In the course of my work with the Native
peoples of the Northwest Coast, I have had the
opportunity to meet many hereditary chiefs. Like the
peoples of Europe, Northwest Coast peoples drew
their leaders from certain elite families, who were
viewed as divinely ordained and categorically distinct
from the commoners. Unlike most peoples of
Europe, if a hereditary chief was despotic or miserly,
they were easily replaced by contending chiefs, who
might serve the people better. They were trained
from birth to assume their proper role in society.
They were providers, caretakers, group organizers.
They were called upon at every turn to earn the
loyalty of their people.
Recently, one hereditary chief tried to explain
their traditional roles to me with a few carefully
selected examples. A chief would walk up and down
the shoreline as the people fished for salmon. Once
the people had caught enough to sustain themselves
and provide a little extra for ceremonies and trade,
once all omens lined up in the proper sequence, the
chief would announce that it was time to stop. Now,
the fish would be protected: to earn the fishes’
respect, to provide for the people upstream, to insure
that there would be enough fish for the village’s
grandchildren, and their grandchildren in the time to
come. At other times the chief would walk from
house to house, asking what each family needed to
survive the season ahead, maybe firewood, or fish,
or berries. At each place, the chief would call
together a work party from the village to seek out
these things for the residents of that house. Each
house was visited in tum. Each person helped
provide for the whole group, and the whole group
helped provide for each person. It was, they tell me,
a very good system.
So much has changed on this coast.
Traditional societies have been pulled apart by any
number of forces: missionaries, traders, diseases,
alcohol, poverty, residential schools; more recently,
it has been the gradual disappearance of the salmon,
the sexy, counterfeit gleam of rock videos, North
American youth culture, urban amenities. Yet, here
and there, the hereditary chiefs hold on, trying to
serve their people in ways that are compatible with
their traditional roles. At the close of the 20th
century, their chiefly duties are manifested in ways
that their ancestors never could have imagined. I
think of R., a hereditary chief of the Nuu-chah-nulth,
bom into his chiefly family’s longhouse, but
whisked away to a residential school as a child.
Culturally ambidextrous, he now advises college
students and his own people on how to survive
through changing economic times, and seeks to
protect their wild salmon from industrial fish farms
and logging operations that increasingly occupy their
traditional lands. He also advises me, as well as
other outsiders, on how to most effectively
communicate with his people. I think of J., one of
the last people to be raised in an all-Tillamook
village, and a descendent of the last chief to reign on
Tillamook lands. He fights mightily through Federal
red tape — attempting to protect the rights of his
people when dredges unearth their burial sites,
seeking to have his people formally recognized as a
Tribe. I think of E., whom I recently met, a kind old
fellow who speaks on his peoples’ behalf,
negotiating with government and timber
representatives so that his people might not lose
control of their sacred places, resource areas, and old
village sites. One of his chiefly ancestors, whose
name he bears, was also a celebrated negotiator
during the fur trade, entertaining and befriending the
earliest English, Spanish, and American visitors to
this coast. Only once did this famed ancestor lose
his composure: when the American captain of a
trading ship, the same captain, the same ship, that
founded Fort Astoria, slapped this chief around
during routine trade negotiations with customary
racist chutzpah, the chief responded in a manner
reminiscent of our own European royalty. He
quietly packed up his things, left, returned that
evening with troops, killed almost everyone on
board, sank the ship, and enslaved the survivors. I
went out of my way to be extra polite to E.
And I think of another hereditary chief, far
more traditional than most. When it became
apparent, around the tum of the century, that the
colonial assault on native cultures was having
pervasive effects, his people isolated several
youngsters of chiefly “noble blood” on remote inlets.
He was among them. These children were
designated as the future generation of hereditary
chiefs, who might lead in the time-honored way once
colonial influences subsided. For years, these
youngsters were drilled in all aspects of traditional
life and chiefly duties, in isolated villages where
white influence was negligible and English was
never spoken. When this last generation of
traditional chiefs emerged from their villages, the
cultural confrontation was just about over, and they
were not on the winning side; it was clear that
colonial influences were not going to disappear as
they had hoped. Recently, I have had the good
fortune to get to know this chief, to befriend him, to
be his guest. As one of a handful of well-trained
hereditary chiefs, he is sought out by other elders to
preside over ceremonial events; this is both his
birthright and his obligation. But in recent years,
many of his chiefly duties have grown less
conventional, by necessity. He teaches me, an
outsider, a researcher, so that his knowledge might
be preserved for his descendents. (Few of his own
young people currently seek him out: “All the young
people, the Indians, want to be white. And all the
whites want to be Indians! This is crazy!” But
lately, he has been preoccupied by the construction
of a longhouse.
