by John Zada
The audience looks restless, gloomy-faced, and unimpressed. A palpable sense of fear and foreboding hovers over the room. After an endless succession of blueprints, diagrams, graphs, pie charts, and factoids plugging the virtues of the indestructible superships, the PowerPoint ends.
“Does anyone in the audience have questions?” the panel asks, with a hint of trepidation. A flurry of hands shoots up. A microphone is brought to the floor. One by one, audience members make their voices heard:
Greed is running this boat. All you people want is to come here and take what you want—and then just leave! We can’t even watch Hockey Night in Canada anymore without being bombarded by oil company commercials saying how great they are!
An older woman takes the microphone and stands. Her lips begin to quiver as she speaks:
We live off of this land. We fish and harvest seaweed. This is all we have. It defines who we are. If there’s a spill, who will look after us? Who will help us? What … what will we do?
She breaks into tears, and sits down sobbing. People gather to console her. The panel members stare uncomfortably. Another man reaches for the mic:
You people have no idea! Even with five or six tugs, those tankers are going to be in a lot of trouble in a storm. One spill would probably devastate hundreds of miles of coast. If that happens we’ll never see anything for it. This whole community, which has fended for itself for thousands of years, will then be standing on its last legs. We’ll be living off wieners and beans!
An uncomfortable murmur rises from the audience. The distraught panel members, who have been listening in stunned silence, thank the community for its hospitality and feedback before abruptly ending the meeting and scattering.
The strong sense of kinship in Bella Bella, the level of cohesion in the community, is new and astonishing to me as a city person who has spent little time in a small town. Within weeks I notice that everyone I meet is related or somehow connected to at least one other person I’ve previously met. Bella Bella’s human landscape turns into a vast web of interconnectivity. This latticework of relations extends to other nearby communities, and it dawns on me that everyone living on this section of coast is part of one large family.
There’s also an unusual synchronicity, or serendipity, at play here. It’s as if a kind of force, or an undercurrent, is constantly orchestrating coincidences. Often, when the name of someone I should speak to comes up during the course of my research, that same individual suddenly appears unbidden, and turns out to be connected to some other obscure story I’m pursuing, mentioned earlier by someone else. Or if a location comes up in relation to a Sasquatch report, I will hear more about that same place again and again in the following days, entirely by chance.
At first I considered these incidents to be random, isolated events of chance made more likely by the small size of the community. But now I think otherwise. Their frequency is uncanny. The connections that recur are often too vague and obscure to be coincidence. Also, Bella Bella is not that small. Despite all the people milling about in town, I still see and meet, on a weekly basis, only a small fraction of the overall population. By the time I leave I still will not have met most of the town’s residents. I seldom experience this kind of profound connectivity back home in the grind of the city.
This is underscored when I order lunch at Alexa’s Diner—Bella Bella’s only eatery—from a young server who is one of Alvina’s granddaughters. As I wait, I look through the window and watch as a funeral procession moves slowly by, led by a man and woman holding a wooden cross. A pickup truck follows, carrying a coffin and pallbearers. Crowds of mourners trail behind, heading in the direction of the government dock.
I spot Alvina coming out of the variety store that shares space with the diner. I call her over, and she sits down beside me, taking a quick break from her errands.
“What’s happening outside?” I ask.
“A young woman from the community died during a heart operation the other day. She’s being taken to Pole Island, where we have our graveyard.”
“The town seemed more crowded today. It must be people here for the funeral.”
“Not all of them,” she says. “There’s also a big three-day potlatch being put on by one of our chiefs in a few days. So the guests are starting to arrive.”
“A potlatch?” I’d heard the word before.
“It’s a gift-giving feast, a celebration of culture,” she explains, “put on by families on the coast to mark births, deaths, adoptions, and weddings—that sort of thing. It’s also a kind of economic system, where wealth, actual material items, will be distributed to the community, and where family business gets done. Potlatches are a big deal around here. Originally, in our culture, prestige and status didn’t come from who accumulated the most wealth but came from who gave away the most. The potlatch host is the one doing the giving.”
Alvina tells me the potlatch is being held in honor of the chief’s mother, who had died a short time ago. I ask her if I can attend.
“Everyone’s invited,” she says, before giving me a penetrating look. “Maybe a chance for you to take a break from all your Sasquatch snooping and learn something different about us for a change.”
For three consecutive days, Bella Bella is taken over by the feast, which draws many spectators to the bleachers and floor of the town’s gymnasium. I arrive during a break on the first day, just moments before the organizers lock the doors for what they say will be a sacred observance.
Singers and musicians, sitting around a long, polished cedar log, begin to stir. An eerie whistling of reed instruments rises like the distant hooting of faraway steam locomotives. Shakers come alive, rattling along with the rumbling and prattling of drums that follow in their wake.
The murmuring audience goes silent.
Then heavy drums and wooden mallets on cedar explode in thunderous unison. The harmony of chanting male voices fills the gymnasium. A line of four men, Heiltsuk elders, dressed in black and wearing red cloaks with animal motifs etched in sequins, emerges from behind a large drapery with an illustration of a thunderbird grappling with a whale. The men’s cloaks jingle with copper as they march piously, methodically, and with heavy hearts toward a denouement, enrapturing the audience. A large, towering young man holding a rattle—the master of ceremonies—leads them.
