Widow Walk

by Gar LaSalle

  Both Ingalls and Pickett spoke enough Chinook to know what was being said, however. Antoine Bill was omitting the fact that the tribes would have to move from their land. Did the aborigines understand what was happening, he wondered?

  Yet neither he nor Pickett, guests of the Brits, had the authority to interfere in the negotiation, so they remained silent. It was God’s will, he concluded. Survival of the cleverest.

  And then something else happened to mark that occasion.

  As Ingalls observed one “tyee” after another walk up to the table to place his mark, he saw a pretty face in the crowd of onlookers staring over at them.

  At first, he thought she was looking at him, and straightened himself in anticipation of a possible covert liaison with the girl. But then he realized she was looking directly at Pickett, who like he, had dressed for the occasion in his uniform, complete with epaulettes and sword.

  After a moment, he elbowed Pickett, who turned to see the young girl.

  Her name was Morning Mist.

  Ingalls recalled that Pickett seemed fixed in place, holding eye contact with the girl for almost a full minute, before blushing and turning away.

  She continued staring at him. She was a radiant being, no more than fifteen, Ingalls recalled. Her eyes, widely spaced on a high-cheeked symmetrical face, compelled one to look back and forth at each. And when he did so, he found she conveyed both a sadness and hope.

  She had a comely, slim figure, and her legs were straight and well formed, unlike most of the older aborigine women and men in the region who spent so much of their time with their legs folded under them. She seemed demure and modest, just like all the other native women who had not been sullied by forced prostitution or slavery.

  Ingalls had watched the shy courtship quickly unfold in the camp that night.

  She spoke Chinook jargon and a few words of English.

  “Take me with you. Take me,” were the first words she said to Pickett, and she articulated it in a way that Ingalls understood to go far beyond a plea for an elopement. She spoke with the urgency of a young girl who saw the dissolution of her surroundings and feared that disintegration; a girl who saw hope, bound in a projected passion onto Pickett, in an emissary from a bizarre, new world.

  The intensity of the plea overpowered the lonely Pickett, Ingalls observed.

  After that, the shyness quickly turned into a steamy, constantly charged storm. Pickett couldn’t have enough of her.

  Within a week, he asked her tyee father, MaNuitu ’sta, for permission to bring her as his wife to the fort in Bellingham.

  Ingalls was surprised at Pickett’s decision, but, thinking back to those events, Ingalls knew the previous year had been his friend Pickett’s happiest. Until Morning Mist died.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Pickett glanced over at Ingalls and realized his friend had been observing him for quite a while. When their eyes met, Ingalls nodded at him and gave him a kind smile. Pickett knew the look and nodded back, reassured his friend understood him.

  Thinking back over all the events they had experienced together over the past fifteen years, he knew that Ingalls, more than anyone else, would forgive him for taking the liberty of searching again for meaning on the painful events of the past twelve months. He ran them through his mind for the thousandth time as the boat neared the Bellingham harbor and the home he had built for Morning Mist.

  It would never be the same, he knew. It would never be the same.

  Chapter Six

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Anah

  The Hudson’s Bay Company is offering rewards of up to 25 pounds sterling to citizens or natives for reliable information leading to the apprehension of the Haida aborigine, Anah Nawitka Haloshem, a.k.a. ”Black Wind”

  —1857 Circular posted in Victoria, Esquimalt, and throughout Vancouver Island

  Three years after the raid into northern California, another epidemic raced through the Haida and Kwakiutl clans, felling half the people in the area, from Queen Charlotte northward up the inland coast two hundred miles. This time, the disease was smallpox, the plague planted purposefully by a conspiracy of whites and local natives who would never take the blame for it.

  In one circumstance, several large chests containing trading goods, but also carrying diseased wool blankets, were set adrift in three small boats close to the inlet of the Nass River where Anah’s clan was wintering. One skiff floated north across the strait into Tlingit territory, and another was discovered by a Haida Raven Clan woman gathering goose barnacles and seaweed.

  She dragged the Trojan horse two miles upriver into the camp.

  Within a week, the first victims fell ill. Because the telltale pustules didn’t present right away, several women attended the vomiting, febrile, disease-stricken first victims and, thus exposed, carried the pox infection throughout the thirty long house lodges.

  Five of Anah’s wives died, and thirteen of his children perished in two months.

  Following gossip from trappers of the epidemic’s devastation and betting the Haida clan would be incapacitated, the Hudson’s Bay Company sent out another expedition in March, this time a force of 256 soldiers and a small complement of Metîs mixed-breed bounty hunters on three fast ships to capture Anah and destroy his clan. Tlingit allies, hearing gossip about the assault from natives in Esquimalt, British Columbia, where the Royal Navy berthed, again alerted the Haida of the approach a few days before the ships arrived.

  But Anah couldn’t move this time. Because so many in the tribe were too ill to evacuate, Anah sent out three war canoes to confront and then turn and flee from the approaching ships to try to divert them from the village.

