Alaska (108 page)

They did not waken him.

In the morning, after a huge breakfast of sourdough pancakes and venison sausage, Nancy said: 'You must see where we are,' and she led him about the wedge of land on which her ancestors had built their refuge from the Russians. 'We have this protected hill. Across the inlet we see the green glacier. Down there the bay where the Pleiades River emp—

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ties. And wherever we look, the mountains that watch over us.'

Tom was still admiring the site, so well suited for a cabin, when with a wide sweep of her arm she indicated the spacious land to the east: 'In these woods, deer to feed us. In the river, salmon every year. Soon we catch many salmon, dry them on those racks.'

As Tom looked toward the drying racks, he saw lying on the ground behind the cabin a large white object stretching a considerable distance, with many chips of some kind scattered about. 'What's that?' he asked, and Nancy cried with a mixture of delight and reverence: 'That's why my father wanted you to come,' and she led him to an extraordinary object which was to have a permanent influence in his life.

It was the trunk of a large fir tree transported here from a considerable distance.

Its bark had been carefully peeled away, exposing the pale-cream wood on which Sam had been working, and when Tom saw the kind of work his carpenter had been doing, he was awed. For this was a Tlingit totem pole in the making, a majestic work of art symbolizing the experiences of its people. In its present position, prostrate on the ground and stretching immoderately, it created a powerful impression, the figures comprising it seeming to flow and crawl and twist in a bewildering confusion.

Tom gasped: 'It's so big! Did your father carve it all?'

'He's worked on it for a long time.'

'Is it finished?'

'I think so. But it's not cut off at the top, so I don't know.'

'What do the figures mean?'

'We better ask Pop.' And when she called her father, Sam came out with the tools he had used to carve this masterpiece: an adz, two chisels, a gouge, a mallet, and now a saw for the final act of cutting away the top.

'What does it mean?' Tom asked, and Bigears laid his tools aside, all except the saw, which he kept in his right hand as a wand with which to indicate the twisting figures.

'First the frog who brought us here. Then the face of my grandfather-grandfather who built the fort at Sitka. Then the deer that fed us, the ship that brought the Russians, the trees.'

'And the man in the top hat?'

'Governor Baranov.'

'Wasn't he your enemy? Didn't he fight you and kill your warriors?'

'Yes, but he won.'

'And now he sits at the top of everything?'

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'Not quite. Today I finish.'

And throughout that entire day Tom Venn sat beside Nancy Bigears as her mother brought food to her husband while he applied his tools vigorously to the wood at the top of the totem. First he sawed off the tip of the fir, leaving two feet of exposed wood. Then, with his rude gouge, he began to hack away the huge chunks that protruded from the top of Baranov's big hat, and his work appeared to be so aimless that Tom asked 'What are you doing, Sam?' but received no answer, for it seemed that the carver was working in a kind of trance.

By midafternoon, with a misty rain replacing the morning sunlight, Tom was completely mystified, but now Bigears began working with his adz, using strokes and cuts much less flamboyant than before. Gradually from the top of the fallen tree emerged the shadowy form of a bird and no one spoke. Now, with rapid, sure strokes, the Tlingit artist gave vibrant form to his topmost figure, and in a triumphant conclusion he brought forth the raven, symbol of his tribe and his people. The Russians in their tall hats had triumphed momentarily, but in conformance with history, atop the Russians stood the raven. In their quiet way, the Tlingits had also triumphed.

'How are you going to get it upright?' Tom asked, and Bigears, willing to talk at last, indicated a raised spot from which the totem would be visible for miles up and down the inlet, and on the river too.

'We dig hole there, you, me, Nancy.'

'But how will we drag the totem there?'

'Potlatch.'

Tom did not understand either the word or its meaning, but he accepted the fact that a Tlingit miracle of some kind would move the totem to the top of the mound and then erect it in an upright position, but what this mysterious potlatch would consist of, he could not guess.

When the totem was finished, all its rough spots smoothed away, Bigears mysteriously disappeared in his canoe, and when Tom asked where he had gone, Nancy said simply: 'To tell the others,' and for six days they did not see him.

