Winter Brothers

by Ivan Doig

  The famous man of the bunch is the carver, Charlie Edenshaw (as his name has come down in history). “...We now know he was a prodigy among a race of artists,” runs one encomium. Examples of his work in ivory and coal-black stone called argyllite proudly grace the display cases of the Provincial Museum, and in his name the Canadian government has erected a memorial longhouse at Masset.

  Of Johnny Kit Elswa there is a print of the studio photo posed with Swan before they left Victoria for the north, and not a trace more.

  I decided to make one more delve, to the Ethnology Division of the Provincial Museum to go through their collection of photos taken in the Queen Charlottes in the nineteenth century. A photographer made a stay at Masset and Skidegate the year after Swan, and the village skylines of carved columns counted by Swan rise vividly, the Masset carvings more fluid with images, the Skidegate monuments more often topped with single great bird figures. One bold Skidegate eagle seems ready to flap away with the sixty-foot column in his claws.

  As I flip the last of these hundred-faced horizons, ethnologist Alan Hoover happens by from his office. “I’ve got something to show you.” He leads me to a back room shelved full of tribal masks and baskets, reaches into a drawer, turns, grins, opens his fist to me.

  “Jesus,” I breathe. “Jesus, Jesus. It’s Jumbo.”

  Across the palm of Alan Hoover’s hand the ivory elephant’s head lies like a meld of silver and gold. The trunk has been carved and accented by Charlie Edenshaw so that it looks like the downspout of a faucet; a glorious fat aqueduct of a snoot. Jumbo’s eyes are the large teardrop shape often seen in Haida art, without iris or pupil, at once blank as blindness and seeing all. His tusks curve up and across the trunk and like it are plump and blunt. This is plainly an elephant of gaiety rather than rampage, and the carver put even more play to him by substituting for flaplike ears a sweeping coiffure of elegant waves and tucks, very much as if Jumbo had decided to wig up for an appearance at the court of Louis XIV.

  What came into Swan’s head when he first looked upon this suave beast of Charlie Edenshaw’s at Masset ninety-six years ago I cannot know. But I find myself absurdly remembering a sardonic quote read somewhere: “‘Every man for himself!’ cried the elephant as he danced among the chickens.” Or perhaps not absurd, for this is a wondrous ivory Haida Jumbo who can be imagined dancing with serene care, when he chooses, in any company whatsoever, capable as well of minuet and magical circling prance within a firelit longhouse.

  Day Eighty-Four

  Swan to Baird:

  I think that your attention has not been called to the fact that there is a balance due me of $1,147.82....Those Englishmen in Victoria cannot understand why I could not have closed my accounts with them at the close of the year 1883....

  And Baird to Swan:

  I notice what you say about coming east some time with your Haidah Indian, and overhauling the collections, and putting them properly in order. I have no doubt that it would be of great advantage to us, but the question is as to the means to compass it....

  Familiar shuttlecock, which the corresponding pair has been carrying on since Swan’s completion of the Makah memoir two decades earlier. But Swan is arriving to the time of his life when the familiar begins to evaporate rapidly. Over the next few years he does a few dabs of local collecting for Baird and the Smithsonian, tries every so often to pry up some support there for another Queen Charlottes journey, then on the twentieth of August of 1887, the diary entry with a black box stroked around:

  The news comes today of the death of Professor Baird who died yesterday at Woods Hole Mass—I set my flags at half mast in token of my respect for his memory.

  The Smithsonian itself passes from Swan next. By the end of 1889 he has written:

  Professor Baird’s death was a great blow to me from which I have not recovered. There is a new deal and no sympathy in Washington. A new king has arisen over Egypt who knows not Joseph.