A guest sitting beside me, a woman from Quadra Island, tells me that the audience is hugely important in a potlatch, as its members not only bear witness to the proceedings but also are an indication of the importance and influence of the family holding it. The larger the audience, the more powerful and prestigious the family.
Canada banned the ceremony in 1884 as part of its policy of assimilating indigenous people and alienating them from their cultures. Potlatch materials were confiscated from their owners and scattered among museums and private collections. Indigenous people caught with potlatch regalia, or practicing the tradition, were imprisoned. But the potlatch merely went underground, where it was practiced clandestinely for three generations before the law was struck quietly from the codes in 1951 (but not officially repealed). Because of this needless persecution, an air of secrecy and sensitivity pervades the tradition to this day.
Events in this potlatch run rapid-fire, back to back, each day between morning and midnight: Sacred mourning hymns for the deceased. The distribution of gifts. Origin stories. The bestowal of formal Heiltsuk names—once owned by others who had since died—upon new honorees. There is the “showing of the copper,” in which the potlatch host’s family members sing while parading a large shield of hammered copper as evidence of their rights and privileges.*
The centerpiece drama common to most Northwest potlatches is also one of the most sacred. The Hamatsa, also known as the redcedar-bark dance or the cannibal dance, takes numerous forms and reenacts the story of the meeting and spiritual combat between a Heiltsuk ancestor and the man-eating cannibal spirit of the north, the Baxbakwalanuksiwe, whose earthly representatives, f
our enormous birds, fight to take the soul of the ancestor.
But the most poignant and moving event at this potlatch, to me, is the masked dance of the deceased. Here the spirit of the woman who has died—for whom the potlatch is held—returns to the material world one last time to say good-bye to family and friends before taking her final place in the abode of the ancestors.
The four chiefs and the master of ceremonies cross the gymnasium floor, disappearing behind a door. The chanting stops, but the drums and shakers rattle on, getting louder and louder, stoking the attendants’ anticipation. After a long time, the door finally opens. The master of ceremonies is the first to step out, shaking his rattle. The drumming and singing again erupt. All eyes fall upon a masked woman who appears behind him: the spirit of the deceased. She is small and frail, wearing a black cape, moccasins, and a kerchief that covers her hair. Behind her is another young man rattling a shaker. Trailing them all are the four elders.
The audience falls into a reverie. The chief hosting the potlatch and his family standing on the sidelines are beside themselves with awe and grief. The spirit treads ever so slowly over the floor. The palms of her hands are held close to her chest. She is shaking to the sound of the rattles, taking tiny steps, while stopping to bend her knees every so often. As she moves, she is constantly looking at the audience. At one point she turns in my direction and gives me a gawking, open-eyed glance, one etched with wisdom, surprise, and sorrow. The living expression of emotion jolts me. I sense that she can see right through me—and through all of us. I’m overcome with sadness for the family members, who wipe away tears.
The deceased continues her journey, shuffling across the floor, peering curiously and nostalgically, drawing in the last drafts of her old life before reaching the room from which she emerged. She turns to look over her shoulder, one last time, before taking her final step across the threshold.
After days of immersion in deep traditions with powerful metaphors and connections to other realms that seem alive and ever present, I feel odd returning to the question of the Sasquatch. The idea of an immaterial, preternatural Sasquatch of spirit makes more sense to me now, while more conventional notions of Bigfoot seem awkward and simplistic. Yet, as more reports reach me of what sounds like a flesh-and-blood forest animal, my mind slowly readjusts.
I’d hoped to have a better sense by now of where I stood on this curious issue of ape-men. But all I have is a muddle of compelling reports barely held in check by some less convincing doubts. Running through it all is a desire for the monster stories to be true. Every day I find myself secretly hoping to see a Sasquatch. I envision the creatures staring at me from every thicket and around each tree-lined corner.
I decide to go to the much-talked-about Old Town area, the site of numerous Sasquatch reports, on McLoughlin Lake, a couple of miles south of Bella. Though long abandoned as a settlement, the vicinity is home to a fish-packing plant, the BC Ferries dock, and a salmon hatchery.
Instead of plodding along the paved road to Old Town, I take the scenic route, walking the rocky shoreline from Bella Bella at low tide. For the next two hours I skip across an intertidal obstacle course of moss- and barnacle-covered boulders piled with driftwood. When the shoreline is impassable, I take detours into the woods and follow game trails that run parallel to the coast. At one point I pass a few century-old Heiltsuk graves, their stones faded and covered in moss. I can still make out names and dates.
I emerge at the fish-packing plant, a facility bleating with the ruckus of forklifts and conveyor belts and peopled by workers in rubbery suits and yellow dish-washing gloves. I push on down the road to the salmon hatchery at the edge of the woods. I duck behind the main building and find the forest trail, which runs alongside a gurgling creek leading to McLoughlin Lake. Some tricky footwork over collapsed sections of a wooden bridge and a trudge through a thicket of trees and berry bushes bring me to the end of the trail at the southern edge of the lake.
