by Don Berry
To Build A Ship
Don Berry
1963
To
Hone Papita Raukura Hotere
and Aaron Judah
in memory of three waterfalls and a pair of shoes
There is a pleasure sure
In being mad which none but madmen know
— Dryden
ONE
1
The first thing I heard about the Bay was that there was a man down there who lived in a tree. It bothered me, perhaps unreasonably. It wasn't the first time I had ever heard of men living in trees, of course. There were whole tribes of them in Africa, families and everything, a kind of half-monkey, half-man that lived in trees and swung around from branch to branch. But that was different; mainly it was thousands and thousands of miles away, so it didn't worry me. But this man was right here in the Oregon Territory of the United States of America. Not a hundred miles away, where I could go and see for myself. It didn't seem — decent. I was in my early twenties at the time and had a lot of illusions about the human race I have since lost.
"Well — what kind of man is he?" I asked.
Willy Cooper, who was having his wheat ground at the same time as I, said, "Just a man, Ben. You know, like you and me."
"A white man."
‘"So."
"Well, what the hell's he eat, Willy? I mean, like pine cones and roots and things?"
"Hell, Ben, I don't know." Willy shrugged, because he didn't really care. It made me slightly embarrassed that I should care so much. The first image I'd gotten in my head was of this fellow hanging upside down by his knees from a branch, looking all around. I think that was what was so hard.
In one last attempt to get some information that would make this thing clear in my head I asked him, "What kind of a tree?"
"Cedar, I hear. Lots of cedar down there, you know, Ben. On the coast I mean."
I turned it over in my mind. It didn't help. Didn't matter how I looked at it, cedar, pine, or fir, no white man had a right to be hanging by his knees in a tree in the Year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and fifty-one. It wasn't right.
So it was this idle conversation in the Oregon City Mill that started me thinking serious about the Bay, decided me to go down there. I had only been in the Oregon country for about a year, had not taken out a land claim as yet, and was still working harvest for other fellows to see me through the next winter. No woman, no relatives. Free as a bird and twice as lonely.
I didn't go immediately, of course, as I hadn't made up enough reasons. No sane man goes roaring down to a new and wild country from civilization just because he hears there's a man living in a tree. Or rather, no sane man admits it right out, even to himself. But I've found that you generally make up your mind to go someplace and then start inventing all the good reasons for it. In the case of the Bay it wasn't too hard, as there was not much information about it. If you wanted to know you had to go see. During the winter of '51-'52 I stewed and fretted around and picked up enough justification that by spring I was jumpy as a cricket to get down there and see it with my own personal eyes.
From the bits of information I could pick up, it seemed to be a sort of Terrestrial Paradise. A lovely little bay, the entrance sheltered by a sandbar so the water never got too rough, even during the coastal storms.
Walled in by mountains on all sides. The only way in was by Indian trail across the Coast Range from the Willamette Valley, or the beach running south from Astoria. The richest land in the whole of the Oregon Territory — you could plant flies and harvest eagles — and so forth. No families as yet, perhaps a dozen men batching it, like myself. In time families would come down, but the women were always reluctant to take their children to a place where there wasn't any school. And you know how it is with reluctant women. But in the meantime the first-rate land was there, open for Donation Land Claims like the rest of the Territory. All you had to do was tell the government which 320 acres of Eden suited you, and it was yours.
In short, a nice private place where a man could build up a future for himself in grand style. The enormous isolation I regarded as an assurance of privacy, as I was looking for advantages. In any case it would pose no serious problems, as I heard the tiny settlement had connections with a firm of Boston merchants. Each year they sent in ships,. loaded with everything a man might need, and took off the Bay's produce at high prices. It seemed logical, considering what a marvelous port it was, particularly for the rough and stormy Oregon coast. And it stood to reason that there must be someplace on the face of the earth where a man was given a fair shake; it was just a question of finding it.
The more I thought about it, the more it seemed inevitable that the Bay would be the future New York of the Pacific Coast. Oregon City and Portland, inland on the Willamette, were too far from the sea. Astoria meant crossing the terrible Columbia bar and fronting the vicious river mouth itself; the litter of broken ships scattered up and down the coast testified to that. It was clear to me that the site of the future great metropolis of the Oregon Territory had not yet been discovered.
This was my own personal chance to get in at the beginning of something really big. It was obvious that in a few years time every acre of that country would be worth a small fortune. And you may be sure that I was well decided to ask more than twenty-four dollars in beads for my share. As with most Americans who have studied history, one of my deepest regrets is that I did not own Manhattan when the time came that those Dutchmen wanted to buy it. And here was the New Manhattan, the Western Manhattan, free for the taking.
By the spring of '52, then, I was terrified that the Others would get there first. When somebody mentioned the Bay in conversation I stiffened, and shut my mouth, saying nothing and appearing uninterested. When somebody didn't mention it, it scared me worse, as it was clear they were plotting to go down there in secret. It was, in retrospect, a fairly futile way to pass the winter, working myself up into the terrible state of nerves like that. But Oregon winters are such that there is not a great deal else to do. So I built imaginary Manhattans at considerable length, went over every foot of the journey in my mind a hundred times or better, prepared my pack and unprepared it, counted my single frying pan a dozen times, just to be sure. It always came out One.