His home is now surrounded by pieces of the
longhouse, as a nearby building site is being
prepared. It is amazing to see, these huge cedar
logs, taking shape into totem poles, house posts,
cross beams. (The cedar is seldom logged by the
Native peoples, who have lost control over their own
territories. More often than not, timber companies
donate a few old-growth cedar logs to these people
as a public relations gesture, after these companies
have logged the old growth off each band’s
traditional lands.) Supernatural beings slowly crawl
out from the fragrant wood grain, aided by the
chief’s adze. Over here, there is thunderbird and
Dzonokwa, the wild woman of the woods, taking
form in the wood, crests from the chief’s family.
These are creatures that played an important role in
the creation of his people. And there, on the cross
beams is sisiutl, the two-headed sea serpent, who
attacks and devours people walking alone on the
beach. Some say that one head is male, the other
female, one hot, the other cold; it is yin and yang, in
serpent form. If one attacks you, stand firm. Do not
run. The two heads will meet as it lunges, opposing
forces will meet, and you will achieve tremendous
spirit power. The old chiefs knew people who had
gained this power; they saw how powerful and
enlightened sisiutl’s near-victims could become.
Some report seeing sisiutl in recent years. And there
are totem poles, alive with ancient animals, retelling
events from his peoples’ past.
Some young carvers have rediscovered their
craft. A few of them construct cedar doo-dads for
tourists and art dealers, are skeptical about the truth
of the old tales. But there are these elders with
traditional training and chiefly status, for whom
carving is a consecrated act. The carving of each
component of a longhouse is a particularly solemn
event: there are strict protocols, ways of relating to
the tree, the creatures one represents, the ancestors
who owned the stories. There are things one must
and must not do. A longhouse that is built with these
protocols, they suggest, will have a power, an
energy that exists somewhat independent of the
people who occupy the house. A longhouse that is
not built according to these protocols will merely be a
house, an inert, huge cedar box.
There are also very specific ways that the
longhouse must and must not be used once it is built.
There are spaces for powerful things, and other
spaces devoted to mundane things. There are
greetings and proclamations that must be made when
the longhouse is first occupied. The house must be
given a proper name. But most importantly, there is
a certain role that the longhouse must have in society,
if it is to function, if it is to be powerful. It is to be a
nexus of community life — a place for remembering
the past, and negotiating plans for the future. It is to
be a place to which a community comes together to
announce births, to celebrate marriages, to mourn
deaths. It is to be a place where debts are repaid,
where wealth is redistributed to the less fortunate. It
is to be a place for feasting, for dancing and singing,
for retelling tales by the fire. It is a place for
teaching, for bestowing honorific names, for making
public announcements. How can so many functions
be summarized? It is central. It is the place where
the community’s soul resides. It is to be a space that
holds the disparate, messy, sometimes conflicting
pieces of a society together, in one place, a
consecrated place, in a spirit of community, in a
spirit of mutual respect.
At the close of this century, a century during
which traditional societies have come apart at the
seams, it is no wonder that this chief, late in life, has
chosen to devote his energies to building a
longhouse. He is among the wisest, most traditional
chiefs left He sees that his people scatter in every
direction, like eagle down in the wind. He sees that
the people of this time have lost that spirit of
community and mutual respect. They have no core,
no center, and they need one badly. The longhouse
represents one of his last, big attempts to provide for
his people. Like his ancestors watching the salmon,
protecting the interests of their unborn descendents.
Like his ancestors, walking door to door, asking
each family “What is it you need?” They need a
center, a place to gather, a sense of community that
overrides their petty internal conflicts. They need a
place to educate their children about their past, and a
place to celebrate, talk, and sing, together. A
longhouse just might make a difference.
ATM
N O W
THE.
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CONVENIENCE
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A public S.H.E.D. meeting, addressing the fate o f Logan
('reek on the north end o f Cannon Beach as well as the
downtown wetlands, w ill be held on Saturday, July 24th at
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month's Ecola Ilahee. The meeting is open to the interested
public, and represents a rare opportunity to express your views
on the fate o f our City's wetlands and streams. Be there!
Rs
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