by Mary Malloy
The promise then he sealed with a token
A ruby stone, a rock-hard heart would memory be
Of him and of his love while she
Alone and waiting through the year
Would learn the news that death had claimed her dear
And what of his heart? Of which this stone by agonizing memory
Made her depend, and not upon his heart—nor he
Eliza H. 1780
Why was this secreted away? Lizzie wondered. It wasn’t all that different from ones she had found in the drawers. She laid it aside and picked up the first letter.
May the 3rd, 1778
My Dearest Eliza,
An incident occurred today in which you played a part. You will readily recognize that this letter is written on your birthday. I dressed with special care this morning, thinking of you, half a world away at Hengemont, now a woman of eighteen years. In your honour I wore about my neck the miniature portrait that you gave me upon my departure. It captures not only your features, but also your spirit, and I look at it often when I think of you and home.
Today it caught the attention of a young native chief of my acquaintance. This man, Eltatsy by name, has become something of a friend after several weeks of contact and negotiation. He wears a woven blanket or robe that is quite the most impressive work of craftsmanship that I have seen since leaving England. You know me well enough to believe that I pressed him pretty hard to part with it for my collection, but he never wavered, no matter what I offered him and, in truth, I have gone pretty high.
Today he came aboard the ship and saw your miniature around my neck. He showed great interest and through gestures and what little bits we have each learned of the other’s language, I attempted to explain to him the importance to me of this small painting, that more than being just an object, it represented for me something priceless, my dear sister. I untied the ribbon on which it hung and let him hold it in his hand as a gesture of friendship. He then took off his robe and let me look at it quite closely. He offered, in jest, to exchange it for your portrait, knowing that I would not accept such a trade. At that moment, for the first time, I understood how important that article was to him. Until then, I had always believed that there had to be a price at which he would finally part with it.
Now I must tell you something that your brother did which you will not find very gallant. You know that I had another miniature with me, that of your friend Margaret Gurney. Don’t think too ill of me Eliza, but I sent down to my cabin for it and offered Miss Gurney’s portrait to Eltatsy for the blanket. She is not as pretty as you, but the picture is really very nice. Eltatsy laughed in a friendly sort of way as he put his robe around his shoulders and handed me back your picture.
He was wearing a really splendid hat, a wooden helmet covered with the face of a bear. This was also something I had offered him a good price for on several occasions. Now he offered me the hat in exchange for Miss Gurney’s miniature. We each had refused to part with the most precious article in our possession, but were willing to sacrifice a lesser gift—though still very meaningful and valuable—as a token of the friendship we have developed. This wonderful artefact will take prize of place in my cabinet when I return.
Again, I must beg that you will not think less of me, dear sister, for parting with Miss Gurney’s portrait. I know that you and father have high hopes for a marriage between us, and it still may come off when I return home. It will depend on how much she likes my collection!
This was altogether a wonderful day. Though this letter may not come into your hands until you are even another year older, I hope it will bring to you the joy I felt in celebrating your birthday so far from home.
Your loving brother,
Francis
Lizzie reached for the miniature portrait lying on the table in front of her and picked it up. This was the very object that Francis Hatton and the Native Chief Eltatsy had handled and admired that day, more than two hundred years ago. The face that looked up at her was not only very pretty, but had a sweetness that made the subject seem good humored and likeable. No wonder Francis Hatton had loved her so dearly. And what a good brother he must have been. Had Eliza received this letter? Lizzie remembered the portrait of her on the stairs. The expression there was so different that she would hardly have taken them for the same person.
Why had this letter been hidden away? Lizzie turned to the next letter, which had no date and seemed almost to have been written in a different hand. The writing was much larger and, Lizzie thought, shakier. Blots of ink were everywhere on the page. Lizzie felt powerfully that it contained bad news.
“Dearest Sister,” she read, “Disaster! Disaster!”