  The Eurydice, a twelve-gun, sixth-rate ship of the line, peeled off in pursuit, but the other two larger ships, the Constance and the Thetis, dropped anchor at the mouth of the broad inlet. They set their cannons broadside to the mouth of the river to prevent any ocean escape and sent 220 of the red and green uniformed marines ashore.

  Correctly anticipating the most probable landing site, Anah had prepared an enfilading ambush, a tactic he had learned watching British field maneuvers. When the marines in the first boat landed and moved onto the crest of the beach, thirty of his Haida shot a devastating volley into the heavily laden troopers, cutting all twenty of them down.

  The troop in the second boat did not have a chance to land and was hit by a volley from a different direction. Caught by the surf sideways, the boat overturned, spilling its wounded and dead onto the beach. The lieutenant in the third boat ordered the rowers to retreat out of distance of the Haida muskets and then signaled back to the Thetis.

  As the wounded Brits lay dying in the surf, the Thetis and then the Constance opened up and began shelling the woods that sheltered the Haida. Trees exploded above their heads, ripping them with wood and metal shards.

  Anah’s warriors retreated in confusion. In the bombardment by the combined twenty-two cannons from the two ships, forty men and women from the clan were wounded or killed outright.

  Within a half hour, British marines disembarked the remaining 180 marines and took the beach.

  Anah, watching them land three field cannons, decided to move his warriors beyond reach. He left the wounded to the mercy of the Brits.

  They gave none.

  The Brits, guided by Antoine Bill, passed through a huge, fresh burial site of smallpox victims. They saw several unburied rotting corpses in the surrounding brambles, and finally found an undefended village with over 260 ill men, women, and children infirmed in several of the smoke-filled long houses.

  The Royal Marine captain of the company, Jeremy Brighton, Esq., set out a perimeter guard and ordered the marines to scuttle Anah’s huge cedar long boats and spike his cannons.

  Then they set fire to the village. Fearing the spread of disease and rationalizing their actions as re
tribution for their losses, the Brits stationed themselves at the single exit to every burning long house and shot down anyone attempting to escape, including women and children.

  None survived.

  The village and all its contents, including food supplies, were burned to the ground.

  The official report filed by Brighton spoke of a “significant encounter,” detailing the twelve dead and twenty wounded marines who had been ambushed on the beach. He spoke of thirty Indians killed in the bombardment and numerous victims of an obvious plague “that has most certainly decimated this Haida clan’s ability to wage war in the future.”

  His report said nothing about the torching of the long houses or the murder of those attempting to escape or of the victims trapped inside.

  From a hiding place on the beach, Anah watched and heard the wailing in the aftermath of the terrible massacre of his infirmed tribe. He made his way north to find the escaped healthy survivors and the warriors in the three canoes he knew would have outrun the Eurydice.

  When he reached the rendezvous position, he learned that his last wife and his two oldest sons had been slaughtered in the bombardment.

  Anah’s howling rage frightened his followers, all of whom were grieving over their own losses.

  In the following days, he mulled over the events and dreamed darkly, carried away by a spirit that circled the ashes of his winter village.

  Anah’s raiding clan had been reduced fourfold. Expecting further incursions of settlers and British soldiers, he knew he would need to move far out of reach, rebuild quickly, and set out to build re-build alliances with the Tlingit and Skidegates.

  Because rumors had spread that the Brits had something to do with the pestilence that killed so many, within six months he was able to construct a formidable enough alliance of angry clans that he was start up his profitable slaving enterprise again. Empowered with the proceeds from that, he began planning the revenge he wanted for the killing of his sons and the rest of his people.

  It was one of Anah’s long boats that Isaac and Sam observed from the spit.

  Chapter Seven

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Isaac

  God does not explain His ways to those of us left behind.

  —Isaac Evers’ Diary, October 8th, 1857

  At first, he thought that the merciful Jesus had sent the dense fog to cover them from the Northerners, but as it established itself and crept under his summer wool, he realized it would also hide movements of a flanking attack if they had been seen earlier.

  So, Isaac began to think it more likely to be Beelzebub’s trick. The fog would also prevent them from escaping because breakers near the shore would capsize their canoe and drown them if they didn’t manage to head into them straight, and they couldn’t see, as thick as it was.

  Sam and Isaac agreed to wait it out, risking discovery and a brutal fight with the killers.

  Isaac fretted that decision. His powder was getting wet, and the thin knives he kept were for skinning and filleting, not for fighting.

  Sam, a slight but sturdy survivor of rival clan wars and pestilence, would be of no help if it came to a fight. Isaac knew Sam would run before he would make a stand, throwing his weapons and belongings behind him, squealing in Chinook all the way.

  Isaac wouldn’t run. He had seen what the worst of these aborigines did to captives. In the Palouse, he had witnessed vengeful acts and random callous cruelty by the natives—gutted men impaled, butt to tongue on long spikes; girls and women bound, raped, and sodomized repeatedly for days until they had begged to be killed; their babies dashed against the rocks.

  And he had seen random acts of retribution by military leaders assigned to the region, covered up in the official reports—sporadic escalating viciousness, so that at any one moment the helpless and innocent were more likely to be the victims than those who started the violence in the first place.

