Salmon Boy.

  “It is my son,” said the mother.

  “I see who he is,” the shaman said. “If you do as I say, he will be well.” He heated oil in the fire and placed four drops on Salmon Boy as he lay there. With each drop, Salmon Boy grew a little larger. At last, the old shaman stepped back. “Cover him and leave him for the night,” the old man said.

  All through that night, the parents waited for dawn, praying that their son would be well. Every now and then, a noise would come from the shelf where Salmon Boy lay, but the parents did not uncover him.

  When the dawn came, the parents removed the cover. There was their son, fully human again. They lifted him up, and he embraced them.

  “I have come back to help our people,” Salmon Boy said.

  From that day on, Salmon Boy always remembered the care one must take never to waste food and never, never to offend the souls of the salmon.

  Tommy’s Whale

  Inupiaq

  Tommy Anawrok had never gone out to hunt the bowhead before. But now he was about to climb into the umiak, the walrus-skin boat, with his uncle and his uncle’s crew. His uncle had hunted whales for many years and was one of the most respected captains. Today they would go out into the Open Lead, where the ice had thawed and the whales would come to the surface.

  Although Tommy was only thirteen and had never before gone on a whale hunt, he had known the bowhead whale all of his life. When he was six years old, a whale was brought up on the ice by his father’s crew, and his father had taken the boy aside.

  “My son,” he said, “I want you to know the w
hale. We are going to leave this whale on the ice until you have touched every part of its body.”

  Tommy did as his father said. He spent a long time with the great whale there in the almost endless Arctic day of late May. He touched its flukes and its tail. He felt its mouth and the baleen through which it strained its food. He climbed onto the whale’s back and walked up it, and found the place just where the head joined the body, where there was a small indentation. His father had told him to look for that place. In the old days, when a whale was struck badly and was suffering, the bravest and the best of the whalers would jump onto the whale’s back and drive his harpoon down into that place. Then the whale’s pain would be ended and it would die.

  When he finished, the long day’s light was dim and his father took him home and told him to sleep. That night he dreamed that he was a whale swimming beneath the ice, waiting to be called up by the people when they needed his help.

  Tommy looked at the broad back of his uncle Tinuk, who sat in the front of the umiak. Tommy had great respect for his uncle. He found himself remembering words Uncle Tinuk had said to him long ago. “The greatest of all the sea animals is the bowhead whale. Long ago, when the Great Sprit had made all things, the Creator decided to make one more being, more beautiful and perfect than all the others. That being was the bowhead whale. Then the Creator saw that the Inupiaq people needed to hunt the whale to survive, and so the Creator gave them permission. But it was with the understanding that we would always show the whale respect.

  “The Europeans have tried to separate us from the animals, from the sea,” Uncle Tinuk had continued, “but every time they take an Inupiaq away from that life, they take a part of his spirit. Those animals are our lives in every way. We hunt them only because we need them to survive. That is why we use every part of an animal after we kill it, and we show it respect and thank its spirit.”

  Tommy had listened closely. He was only seven then, but he already knew that he would be a good hunter some day if he could be like his uncle. His mother had once told him a story about Uncle Tinuk.

  “When your Uncle Tinuk was a boy,” she had said, “he would go out hunting for seals with his gun. One time he went out with two of his older friends. Tinuk waited near one of the breathing holes for a seal to come out so that he could shoot it. His friends went around one of the pressure ridges on the ice, where the ice was pushed up twice as high as the roof of our house, to look for other breathing holes there. When they climbed up on top of the pressure ridge, they saw a polar bear only about fifty yards from Tinuk. It was down on its belly, crawling toward Tinuk the way a bear will when it is sneaking up on a seal. It was too far off for the other boys to shoot at it, and the wind was strong in their faces, so that they knew Tinuk would not hear their shouts. They could only watch.

  “It seemed as if Tinuk did not see that bear. He kept sitting there, looking at the breathing hole in the ice. He did not move, and the bear got closer. Then, just when the bear was close enough to charge, Tinuk fired that little twenty-two. It hit the bear in its eye and killed it, like that. Tinuk had been waiting for the right time to shoot.”

  “It is true,” Tommy’s grandmother Belle had said from where she sat near the stove, sewing on a reindeer skin. “That is what my son did. He was like that boy in the story with the great eagle. He did not strike too soon.”

  Tommy knew that story about the great eagle. Grandma Belle told it often and Tommy never tired of it. Long ago, the whales began to vanish from the sea. The Inupiaq people lived near the foot of the big mountains by the sea. On top of one mountain a giant eagle lived, and down that mountainside a river ran. But instead of water, that river was full of whale oil. When the people saw oil in the river, they knew that the great eagle was catching all the whales and carrying them to the mountaintop.

  The people knew that soon all the whales would be gone. So it was decided that someone must kill the great eagle. A boy whose name was Tinuk—the same name as Tommy’s uncle—was the one who said he would go.