  These half-dozen years from the Queen Charlottes achievement to that disgusted sign-off of the Smithsonian emerge from the diary pages to me as written echoes. Line upon startling line the pen’s sty-itch skritch now murmurs reprise of Swan’s earlier Port Townsend life. Dolly Roberts has married a naval lieutenant and become Dolly Biondi, but Swan is drawn briefly to another well-made young lady: Grand opening ball at Learneds Opera House. Took Harriet Appleton and danced for the first time in my life at a ball. Had a good time & got home at 2 AM. He is back at the usual sheaf of paperwork jobs; his letterhead recites Attorney at Law and Proctor in Admiralty United States Commissioner Commissioner of Oregon for the State of Washington Notary Public Hawaiian Consul and there are constant matters in the ungirdled Port Townsend style: Capt Moore of US Rev Cutter Wolcott came this morning to as{ my advice about his Chinese steward who smuggled some opium on board when the cutter was last in Victoria, and yesterday he brought it ashore in the Captain’s soiled linen and attempted to sell it to the steward of the Rush, now lying in port. There were 8 pounds of this opium which he seized & confiscated and now has the Chinaman in Irons. I told Capt Moore that I thought if he kept the Chinaman in irons for 10 days, it would be punishment enough as the loss of the opium worth $100 added to being 10 days in irons would be a sufficient vindication of the law and...I did not think it necessary to put the Government to the expense of a trial. He jaunts to Boston and family another time, goes to Matilda’s grave, with more sentiment than scruple of fact plucks a geranium leaf as a memento of my dear wife. He occasionally visits Neah Bay, or Neah Bay will visit him: Sch Lottie arrived from Neah this morning. All Jimmys family came up on the schooner. I took Jangi to Peysers store and gave him a complete outfit. He returned to the vessel as proud as an eagle. Swan remains ready, at the nudge of a pen nib, to share with any correspondent his Indian lore: Reed letter from Mrs Mary B Leary Seattle requesting me to give her an Indian word suited for the new City Cemetery—I suggested “Washelli” the Makah word for west wind, and quoted from “Hiawatha” to show that the west is the “region of the hereafter,” and that “Washelli Cemetery” would mean the “Cemetery of the land of the hereafter.” His palate is as enthusiastic as ever: Capt Dalgardno called on me this evening and we celebrated New Years with a pitcher of punch stuffed olives and potted duck and felt much refreshed. And so is his sporadic thirst for alcohol, for again, on the first of June of 1885, there is another court order adjudging and decreeing that “James G. Swan is an Habitual Drunkard...As ever he keeps this hooded, like a falcon never allowed to flap up into view from his writing wrist: his page this day reports instead that This morning I eat a hearty breakfast of salt cod and potatoes which caused a violent fit of indigestion.

  Yet something fresh does speak within the diary lines, and it is that Swan the pioneer is shading into Swan the Pioneer. I have watched this happen before, among the two Montana generations older than mine: homesteaders or cowboys or sheepmen who endured decades enough that longevity began to intensify their outline, as a tree against an evening sky will become more and more darkly stroked, distincter than reality. Part of the process is simply to outlive the other figures from your time and Swan definitely has been doing so; his pages at times read like a visitation book as he makes calls on sinking Port Townsend acquaintances. Part of it as well is to have honed a skill sharper than those of your neighbors, and Swan has become rightly recognized for his knowledge of the coastal native cultures. As President Hayes had done in 1880, the famed anthropologist Franz Boas in July of 1889 pays his respects to Swan as a rare ambassador to the tribes. (Their introduction occurred in Victoria: Met Dr Franz Boaz and went with him to see a lot of Haidas which had just arrived. They were all drunk but civil.) And yet another part of the capping of the P of “pioneer” simply is—what else would it be in Swan’s case?—literal: he joins and is an enthusiastic member of an old-timers’ group called Washington Pioneers.

  He amply qualifies. Washington Territory was not yet created when Swan sailed into Shoalwater Bay that late a
utumn of 1852, and now, the eighteenth of November of 1889 at Olympia:

  This is the Inauguration day when we become a State.

  The town is crowded to excess The pioneers met at Columbia Hall and each one had a nice badge furnished....

  At 10 AM we marched out and took our places in the grand procession. First the Tacoma Band, then the Pioneers headed by E C Ferguson President, James G Swan Vice President, Frank Henry Secretary, & Geo A Barney Treasurer. Then followed some 50 or 60 Pioneers, men & women Then the Military, more bands the Governors members of the Legislature and citizens generally....