I’ve heard this place is not frequently visited, yet I find myself standing next to three young people—two men and a woman. They are indigenous, in their early twenties, and look like students, wearing jeans, sneakers, and small backpacks. They all sip leisurely from cans of Kokanee beer, taking in the brush-hemmed views of the lake.
They tell me they’re visiting from the nearby village of Klemtu, before asking who I am. I give them the annotated spiel about my travels and book project without mentioning Bigfoot.
“I hope you don’t write that you met a bunch of Indians drinking by the lake,” one of them says jokingly. We all laugh.
Then one of the young men asks whether he should try making a Sasquatch call.
My ears prick up. I ask him why he’d want to.
“Because,” he says, “someone posted photos of Bigfoot tracks from this lake on Facebook yesterday. Maybe they’re here somewhere.”
My heart skips a beat. “Did the person write where they were?”
“No, but the photo was in mud. Probably on the shore somewhere.”
If this was true, the tracks would probably still be visible. “Have any of you looked for them?” I ask.
The three shake their heads.
I tell them I’m going to scan the shoreline. To our left, high, forested banks meander back to the head of the creek. I turn right into the bushes, toward the flat, muddy shore. I arrive at the water and walk parallel to it, examining the banks carefully. At first I see nothing but twigs and the tracks of birds and deer in the mud. Later I pass what look like children’s footprints in a wide muddy bank. Rocks, large tree roots, and high banks force me to climb up into the muskeg to skirt those obstacles, and I soon find myself on the other side of the tiny bay. It becomes a feverish wild-goose chase, and again I start to feel silly. There are no Bigfoot tracks here. I turn around.
I tell the visitors from Klemtu I found nothing corresponding with giant tracks. One of them suggests that maybe the small footprints I saw belong to a juvenile Sasquatch—a comment I dismiss. But I ask, before leaving, if they remember the name of the person who posted the Facebook photos, and I’m told it’s a young woman with the first name Beth.
Back at Alvina’s, I pull up the woman’s Facebook page. The privacy settings are lax, and I start to shuffle through the deck of selfies and food shots on her wall. I finally come to some photos of human-looking footprints in the mud, and the woman’s caption above them: “Bigfoot lil’ feet.”
In response to a question in the comments section, she says the tracks were found at Old Town’s lake. I realize the tracks may have been the small ones that I attributed to kids playing in the mud.
When I ask Alvina if she knows Beth and where to find her, she scrunches her face into a look of annoyance.
“Why do you keep asking me if I know people around here?” she says. “I know everyone in this town.”
I tell Alvina about the tracks, and she remarks that finding human footprints there is odd. Not many people go up the trail, she says, and it’s almost unheard of for people to walk around in the mud—or wade in the water. “No one ever goes swimming in that lake,” she adds. “A lot of people are afraid of that place. It’s an old village site.”
Alvina picks up the phone and dials Beth’s number for me. There’s no answer. She leaves a message on my behalf.
I decide in the meantime to head back to the lake to take another look with camera in hand. When I get there, I find a flurry of small, bare footprints, about eight or nine inches long, that meander along the muddy shoreline. The area looks completely undisturbed, except for a few sets of shoe prints nearby, including my own from when I’d walked by earlier. One of the shoe prints belongs to a child and is smaller than the barefoot tracks in question.
My first reaction again is to regard the bare prints as made by human children. But as I look closer at them, I begin to wonder.
I discern two distinct sets of footprints. They originate from separate areas on the edges of the mud and come together before go
ing forward into the shallow water. They reappear together in the mud again to the left, moving toward firmer ground and the bush.
One set of tracks is wider, and looks almost like a Birkenstock sandal with toes attached to it. The other is unusually long and narrow. The big toe is a smidgen apart from the four others.
I also notice a green apple sitting on a log behind me onshore.
I take a few photos of the tracks before heading back to try to piece together the story.
Days later, I catch up with Beth and her boyfriend, Carl, a young couple in their mid-twenties. Beth is a stay-at-home mom, and Carl works as a gas-station attendant at the government dock.
I speak to both of them separately about the day they and their young nephew went up to McLoughlin Lake to go fishing for cutthroat trout. They had cast their lines at the end of the trail (where I stood with the people from Klemtu) but got no bites. So they decided to try a different spot, and walked into the bushes farther along the shore until they came to the muddy banks and the collection of small barefoot tracks. They had seen no other footprints, tracks, or disturbances in the area indicating that other people had been there. (It was their shoe prints I’d seen in the mud.)
They had been astonished by the small prints. Echoing Alvina, they say that not many people go to the lake—and even fewer wander into the bushes there. In all their time in Bella they’d never heard of anyone wading or swimming in the water.
And when they looked closer, as I had, the tracks had appeared odd to them. “They didn’t have arches,” Carl says. “I’ve seen arches on my footprints at the beach. These ones were flat-footed. One set of tracks was really narrow. And the heels on the other set seemed wider than normal.”