Jonny removed one and drew it over Ernie’s head. “You too,” he said in a raspy voice.
He went to the ledge where he had left his small carved box. “My tools,” he whispered as he lifted the lid. Inside he found his carving tools and his small, smooth, owl stone.
“Look,” he said to Ernie.
“Kalaku must have found it by the fire and brought it back here,” Ernie said.
“Which means he didn’t go to the village,” Jonny said. “He didn’t get sick.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Ernie said in a tired voice. “None of it matters anymore.”
After dinner, Jonny and Ernie offered to clear the table and wash the dishes while Tom and his wife sat out on the porch.
“What do you think those guys are going to do over there?” Jonny asked Ernie.
“You know white guys,” Ernie said. “They won’t be happy until they even have the bones in our burial grounds.”
Jonny scraped the remains of their chicken dinner into the garbage. He turned to Ernie. “We should go back and see the school,” he whispered.
The fire had destroyed the dark wood-paneled walls, long narrow windows, and rows of beds. Where there had once been classrooms, a chapel, and a kitchen, there was only black timber and rubble. The heavy planked floors that shone like glass were gone. So were the giant front doors and wide empty corridors.
Jonny and Ernie crawled up and over the crumbled charred walls of Redemption Residential. They made their way to where the basement had been. A pair of metal handcuffs dangled from a charred iron bedstead.
“I didn’t think those stories about kids getting chained up in the basement were true,” Ernie said. He picked up a rock and hammered the cuffs free. “I thought it was just older kids making up stories to scare me.” He put the cuffs in his back pocket.
23
Totem
Tom McCutchen carried a cot into the old wooden shack while his wife handed Jonny a stack of sheets and blankets. “When it gets really cold, you must sleep inside,” she insisted.
People were coming from all over to watch him carve. He worked best in loose pants and a shirt of woven homespun. His feet were most comfortable in flat moccasins. Sometimes Jonny told them how people long ago wore mountain goat cloaks and skirts of shredded bark. Sometimes they sang songs of the figures he was carving.
Jonny ran his hand along the prepared pole. He breathed in the sweet woody aroma of freshly cut cedar and smiled. With the lightest of movements he made the outline of a face. He could picture the heavy brows and large eyes of the great image, waiting to be free. Jonny picked up his antler wedge along with the stone chisel. “If you used a steel chisel, you’d split those boards a lot faster,” someone would always suggest as they watched him work. Jonny would just smile and carry on.
One young woman came often. Sometimes her slender, fine-boned fingers traced the faces that Jonny made. Today, she paused with one hand shading her eyes from the sun. Her hair blew back, away from her neck. To his surprise, Jonny recognized the small white pendant in the shape of an owl she wore around her neck.
“Is that carved from bone?” Jonny asked.
“Yes,” she said holding it up for him to see. “It belonged to my grandmother.”
“Hmm,” he murmured, remembering the very day Kalaku had given it to Silver Cloud. “Does your grandmother live around here?”
“She lived for many years in a village upstream until she died of old age.”
Jonny stared off in the distance and smiled in remembrance. “Her medicine was very strong,” he said. “She would not let her soul be chased away easily.”
The young woman looked into his face and creased her brow.
Jonny admired the girl’s high cheekbones, thick black hair, and deep black eyes. She is very beautiful, he thought, holding out to her his small box of sandwiches.
“My name is Sarah,” she said extending her hand, “Sarah Bottle.”
Jonny watched her take a small bite, chew, and then set the sandwich down in the palm of her hand. She was obviously not hungry, just being polite. He decided he would carve her a hair comb with the face of a wolf.
The Wild Woman of the Woods lay before them on a trestle. Her rounded lips pursed beneath her half-closed eyes. Her giant black body with pendulous breasts had fingers thrust into the mouths of two small human heads.
“Whatever made you carve the Wild Woman of the Woods?” Sarah asked.
“It’s a reminder for parents to keep their children close by,” Jonny replied.
“They all say that’s what happened to the missing boy.”
“He escaped from her,” Jonny told her with confidence. “He is with another family.”
“Our family has a story something like that,” the girl told Jonny. “My father told me he once found a white child in the woods.”
Jonny put down his chisel as his heart began to pound. He kept his head down.
“Was he lost?”
“Oh no,” she said. “He was swinging in a hammock from a tree branch.”