In the last pant of April, 1852, I started out, heading south down the Willamette Valley in order to divert suspicion, looking for the bail that was reported to lead across the Coast Range from the territory of the Kalapuya Indians. Feeling very spunky, I can tell you, and singing a little song of my own devising:
With my pack upon my back
And my frying pan in my hand
I am bound for the Tillamook land.
Intending to profit fully from this unparalleled opportunity to own the new Manhattan. And intending to see the man that lived in a tree.
2
The Indians had several methods of marking a trail, all of which were useless. The most common was to make two perpendicular cuts in the bark of a tree, about an inch apart. Then a horizontal out at the top, and the strip of bark, sometimes a foot long, was peeled downward and left hanging. It was very clearly not the work of nature. It seemed unnatural to the elk, too. The bulls, either enraged or curious about this phenomenon, immediately scraped it off with their antlers, leaving an irregular patch of rubbed bark no different from any of the others, which were numerous.
The second method was to insert a stick in a slit of bark, pointing in the direction of the trail. This served very well, one time. The next Indian that came along the trail had a tendency to pull the stick out of the bark and examine it carefully to make sure it was indeed an artificial sign. Then he threw it off into the brush and went on. It is no wonder one
often came upon Indians wandering around aimlessly. It was not due to lack of industry, as the Methodists claimed. They were simply following Indian trails, which is to say, they were lost. It is their privilege, as they were here first.
Thus, the fact that I lost my own way on my trip to Tillamook is neither surprising nor my fault. The plain fact is that most of us were lost most of the time while traveling overland. You simply blundered along in the general direction intended, looking hopefully around from high points and asking directions of anyone you happened across.
My own ‘guide' I met on the third day out, a Kalapuya with a little boy behind him on his horse. I was by that time in the Coast Range, but still wandering around on the eastern slope, well before the divide.
We exchanged the usual jargon, greeting, klahowya, and he dismounted. I gave him a bit of tobacco and asked him where the ocean was.
"Nika nanitch salt chuck. Ka salt chuck?"
He pointed west. As the sun was low in the afternoon sky, it told me little I did not already know.
"Nika ticky nanitch Tillamook illahee."
It was perfectly all right with him if I wanted to see the Tillamook country. He puffed contentedly on his pipe and pointed into the setting sun again. After a bit more conversation of this sort, I found he was heading toward the ocean himself. He was taking his little boy, who was, I would guess, about seven years old, to see it. The Kalapuya were an inland tribe, but with that vast expanse of water so near, it was normal that they should want to see it at least once.
My new friend and guide, whose name I never learned, agreed to let me come along with him for two dollars. While selected quite at random, the price was reasonable, and I accepted. I did not have two dollars, but the agreement was more important than the sum and I was confident something could be worked out on reaching our destination.
As it was too late for much more traveling that day, we made camp where we had met, in a small prairie. The Kalapuya had no provisions with him except for several blankets he was taking down to trade with the coastal people, which would pay for his son's ocean-view treat. We ate well, however, as I had bacon and flour in sufficient quantity. When the night came there was a sudden chill in the air, and we sat close around our little fire. The light was sucked into the darkness all around, and the night was clear. I believe the climate has changed, as I remember nights more clear than they are now, and the stars brighter. The Milky Way spread luminous over our heads and the black silhouettes of the hills and ridges around us were like a frame for its glow. Our little fire was clearly the center of the universe, a bright warmth in the midst of the cold and silent night.
We let the flame go down to red coals, and the tiny circle of light drew in and in until there was only the glow among the ashes. Somewhere in the infinite blackness the Kalapuya's horse rustled his picket rope. At last, without a word, the Indian wrapped himself and his son together in their blanket and lay down beside the fire. I watched the shifting blacks over the surface of the coals for a few moments more, and then took my own blanket out of the pack. The cold was severe now, with the fire's warmth gone, and I shivered.
I rolled myself in. On the opposite side of the coals I could see two glinting red reflections, the dying fire repeated in the eyes of the Kalapuya as he watched me.
"Cultus pasisi," he grunted.
Mine was,in fact, a worthless blanket, but I did not think it his place to say so. I answered rather shortly that it would serve, and he was silent again for several minutes.
"Mika mitlite — inapoos?" he asked finally.
I told him I had no fleas that I knew of. He unwrapped himself from his blanket and went to his little stack of merchandise. He brought back a fine Hudson's Bay three-point blanket, warm enough for a battalion.
"You take," he said in the Jargon. "More warm. But — you leave no inapoos. Good blanket, kloshe pasisi."
He went back to his own, where his son waited silently, watching us both with great dark eyes in the night.
"Sell good blanket, me. No inapoos," he said reflectively. "Warm." He wrapped himself and the boy up again and lay on his back, looking quietly up at the stars scattered across the depth of the sky like the phosphorescent wake of a great night-traveling ship.