The letter had obviously been written in a state of extreme emotion. It described the death of Captain Cook at the hands of the Hawaiians, and the loss to disease of his successor, Captain Clerk. Francis Hatton seemed to feel that he had to bear some of the responsibility for these tragedies, for having committed some terrible sin. Lizzie raced through the letter trying to grasp what had happened. The details, he said, would be found in these pages from his journal. She hurriedly turned to them.
The first one was dated April 16, 1778, two days after the last entry in the bound journal. The ship was still at Nootka Sound. Francis Hatton was still happily writing about his work with his effervescent teenaged assistant Tatooshtikus, and was actively negotiating with the other officers and the local chief, Maquinna, to bring him along on the northbound cruise when they departed Nootka Sound.
There were several entries in which Hatton commented on the level of artistry exhibited on the Northwest Coast, which exceeded anything he had ever seen on his voyage “or even among the finest cabinets in Europe visited in my earlier travels.”
While the relationship with Tatooshtikus was jovial and paternalistic, Hatton’s feelings for the visiting Eltatsy were completely different. Lizzie could sense his real respect and regard.
April the 16th, 1778: Today I saw the most beautiful blanket or robe. Words can hardly describe the fine quality of the weaving and the intricate pattern of this remarkable thing—I must call it a work of art, for it is certainly the finest example of Indian handicraft I have yet seen. This blanket adorned the person of Eltatsy, a young chief of the visitors from the northern tribe. He is a man of great height and would be thought handsome, I think, even in England. His manners are friendly yet have a kind of elegance that make his noble birth apparent, even among Savages. Through Tatooshtikus, but even more through gestures of the hand and expressions of the eyes and face, I communicated with him at some length. Eventually, of course, I offered to buy the blanket, but no amount of buttons, blades, or blankets of ours would purchase it. He also wears an extraordinary hat or helmet with an actual specimen of a bear’s face mounted onto a carved wooden helmet; no inducement would make him part with that either. His wife was with him, as ugly as he was handsome, disfigured by a wooden disk inserted in her underlip, and she was quite shrewish in demanding that I stop asking for the blanket in her presence. According to Tatooshtikus the blanket is a symbol of Eltatsy’s high rank, and the figure woven into it is a bear—his family crest. I think the blanket and helmet may be a uniform of sort, by which other people on the Coast may recognize his lineage and position.
Lizzie was not surprised to read Hatton’s disgust at seeing the wooden labret that extended the lower lip of Eltatsy’s wife, a high-ranking Tlingit Indian woman. As the lip ornament was not worn by the women of Nootka Sound, this was the first time it was observed by the Englishmen, and Hatton’s comments were consistent with those Lizzie had seen dozens of times in other shipboard sources. The woven robe worn by Eltatsy was, Lizzie recognized instantly, a ceremonial dancing blanket, originating among the people from the Tlingit village of Chilkat on the coast of Alaska. These blankets were such extraordinary examples of the artistic skill of the women of that regi
on that Lizzie was not surprised Hatton was so taken with it.
Over the next several days Hatton pressed Eltatsy for the item. On the seventeenth he wrote that he had again tried to “convince him to sell me his blanket. I am determined to have it at any price, though he has already refused tobacco, mirrors, rum. I will soon run the risk of offering more than the Captain has allowed for private trade. (In truth, I already have.)”
On the twenty-sixth the ships left Nootka Sound to proceed north with Tatooshtikus aboard. He informed Hatton that they would meet up with Eltatsy again when they got near his village and that Hatton could then continue the bartering process which the young native boy, and most of Hatton’s shipmates, found a very comical game.
On the third of May they entered a large channel, which Cook named “Cross Sound” to honor the feast day of the Holy Cross. Hatton was full of expectations as a number of canoes came toward them. Standing in the prow of one was Eltatsy, wearing his ceremonial regalia, singing a welcoming song, and powdering the surface of the water with handfuls of downy white feathers. The ships each fired a canon in salute, and soon Eltatsy and a number of important individuals from the local tribe were on board the Resolution. Eltatsy introduced an older man to the Englishmen, whom Captain Cook and Frank Hatton took to be his father, and whose name was given in Hatton’s journal as “Whooner.”