“Did his parents just leave him there?” Jonny asked with a dry throat.
“No,” Sarah said. “My father said the family’s cabin burnt to the ground. It was a good thing the little boy had been put outside to sleep in the shade.”
Jonny put his hand to his forehead to stop the vision of the burning cabin.
“Are you all right?” the girl asked. “Maybe it’s too hot to work in the sun today.” She turned to another pole on a trestle. This pole had only one totem, an eagle, head slightly raised and turned, wings folded.
“What colour are you going to paint this one?”
“I won’t,” Jonny replied. “I’ll let it weather. It’s for the burial grounds across the bay.” He didn’t want to pester the girl, but Jonny couldn’t stop thinking about what she had just told him. He didn’t want to hope, but couldn’t help it.
“Did your father know the people with the burnt cabin?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “He visited them often. The woman was white. The man was an Indian trapper. I think my father used to call him White Wolf.”
Once again Jonny’s heart pounded with anticipation. He worked at making his voice sound calm. “Why did he call him that?”
“The man trapped a white wolf one winter, but kept the pelt instead of selling it. It would have brought him more money, but he didn’t have the heart to let it go,” she said. “I also know he smoked a pipe that was in the shape of a wolf’s head.”
It was all too much for Jonny. He threw down his tool in anger. “How do you know that?” he asked in a gruff voice. “You’re probably just making it all up.”
The girl’s eyes filled with pain and she took a step back. “I know because my father watched him carve it. He made one for him as well.” She flipped her hair away from her shoulders in anger.
Before Jonny could apologize, Tom McCutcheon called out from across the field. He and his wife were hurrying toward Jonny.
“Hey Jonny,” he said. “I found this in the barn rafters when I got down the canoe.” He took a metal box out from under his arm and placed it on the worktable.
As soon as Jonny saw the biscuit tin, he remembered Agnes giving it to Tom in exchange for his sou’wester.
“It’s rusted shut,” Mrs. McCutcheon said. “Give it a tap with your wedge.”
Tom, his wife, and Sarah Bottle stood in anticipation as Jonny pried the rusty tin open. In it there were three yellowed envelopes, some dried cedar cones, and a small green disk.
Mrs. McCutcheon lifted the top envelope. She removed the photograph between the thin pieces of writing paper with care. It was of two women sitting on a pebbly shore. Both wore cedar bark capes. Across their chests woven braids held square reed baskets to their backs. Small plugs of wood pieced their lower lips. Strands of dark hair escaped from their thick heavy braids and danced across their faces, as they stared out across the waves.
She turned the staine
d black and white photograph over and read, Women on shore, Northwest coast. A. Atkinson. With a smile, Mrs. McCutcheon handed the photograph to Tom as she unfolded the accompanying note. “This note is addressed to your grandfather, Tom,” she said to her husband. “It’s got to be at least seventy-five years old. Take care handling it.”
Dear Tom,
I hope this small letter and photograph reaches you via Inland Packet as you recommended. This is one of the photographs not used in my presentation. Apparently the jewellery caused offense. How I miss the times when my dinner cloth was over a hard rock with a white-headed eagle flying above.
Agnes Atkinson
“Agnes?” Tom asked in surprise. “You mean the photographer was a woman? That must have caused quite a stir among the Natives.”
“Which ones?” his wife asked, raising her eyebrows.
The second envelope contained a single photograph. A woman dressed in furs stood on a beach. Several warriors sat at her feet with carved, pointed paddles raised in salute. Mrs. McCutcheon read the inscription, Silver Cloud, medicine woman, Northwest Coast.
Sarah Bottle gave the sound of a huge intake of breath. “That was my grandmother.”
Mrs. McCutcheon held the photograph up to the young girls face. “Must be,” she said with a grin, “the resemblance is uncanny.” She handed Sarah the picture.
The last envelope held a photograph of Old Tom himself standing beside his dugout canoe, grinning. Two boys stood on either side of him holding the paddles.
“Let me see that,” Tom McCutcheon said, taking the photograph from his wife’s hand.
“It’s got to be Old Tom,” his wife replied. “It’s the very same canoe.”
“Oh it’s him all right,” Tom said with a puzzled look on his face. “But look at the two kids standing beside him. They look exactly like Jonny and Ernie.”