* * *
We were together for three more days. Each night the Kalapuya repeated the ritual he had established. Either he enjoyed it so much he felt it worth doing again, or he forgot having done it before. I gave more guarantees of my flealessness in those four nights than in all the rest of my life together. Each morning he examined his blanket meticulously, inch by inch, and folded it neatly with the rest. He explained to me that it was not the simple presence of inapoos that made a blanket undesirable, but the presence of foreign inapoos. The people liked to provide their own, and it is quite true that there is a certain security in familiarity.
All these interrogations were in `some measure humiliating to me, but as the nights remained very cold I found I was not as humiliated as I was warm, and raised no objections.
During these days the boy did not speak once. It is possible that being so young he spoke only his own language, and was not familiar with the universal Chinook Jargon. Or he may simply have had nothing to say. An Indian will often remain silent when he has nothing to say, which gives them the reputation of being taciturn.
It was toward the middle of the morning on the last day that we reached a ridge from which we could see the ocean. A small bay was directly ahead of us, and I could not repress a sudden excitement of this first glimpse of the Garden of the World, as it seemed to me. The Kalapuya contented himself with pointing at the vast expanse of gray that stretched out to the horizon, saying simply, "Salt chuck." The boy studied it carefully, intently, storing it away in his memory. After this brief period we set off again, moving somewhat faster now for the excitement.
The sun came out of the overcast around noon and I was sorry we had come down off the high ridge, as I would like to have seen it sparkling on the sea. But I told myself I would have many years to contemplate that spectacle; for the moment the problem was to reach the Bay itself. After struggling through a series of small but very steep ridges, thickly grown with brush beneath the firs, we came out at the water's edge around four o'clock. Against all hope, I had been scanning the courtryside with great care as we moved, on the chance I might catch a quick glimpse of the man that lived in the tree. In this I was disappointed, and shortly after discovered why.
My Kalapuya made contact with the Indians who inhabited this region, living in a small concentration of plank houses at the mouth of a tiny river. His son went scuttling off to the beach, squatting there on his haunches and staring fascinated as the great lines of breakers rolled in and thundered into foam.
From the Kalapuya's conversation it soon developed that we were not in the Tillamook country at all. This small bay was some fifty miles south of the Bay for which I was headed. There has been a confusion somewhere, which everyone regretted. On a journey of some hundred miles we had made an error of fifty, which was not encouraging. However, the way was now plain, as I had only to follow the beach north and sooner or later I would reach ‘home.'
According to the Indians here the going would not be very difficult. There were small groups near almost every river I had to cross, so I could get someone to ferry me across.
In spite of his inefficiency I had found my Kalapuya an excellent traveling companion, and I took leave of him with some regret. He was regretful, too, but in his case I believe it was because I refused to pay him the two dollars for misleading me so royally.
Before leaving, I asked how I would be certain of the Bay I sought, where the Tillamooks lived. I was told there would be no difficulty, as it was unique on all the coast. The headman, the tyee, of the Tillamooks was black, black as charred wood, from their demonstration.
And there was a white man there who lived in a tree.
3
The remainder of the trip, another four days, was
uneventful. It was vastly more difficult than it had been represented, of course, but I already knew it was impossible to get reliable information from Indians. There are only two degrees of difficulty recognized in their scheme of things; very, very easy and impossible. "Impossible" means nobody has ever tried it, as often as not through simple lack of interest. "Easy" means that it has been accomplished within the memory of living man.
At the whim of tide and terrain I was often obliged to double inland, forcing my way through the unbelievably dense brush of the coast forest, in which I was lucky to make a hundred yards an hour. This, combined with a series of headlands, points, ridges, humps, and down-right mountains, served to lower my spirits considerably.
It also began to rain round noon of the first day, and continued for the remainder of my trip. At first I sought shelter under the roof of thickly twined branches, but these soon became soaked and the steady, dripping cascades from above were worse than the rain in the open. After a few hours it appeared that there were no dry places left in the world, so I reluctantly shouldered my pack again and made off. I was to be drowned in any case, and decided I might as well cover a few more miles in the process.
By the second day my pack was fully ten pounds heavier. My flour had turned to paste, congealing in a disgusting clot that had to be scraped off the bacon. My coffee had turned to coffee, and seeped steadily through the bottom of the pack, staining the rear of my jeans, my legs, and leaving a brown trail behind me that quickly disappeared into the dark wet sand of the beach.
The nights were the same, but colder. I deeply regretted the fine blanket of my Kalapuya friend, and I thought about it a good deal. I had used it sufficiently that it seemed like my property anyway, and I rather resented being deprived of it. I would have bought it, but it was a three-point blanket. On the traditional system of "a point's a plew," it was thus worth three prime beaver skins in trade, or a cash value of near fifteen dollars. I had not seen cash money in the value of fifteen dollars since I came to Oregon. And considering my state, it was obvious that I had nothing else to offer. One frying pan, beginning to rust; one pair boots, turning to mush; one pair jeans, blue forward, wet amidships, and brown aft. And one brain, moldly, to judge from my mood, condition not guaranteed.