  Days Eighty-Five, Eighty-Six, Eighty-Seven

  This has been a stormy cold disagreeable day, the first of February of 1893. Snow falling all day. The worst day this winter. I have felt much depressed with the many deaths of friends since New Years. Felix Dobelli lies dead at the Undertaker and Capt Sampson died last Sunday and Mrs. Morrison is very low. My turn may come soon.

  The diaries of the 1890s. Common tan pocket notebooks for the decade’s opening year. Not auspicious. But for 1891, an elongated Standard diary with maroon leather covers and gilt page edges. Notebooks again for 1892. Then beginning with 1893, five volumes in a row with Excelsior Diary in gilt script across a maroon cover. 1894 is longer and slimmer than the other Excelsiors, but the group is more uniform than any other of Swan’s sets of years.

  For Swan and his town, the decade itself is not at all so orderly, and red ink the more usual coloration than maroon. Port Townsend had boomed at the end of the 1880s; seven thousand population, streetcar lines, an electricity plant fed with slabwood; the big downtown buildings which still stand, three-and four-story dowagers of stone and brick, were built then. Naturally, railroad hopes had freshened. A line called the Port Townsend Southern, the first mile laid by the townspeople themselves, caught the attention of eastern railroad men—officials of the Union Pacific this time—and drew a promise of completion to Portland. The acreage Swan bought west of town twenty years earlier at last looked as if it would pay off; an offer of $100,000 had been made to him, he exulted to his daughter Ellen. Swan had bet as well by investing in a fish processing plant, and Franz Boas was salarying him to do some artifact collecting for the famous Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

  Then with the depression of 1893, financial fizzle for both Port Townsend and Swan. Again no railroad, again no profit from the long-held land.

  Whether the dull day, the eleventh of January, 1894, or as a precursor of bad news I have felt remarkably dull and low spirited. The times are very dull, taxes are due and no money to pay them and I feel as if I have lost all.

  But there are thousands of people worse off, and I have good health. I have much to be thankful for, but I feel very despondent.

  As when he explored the west shore of the Queen Charlottes, Swan now is going into territory where I, as a modern winterer, cannot follow. Just once have I experienced the dearth of money which plagues Swan now—sixteen years ago, when I arrived back to Montana out of the Air Force, stepping off the train at Ringling with two dollars, both of them borrowed—and mine was only a moment, tiniest fraction of his new chronic brokeness.

  Stormy day, the twenty-sixth of December 1895, remained at home and dyed my pilot jacket which had become jaded and rusty I used diamond navy blue dye and tomorrow I can tell how I have succeeded. The next day: Pressed out my navy jacket and it looks as good as new. The old pantaloons which I dyed and pressed a few days ago, and this fresh dyed jacket make my friends think I have just bought a new suit of clothes. I am much pleased as now I can renovate my old clothes with but small cost....

  Nor can I truly share the fact of age as it works now on Swan. I can watch his reports of decline in the diary pages of 1896 and 1897, how the wide days of Northwest summer seem to mean less to him now, and the days of coastal winter grow newly treacherous—Snow showers this evening. I slipped down on the crossway and sprained my right thumb. How he records as ever the letters sent and received, whom he has called on, met on the street, borrowed two dollars from, but all the while the incidents of his life becoming smaller and smaller, a walk around town chronicled as a canoe trip to Neah once had been.

  I see, and am moved by, the way Swan begins to be cared for by his coastal friends. The women who were the Roberts sisters of Swan’s smitten sentences of twenty years before, Dolly Biondi and Mary Webster, take turns with Sarah Willoughby, wife of the Makah Reservation agent during Swan’s last trio of years at Neah Bay, in hearing again his stories, seating him to the table: Dined at Mrs Websters on Stewed chicken, mushrooms and huckleberry pudding—delicious. His landlord forgives him his office rent, the family of Jimmy Claplanhoo—Jimmy has fledged into Capt fames Claplanhoo in the diary, owner and skipper of a schooner of his own—provides frequent visits from Cape Flattery and an occasional gift of a suit of clothes.