In the waiting period Nancy suggested that her mother pack a little bundle of food which she and Tom could take with them on an excursion to a lake at the head of the river: 'It's a beautiful place. Quiet. All mountains. Nine miles, easy walk.'

So off they started on a fine September morning, and as they hiked along, with Nancy showing the way on a footpath long used by her people, Tom experienced the quiet charm

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of this part of Alaska, so different from the bleak power of the Yukon and the vast emptiness of Nome and the Bering Sea. He liked the trees, the waterfalls, the ferns lending grace to the scene, and the ever-present rippling of the little river.

'Any fish in there?' he asked, and Nancy replied: 'A few salmon come all the time.

But in September, many, many come.'

'Salmon? In this tiny stream?'

'They come to the lake. Soon we'll be there.' And at the end of their climb Tom saw one of the choice spots of southeastern Alaska, Lake Pleiades, rimmed by its six mountains.

'This was worth the effort,' he cried as he looked at the placid water with the mountains reflected in its surface. Beside its quiet shore they ate their lunch, and then Tom showed Nancy how he could skip flat stones across the surface of the water, and she said that he must have many skills.

On the way back to the cabin, with a bright sun winking at them as they passed the waterfalls, Nancy was in the lead, some twenty feet ahead, when Tom became aware that someone was coming up behind him, and supposing that it was some Tlingit on his way to the Bigears cabin, he turned to speak, and found himself facing a rather large

grizzly

bear approaching rapidly.

Since the bear was still some distance away, Tom erroneously supposed that he could escape by running from it, but as he started to dig in his toes and speed to safety he recalled a tale told one wintry night by an old man with half a face: 'No man can outrun a

grizzly. I tried. It caught me from behind. One sweep of its claw. Look at me.'

Driven by an anguished fear, Tom increased his speed, heard the bear gaining, and screamed: 'Nancy! Help!'

When she heard his cry she turned and saw with horror that he had no chance of outrunning the bear, for the animal, reveling in the chase, was forging ahead with even greater strides and must soon leap upon Tom from the rear. She was terrified, for she knew that the bear would not stop until it had overpowered its target. With one swipe of a gigantic paw with its swordlike claws, it would rip away Tom's face and perhaps sever his windpipe.

In that instant Nancy Bigears knew what she must do, what her Tlingit ancestors had learned through the centuries when they confronted the grizzly on lands they shared with the fierce creature. 'You can do three things,' her grandmother had told her.

'Run away and be killed. Climb a tree and maybe live. Or stand and talk to the bear, making him think you're bigger than you are.”

There were trees at hand, but none close enough to run to, 661

nor fit for climbing if one did reach them. The only hope lay in talking to the bear, and with almost spontaneous bravery Nancy dashed back toward Tom, who was close to being overtaken by the speeding bear, grabbed his hand, and brought him to a stop.

Holding him firmly, she turned him to face the bear, who lumbered up, stopped abruptly about ten feet away, and blinked at the object that now blocked its path.

The bear had exceptional powers of smell, and these assured him that what it had been chasing was still at hand, but its eyesight was limited at best and often defective, so it could not determine what it was that stood before it. And then came that low, powerful, unfrightened voice in Tlingit: 'Sir Bear, do not be afraid. We are your friends and we mean you no harm.'

The bear remained motionless, cocking its ears to hear the reassuring sounds: 'Stop where you are, Sir Bear. Go your way and we shall go ours.'

Its small brain became confused. In chasing the man, it had been playing a kind of game, no more, and had it overtaken him, as soon it must, it would probably have killed, more in sport than anger. It knew it was not threatened by the man, whom it saw merely as an intruder upon its stream banks, and as long as Tom fled he remained an attractive target to be chased. But now everything was changed, for there was nothing to chase, no slim moving thing to be played with. Instead, there was this big immovable thing, these firm sounds coming from it, this sense of mystery and confusion. In the flash of a moment everything was altered.

Slowly the bear turned around, stared over its shoulder at the strange object in its path, and took a powerful first bound of its retreat. In its ears as it went it could hear those quiet but forceful sounds: 'Go your way, Sir Bear. Go to your salmon spot and may the fishing be good.'