At one point in the festivities, Cook turned to Hatton and said, “I am sorry Mr. Hatton, but in the interests of diplomacy I forbid you asking this good gentleman to strip and give you his clothing!” Hatton thought it a fine joke, but was pleased to see that everyone on board recognized Whooner’s outfit as a truly remarkable work of art. In addition to a robe like Eltatsy’s, though “with a somewhat different design,” Whooner wore a large head ornament made of feathers and strips of bark. Just above his face was mounted a small carving, a wooden face, perfectly formed, and set into a frame inlaid with pieces of abalone shell. Hatton described it as “the most remarkable bit of carving I have ever seen.”
Hatton and Eltatsy soon renewed their friendship, and now Hatton found that Tatooshtikus was more of a hindrance than a help. It was becoming increasingly clear that his language was not the same as that spoken by the people at Cross Sound, though Eltatsy had a good workable knowledge of the language of Nootka Sound and was infinitely patient with both Hatton and Tatooshtikus.
Many jokes and banter were exchanged about Eltatsy’s blanket, and the trade of items described in Hatton’s letter to his sister took place. When the ships departed, it was with good feelings on all sides. They left Tatooshtikus behind for Eltatsy to convey back home on his next visit there. Hatton wrote eloquently of his fondness for Eltatsy, and of his appreciation for having developed a “friend among Savages.”
Lizzie turned over the next page of the log to find the writing dark and blotted. It almost looked as if Frank Hatton had wept onto the page, and he had carefully drawn a thick black line around the first entry.
May the 4th, 1778, 11 p.m. It is my sad responsibility to report the death of the estimable Eltatsy. After a day spent in commerce with every appearance of good fellowship, our ships weighed anchor at about 3:00 p.m. to beat out of Cross Sound. Within a half hour, a thick fog settled upon us and we began to fire our cannons in an effort to determine where the shoreline was by using the echo from the land to indicate our distance from it. One of the gunners, by habit, loaded shot into a gun and, by a horrible accident, our friend was struck and killed, along with everyone in his canoe. As the fog lifted and we saw what had been done, our remorse was great. Everyone on board thought well of this man, but I think that I felt him a friend most of all.
May the 6th, 1778: Fog keeps us within this canal for another day. Today the captain sent some small boats to scout further up the inlet to see if there is a passage there out to the Northeast—I commanded one boat. As we made soundings around several rocky outcroppings, I saw that one had a number of small wooden huts built upon it, very unlike the large habitations of the local people. As I looked, the clouds began to break and a ray of sunlight hit the topmost hut perched on the pinnacle of the rock. Hanging on one wall was Eltatsy’s blanket, or one identical to it. It seemed a sign that I should get one of these remarkable weavings after all, perhaps as a tribute to him. I ordered the men to pull in close that I might explore this island a bit. I think they knew my real purpose—my collection is the source of some amusement onboard. The climb to the top of the rock was not easy, but it was eminently worthwhile. The huts were clearly not living places, but seemed rather areas for storage or for the careful discard of important objects. A number of them had blankets like Eltatsy’s, now decayed by time and the elements.
On one of them I found the bear blanket hanging in all its glory. It may be that since Eltatsy is dead, his wife is superstitious about retaining this garment. If that be so, I thought to myself, then may not the blanket be more carefully kept in my cabinet at home, than out here exposed to the wind, rain, and salt air?
Thinking that I might provide a more fitting memorial for the man we had inadvertently killed, I removed and folded the blanket. Before leaving with it, I was determined to see what other treasures might be contained within the hut and, as there was no door, I pried off two of the planks to look inside. There I saw a most remarkable box, carved and painted with a design similar to that woven on the blanket—I thought I could make out some of the elements of the bear motif that Tatooshtikus had pointed out to me. The lid was tied on with a very intricate series of knots in a cedar bark cord. As they appeared to be something of pair, I determined I must take the box as well as the blanket. Had it been any larger I could not have carried it by myself, but it was, fortunately, of a size that I could remove. I placed the folded blanket on the top and made my way back to the boat, where again the men made some jokes about my collecting, but I was now so pleased with my acquisitions that I let them have some sport at my expense. We sounded somewhat further up the canal, but reached water too shallow for the ships and returned to our vessel to inform the Captain.