  By comparison, all told, Isaac believed the aborigines were much more apt to let their anger rampage than were the bluecoats or the militia, usually because so many of the native young men were engaged in the confrontations. But, in trekking with his company across the Snake River, he had come upon the corpses of hapless travelers, emasculated and skinned men and barely living survivors who told them the ones who seemed to enjoy giving it out most were the tribal women. While the men were gambling over their plunder, older squaws, in particular, poked, prodded, and flayed. He could never imagine a white woman doing that.

  Isaac thought of the civility Emmy had brought with her to the homestead he had claimed, and how everyone on Whidbey and the military with whom she dealt in Port Townsend seemed to go out of their way to stay in favor with her.

  It wasn’t that she was not turn-heads pretty in an unpretentious way. She was. It was that she held her own and then some against any man. It was equanimity, present with every step she took and every word she spoke, that lent itself to every situation. He could never imagine someone like Emmy becoming so vicious.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Isaac awoke, surprised he had drifted off on this thought when he most needed to be vigilant. He damned his weakness. Then he looked over for Sam and saw that his companion had moved away from his spot.

  Gone.

  The fog had lifted Sam away — likely he had hidden himself in the canoe — while Isaac had recklessly daydreamed.

  Isaac wasn’t sure how much time had passed, had forgotten to wind his pocket watch, initially just fearing that the winding sound itself would alert the marauders, then just forgot about it. The watch had stopped at 2:30 a.m., and there was no sign of sunrise yet.

  The water had receded, so he felt higher up from its edge, but he couldn’t tell how far. They had covered the canoe, turned it upside down as best they could with driftwood, digging it down into the sand so the visible line of its prow would be broken to a casual glance, camouflaged to look like drift logs. Still, he knew how sharp the raiders’ eyes were and prayed the surf and chop in the morning would be sufficiently disruptive to their vision so that, when the Northerners moved out, they wouldn’t be able to fix well on the little stretch of beach where he and Sam had hidden the canoe.

  Isaac had pulled his tan oilcloth over his shoulders in the darkness and knew he had to take it off and slip behind the camouflaged boat before sunrise. Otherwise, he would surely be seen.

  The drizzle started up again, masking sounds of the surf even more than the fog had when it moved in. Isaac had covered the edge of the barrel with his thumb all night to prevent condensation from creeping down into it and dampening the powder.

  He kept his cartridge box close to his chest. He might get one, maybe two, poorly aimed shots off at an incoming boat if he was quick, but nothing more. And if they were attacked from land side, it would be one shot then a slashing knife fight, if he were fortunate.

  He would have to provoke his attackers enough that they’d want to kill him outright. Or turn his rifle back upon himself, disappointing them with his last shot.

  He had thought about that way of ending it many times, when he had taken his company with Wright to the Palouse country to help the army hunt down Kamiakin, the aboriginal Walla Walla tribe’s tyee. So had the other men, the volunteers he had brought with him, he knew.

  The soldiers, mostly Irish, never seemed to talk about that way of ending it. Kept to themselves, mostly. But the volunteers all talked about it, constantly it seemed, pulling closer and scaring themselves to sleep under the stars, weapons held ready like he held his now. They had talked about where to stick the knife if the rifle didn’t go off.

  They all had been spooked by what they had found on the river’s edge across from the Pendleton crossing, the remains of a small wagon train of Missouri homesteaders. Just the men, propped up in poses like mannequins he had seen in San Francisco. Naked. Fingers and noses and genitals gone, cut off and eat
en by the crows, or lying next to the bodies, drying to a leathery brown gristle in the heat of the July sun.

  Because it was the best crossing spot on that part of the Columbia River, someone had left that scene as a fresh warning. When, following one of several trails from that scene, they had finally confronted a large group of aborigines in the Walla Walla territory, Isaac was surprised at how easily discouraged the savages seemed to become after a few volleys from the soldiers and his militia.

  And when they discharged the eight-pounder howitzer they had pulled behind them for days, the Indians just turned and ran in every direction. Then it was a matter of hunting them down, where they were hidden in the gullies, and dispatching them one by one.

  Isaac and his men never found any of the kidnapped women or children, and it made him wonder whether they had punished those responsible for the river crossing massacre or whether the white women had been abandoned or killed by this sorry lot. It didn’t matter after what he had seen at the river. In his opinion, the region had to be cleared for those higher on the ladder God had created.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Isaac had drifted again. The cold had numbed him asleep briefly earlier, and because he had been too frightened to undo his breeches to pee, he just suffered through it, offering up the pain as a small sacrifice to right things a bit with God, if this were to be his last day.

  But he fell asleep again and then awoke, realizing he had just let go while he lay there, pissing away any grace he had accumulated. He wondered if the Lord would forgive him for this weakness. His last moment would be disgraced, but only he and God would know, and perhaps that was the way it should be, humbled in spirit by his body after all.

  God would forgive this little mistake, Isaac knew. It was the bigger sins he had visited on lesser beings that needed rectification somehow. He had taken no pleasure in the Wright expedition’s most violent actions, had tried to justify it by what he had seen on the river bank, but he had looked the other way when the pathetic beings had wept over their children.