Only when the huge bear was gone did Nancy relinquish her hold on Tom, for now she knew it was safe for him to relax. Had he run when the bear stood there facing them, or even moved conspicuously, both she and Tom might have been killed; now as she released Tom's hand she could feel him start to sag.

'That was close.'

'It was, for both of us.'

'I didn't know you could talk to bears.'

She stood in the sunlight, her round, placid face smiling as if nothing of moment had happened: 'He needed talking to, that one.'

'You were very brave, Nancy.'

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'He wasn't hungry. Just curious. Just playing. He needed to be told.'

ON FRIDAY THE NEIGHBORING INDIAN FAMILIES BEGAN to arrive, coming up Taku Inlet in their painted canoes or drifting down with sails set as the famous Taku Wind blew out of Canada, shoving their boats along. They were dressed not in work clothes but in festive garments, dresses heavy with beads, trousers trimmed in fur. They wore hats that Tom had not seen before, and children were adorned with shells and wore cloaks of decorated deerskin. They were a colorful group, and as each family arrived Nancy and her mother greeted them with the same words, which Nancy interpreted for Tom: 'We are honored that you have come. The master will soon be here,' whereupon the visitors bowed and moved off to inspect the prostrate totem, which they adjudged to be excellent.

Now there was excitement along the shore, and children ran down to greet Sam Bigears as he paddled his way home, his canoe full of purchases from Juneau. Eagerly the young people helped him unload, handing along from one to the other the parcels which would soon lend dignity to the potlatch. When they came to three small packages of surprising weight they asked impertinently: 'What's in here?' and he told them to tear away the wrappers. When they did they found three small cans of white man's paint, and these were taken to where the nearly completed totem lay on the ground.

Its major segments had already been colored in the subdued tones provided by the earth: a soft brown, a glowing blue, a quiet red. What Bigears now proposed was to highlight the pole with small areas of a vivid green, a scintillating carmine and a jet-black. Going directly to the totem without even pausing to greet his guests, he opened the three cans, gave two carvers as gifted as he their own brushes, and explained what he wanted: 'Frog got to be green, black spots. Hat black, what else?

Faces red, wings of the other bird green, eyes of the beaver red, too.'

Deftly the men applied the finishing touches. Purists among them would have preferred that only natural colors be used, as in times past, but even they had to agree that the restrained touches of store-bought paint blended pleasingly with the rest of the design, lending it those accents of brightness which revealed the character of the man who had done the carving.

When the third coat was applied, with the sun beating down to bond it to the wood, the women came to applaud,

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and all agreed that Bigears had done his work like a carver of the old days. One woman pointed out that the totem in her village was taller, and another was not too pleased with the bright red touches, but in general it was approved: 'It will stand properly in this cove, facing the glacier, speaking to all who come up or down the inlet.'

Now the potlatch began. Seventeen families had come to participate in Sam Bigears'

hospitality, and as the food and the gifts were presented to the visitors, it was acknowledged that Sam was just as generous as his forebears had been. Tom Venn was astounded at the lavishness of the celebration, and thought: This must have cost him a lot. Sam, as he moved among his guests, gave no indication that he considered his gifts extravagant, nor did he comment in any way upon the bountiful piles of food. When Tom, eyes wide, asked: 'Do you hold potlatch often?' Sam evaded a direct answer: 'I have luck. Good job. Good wife. Good daughter.'

Tom told him of the adventure with the grizzly, and Sam laughed: 'I wish I know sooner.

I put bear on totem. Celebration.'

Suddenly Tom wanted to know many things: a celebration of what? a potlatch in honor of what? these friends assembled on what principle? the totem representing homage to what power? the force or spirit which bound these people together stemming from what? And as these questions pounded through his head, he realized how much he respected his carpenter and how impossible it was to ask him for an explanation.

But he could ask about the totem itself, and now as it lay for the last time on the ground where each part could be inspected at close hand, he moved along it, asking what role the turtle played, and why that bird rested the way it did, and why the raven's wings were added to the post and were not a generic part of it? Sam, obviously proud of his work and pleased with the way his three store-bought colors accommodated to the softer earth tones, was happy to speak of the totem in these hours before it was to be formally erected at the entrance to the cove; it was as if at that moment the totem would become the property of all and no longer his creation.