  Study as I may, however, I know I do not grasp this process, silent as spiderspin, which is happening to Swan here and which is called age. My belief is that we cannot truly see ourselves as we will be when old; perhaps dare not; and so are unable to imagine very far into the oldness of others. All I can learn for certain from Swan, and it may be plenty, is that now some of his days are better than other of his days, but no day is easy.

  Yet if such information must be secondhand until I encounter age myself, this would not be Swan’s wordstream if it were not also clear as a diary pen can make it. On the first of April of 1898, Swan’s eightieth year, he begins to use an old but unfilled pocket diary, a mustard-colored Standard published for 1890. Generally he remembers to add the tiny loop of ink atop the 0 of 1890 to transform the year, but when he doesn’t, it is as if his entries ebb back and forth between the years the way—life imitates life—this winterbook has traveled between his time and mine.

  The twenty-eighth of June: Weighed myself on Joe Gates scales I weighed 143 pounds the lightest I have weighed in some time My long sickness pulled me down but I am getting better slowly.

  The twelfth of July: Mr. Springs of Everett was here to day and talked against Port Townsend, said...if the rail road is completed it will do no good as vessels will all load at Seattle and a lot more such rot. I told him if the road is completed to here, that trains of cars can bring their grain direct to Port Townsend as well as to Seattle or Everett, but he would not admit that....

  I told him he is an old fossil & he had better remain in Everett as it is an evidence of ignorance and bad taste to go into a town and run it down before its residents. He is a regular crank and is fit for such a place as Everett.

  The second of August: Have felt very much depressed all day. Think there is to be a change of weather.

  The seventh of August: I did not go to church, as it seemed that everything was wrong about my clothes and I did not get ready to go out till 12 o’clock noon.

  The twenty-fourth of August: A lot of Quilliute and Makah Indians arrived today and camped at Point Hudson They are going to pick hops I went down to the beach to see them. They all tyiew me and were glad to see me. It looked like old times to see so many Indians on the beach.

  The eleventh of September: Commenced a letter to my daughter Miss Ellen M Swan. The letter I received from her on the 7th I burned as it was a very disagreeable one.

  The fifteenth of September: Mrs. Webster gave me a bag full of doughnuts for bringing her mail from the Post Office to her however I took the doughnuts to Mrs Biondis and her sharp perceptive faculties soon found out the contents of the parcel and she soon had an impromptu course of hot coffee cake and doughnuts we enjoyed them.

  The tenth of October: Dr Brooks O Baker examined me for vertigo which has troubled me at intervals since last January. He said it proceeds from heart weakness and gave me a prescription of his own preparing, of which strychnine forms one of the ingredients Commenced taking Dr Bakers medicine this afternoon.

  The thirtieth of December: Have had quite an attack of vertigo this evening.

  Day Eighty-Eight

 
; My first birth day in the new century, the eleventh of January 1900. 82 years old. May this new Era bring new prospect and may I live to see its so glorious promise unfold....I have been reading evenings in my diaries and it seems singular to see half my life therein...50 years ago I left Boston and 411 began my daily journal but yet my early years at Neah Bay are fresh to my mind Only when I recall the deaths of so many friends Prof Baird Maj Van Bokf{elin friend Webster Bulkley & store-peeper Gerrisk my own dear son Charley last year, does the time seem so long as it is. And the Indians I formerly knew are gone Swell Duke of York old Edinso Capt John only Peter alive...Ellens letters and the little sums she sends are all I have now to tide me over to improved times. My wish is that Pt Townsend will yet take its rightful place as the most magnificent city of the west and that my burden of debt will pass from me. As the Poet John G Whittier writes “for all sad words of tongue or pen The saddest are these, it might have been!” But if it is ordained otherwise I have other remuneration in life my collecting for the Smithsonian Institution the Makah memoir The “Northwest Coast my expedition to the Queen Charlottes Archipelago the knowledge of Indian ways and language which otherwise would have been lost for future generations, I would not trade for more worldly wealth. For if I have not prospered greatly in my western life yet I am greatly prosperous in what I have done....