Jonny picked up his knife and went back to work. “I guess all of our families come from around here,” he said as he bent to cover his huge smile. “By the way, Sarah,” he said, “I didn’t mean to offend you. I’d really like to meet your father.”
Chinook Jargon
Trade language was used with diverse language groups since the beginning of the sixteenth century. Toward the end of the nineteenth century it was in extensive use throughout the Pacific Northwest. Even though each tribe spoke is own dialect, all spoke Chinook jargon with strangers. Missionaries made effective use of it, translating hymns and prayers from the bible.
Jargon
English meaning
Chako
Come here
Cheechako
Newcomer
Klahawya
Greetings
Klahwa
Slow
Klaksta mitlite kopa saghalie
Who dwells on high
Kloshe nanitch
Take care (used when someone is leaving on a journey)
Konaway tillikum
Everybody/everyone
Law man chako
The cops are coming!
Muckamuck
Food
Naha
Mother
Naika wawa Chinook wawa
I speak Chinook speak
Neiska
Our
Neiska Papa
Our Father
No mahkook
Not interested
Sagalie illahhee
A spirit place
Sagalie mama
Sacred mother; Virgin Mary
Sitkum si’wash
Half-breed
Tamanass Whiteman
Evil Caucasian
Tyee
Extremely large salmon
Author's Note
Totem poles not only tell stories, but have them as well. The Haida of Haida Gwaii (formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands) originated the practice that spread down the Pacific Northwest coast to include the Nootka, Kwakiutl, Tsimshian, Tlingit, Bella Coola, and Coast Salish. The poles of the Kwakiutl are those most familiar and accessible to the general public. I am indebted to the painstaking research of Hillary Steward.
The winter villages for these Native groups were located near mouths of rivers, inlets, or on sheltered bays and were always regarded as permanent homes. Here they practiced their gift-giving festivals until the Indian Act prohibited the potlatch tradition.
The first steamer brought out by the Hudson’s Bay Company was the S.S. Beaver. Built of stout oak, she travelled from Nisqually to Fort Simpson, calling enroute at all Native villages. In 1862 the company replaced the Beaver with the larger, more modern Enterprise. The British government then chartered the Beaver for the purpose of survey work. From time to time, the owners issued memorial tokens with the impression of the Beaver on one side and the Santa Maria on the other.
The Canadian government sent Coast Salish children to residential schools on the island of Penelakut in the Southern Gulf Islands off the coast of British Columbia.
My writing group of Anna, Angela, Corinne, Marjorie, and Paula has provided support and criticism thorough the development of this novel. Thanks go to Brenda and Nancy, my avid readers and honest friends, and my husband Stan, always willing to visit museums, historic sites, and places of interest.
Copyright © Jennifer Maruno, 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Editor: Jennifer McKnight
Design: Courtney Horner
Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Maruno, Jennifer, 1950-, author
Totem / Jennifer Maruno.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4597-1934-7
I. Title.
PS8626.A785T68 2014 jC813'.6 C2013-907399-X
C2013-907400-7
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
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Contents
Cover
Totem
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chinook Jargon
Author's Note
Also by Jennifer Mauruno
Copyright
Also by Jennifer Maruno
Kid Soldier
9781459706774
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Fatherless and penniless, fifteen-year-old Richard Fuller wants a bike, so Mr. Black, the baker hires him to help with deliveries. Mr. Black entertains him with army stories and teaches him Morse code. He invites Richard to attend the opening ceremonies of the local 1939 military camp. Infatuated with army life, Richard takes part in Army training camp under an assumed name. When war looms, he makes the most impulsive decision in his life and enlists.
He travels to England, witnesses the terror of the Battle of Britain, the horrible death of a German pilot, is caught in the London Blitzkrieg, and is wounded himself. When his true age is discovered, Richard faces a possible court-martial.
Will Richard’s desire for adventure lead to disaster so early in his life?
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9781894917834
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Nine-year-old Michiko Minagawa bids her father goodbye before her birthday celebration. She doesn’t know the government has ordered all Japanese-born men out of the province. Ten days later, her family joins hundreds of Japanese-Canadians on a train to the interior of British Columbia. Even though her aunt Sadie jokes about it, they have truly reached the “Land of No.” There are no paved roads, no streetlights and not streetcars. The house in which they are to live is dirty and drafty. At school Michiko learns the truth of her situation. She must face local prejudice, the worst winter in forty years and her first Christmas without her father.
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