There were a number of entries for the passage along the Aleutian Islands and attempts to get north through the Bering Straits and thence to the coast of Russian Asia. Cold weather and ice dominated several entries, and though Hatton talked about his collection, and speculated about what was in the box, he waited to open it until warmer weather would give him more privacy by allowing him to send the lieutenants who shared his cabin up on deck when they were not on watch.
It wasn’t until the ship once more turned south for Hawaii that he spoke about the box again. Lizzie scanned the entries quickly; she had a sense of foreboding about what was to come. Though Francis Hatton had not realized what he had taken when he removed that box from the island, Lizzie was fully aware. Even if she had not suspected it from his second letter to his sister, she had read enough Northwest Coast Indian anthropology to know that he had robbed a grave of its occupant. In the entry dated New Year’s Day, 1779, Francis Hatton made the same discovery.
January the 1st, 1779—A smooth crossing thus far back to the Sandwich Islands and the men are very much looking forward to the women they met there before and to the fresh provisions such a stop will afford us. I am in hopes of getting one of the feathered capes I saw there but could not procure on our last visit. Today when my shipmates are on watch I will open the box from the “Blanket Island.” There is too little room in the cabin when the three of us are here, and they complain enough as it is about the amount of space my collection consumes. I hope it might contain a few good masks and maybe some weaponry. It is my intention to return it to its original state after I have opened it, so this sketch is intended to document the tying of the cord around it.”
In the middle of the page was a good sketch of a Northwest Coast Indian bentwood box. Lizzie could see where Hatton had drawn the claws and teeth that marked a bear in the bold iconographic style of the Tlingit Indians. His sketch noted wi
th a sailor’s precision the location and formation of the knots on the cord that bound the box. In the next entry his handwriting was dramatically poorer. Lizzie knew what he had discovered.
2:00 p.m.—As I have so carefully described what I have found and collected up to this point, honour requires that I do so now as well, though I wish my discovery of today could be forgotten and the box returned swiftly to its resting place on the island in Cross Sound. In short, I found inside it the partially cremated remains of a man—there was no mistaking the long bones of the leg and the portions of the skull and jaw that were immediately apparent upon opening the box. I am, in fact, convinced it is the mortal remains of the very Eltatsy who refused to sell me the blanket now stowed beneath my bunk, because his honour was somehow bound up in it. To have so capriciously robbed a grave is unforgivable in any case, but how much more so in mine, whose family has for centuries been cursed by thoughts of a corpse that could not be buried in the family tomb. What will Eltatsy’s widow think when she finds his grave empty? Oh horrible day.
January the 5th, 1779—I considered for a time today throwing the blanket and the box overboard, and giving Eltatsy a sea burial, as I would myself wish were I to die now. But as that was not his wish, nor the wish of his family, I cannot do so. The box must be returned, of that there is no doubt in my mind, and I am determined that it must be done. “Semper Memoriam” has been my family motto since my Crusader ancestor failed to return from the Holy Land as promised. “Numquam Dediscum” will now be my motto until this task is completed. According to my best calculations the burial island is located some forty-five miles up Cross Sound from the cape denominated “Cape Bingham” by Capt. Cook, and determined by Mr. Bligh to lie at 57° 57' north and 123° 21' west of Greenwich. It is a small rocky outcropping, the highest of several such rocks or islets which lie in a group behind a pleasant island near to the north side of the inlet. Eltatsy’s village lies beyond it another few miles. It would be impossible to convince Captain Cook to alter our course at this point in our cruise, so my plan now is to return to this ocean on the very next expedition that leaves England after our return.