  Tinuk took two spears and climbed the mountain and waited in a crevice. When the great eagle returned, carrying two whales in its talons, Tinuk did not move. Finally the eagle settled down. At just the right moment, Tinuk struck with his first spear. It wounded the eagle, which screamed and spread its wings to take flight. Then Tinuk stood so the angry eagle could see him. He waited as the eagle swooped toward him. Then he threw his spear, piercing its breast and killing it.

  As Tommy joined the men in the umiak, he found himself remembering the story of the eagle. The importance of trusting himself was part of what it had taught him. But even more, the story had taught him that one could trust oneself only when prepared. The life of a hunter was dangerous. Anything might happen at any moment. Knowing what his body could do, knowing that his weapons were in good working order, knowing about the animals and the ice, the wind and the sea, were all necessary if he hoped to feed his family and return home safely. When a man went out in a small boat, he went only with men he knew would not foolishly put themselves or the others with them into a dangerous situation. That was the trust his uncle was showing him today.

  The clouds hung low in the gray sky. The water of the Open Lead, the river of seawater that flowed through the ice at this time of year, was calm. The men’s snowmobiles with their sleds attached to the back, burdened with ropes and the block and tackle to pull a whale up on the ice, shrank until they could no longer be seen.

  “Keep watching to all sides,” Uncle Tinuk said, and Tommy narrowed his eyes behind the dark lenses. Like his uncle, he wore sunglasses against the glare. In the old days, the Inupiaq had made their own “sunglasses,” carved with a small slit in the center, which were strapped over the eyes. Two of the old men still had such goggles. But most of the best hunters now used modern sunglasses. He lifted his head up even higher to keep watch.

  Fred Anawrok, his older cousin, chuckled from behind him. “Tommy,” he said, his left hand steady on the handle of the outboard motor, “you look like that big eagle your grandma tells about in that story.”

  “There.” Tommy’s uncle spoke from the front of the umiak. The motor roared, and they turned hard to the starboard side. There were two whales ahead of them, swimming on the surface. As they came closer, Uncle Tinuk raised the gun to his shoulder, aiming for the spot that would kill the whale as quickly as possible. It was not right that any animal should suffer, even though it was necessary to hunt it.

  Tommy held his breath, waiting for the shot. But his uncle kept waiting. Then, as the whale surged up, he fired. The blast of his shot rang in Tommy’s ears. Just as he fired, however, the boat struck a wave and drifted away from the whale. They brought the boat close again. A second shot was fired. It, too, went wrong. The whale continued to swim, its blood flowing into the sea.

  The long harpoons in the boat could be used now, but the strike would have to be clean and sure to kill the whale. Suddenly Tommy knew what he had to do. He stood and called to his uncle.

  “Give me the harpoon,” he said.

  Uncle Tinuk and the others in the umiak looked at him. Everything was silent. It seemed as if even the sound of the outboard motor and the splashing of the whale as it swam were gone.

  Uncle Tinuk took the harpoon and thrust it, point first, at Tommy. It was a gesture that might have made another person sit back down or flinch, but Tommy reached out his hand for the harpoon. He took the cold metal in his hand, and a look passed between him and his uncle. Uncle Tinuk understood that now was Tommy’s time to try. Holding the harpoon across his body for balance, Tommy moved toward the starboard side of the umiak where the whale swam. He took a deep breath and jumped. All of the balance that hunters train for served him well. He landed on the whale’s back and did not fall off, even though the water washed over his ankles and his knees. He made his way up the whale’s back until he stood over the place he had touched when he was
a small boy, that indentation where the whale’s head joined its body. He lifted the harpoon.

  Then, with all of his might, he struck down. The sharp harpoon plunged through the skin and fat and bone. The whale quivered once, the full length of its huge body, and then died.

  Tommy felt hands grasping him, pulling him into the umiak. His uncle and his cousin were patting him on the back as the other men fastened the ropes to the bowhead to tow it onto the ice. But Tommy saw only the great whale, and he spoke the words he had learned long ago.

  “Bowhead,” he said, “thank you for giving us our lives.”

  Afterword

  I owe much to the elders who shared stories with me, but I could not have told the ones in this collection had it not been for my two sons, who helped me better realize what I had been taught as I tried to pass it on to them.

  I listened to many voices as I put this book together. Some were the voices of teachers who had, in a physical sense, passed on. But I only needed to be silent for a moment to hear again the gentle and strong voice of my friend Swift Eagle, the Apache/Pueblo storyteller who once reminded me to listen to the voice of the leaves. In that same silence, I could also hear the clear, teaching words of Maurice Dennis, the Abenaki tradition-bearer whose Indian name, Mdawelasis, means “Little Loon.” And there were others, so many I cannot list them all.

  I tried, as I wrote, to keep in mind the meaning of the name given to me a decade ago by Clan Mother Dewasentah of the Onondaga Nation. That name, Gah-neh-goh-he-yoh, means “The Good Mind.” To keep a good mind means that one must always try to speak with honesty and honor and keep one’s thoughts away from selfishness and vanity, especially when speaking on a topic as important as the passage of a boy from childhood into young manhood.