Tisha (27 page)

Cathy looked lovely. She had on a dress that I wouldn’t have dared to wear, but on her it was exquisite. Made of caribou skin that was as soft as chamois, it had a fox collar that showed part of her back. It was almost like a long parka, except that it was split to the thigh, and the hem, trimmed with beadwork and fur, came to a point in front and back.

The dance itself was less rackety than the ones at Chicken because hardly anyone wore boots or shoes. The men were better dancers, too. In Chicken the men used to get so rough at times that I’d be scared of getting knocked out by an elbow. Here, even though there was plenty of whooping and floor-stomping, there wasn’t anything rowdy about it. I didn’t see any of the men ask a woman to dance. They’d just go over and lead her out on the floor and that was that. The people who weren’t square dancing stood on the sidelines tapping their feet and clapping in time to the music, some of them chanting
Little Brown Jug
or
Turkey in the Straw
in their own tongue.

I danced the first couple of sets with Ben Norvall. He’d left Chicken a couple of weeks ago to come here, where he was living with Mary Magdalene. Face flat as a pie, and a lump of snuff always tucked inside her lower lip, Mary was strong as a football player. When she didn’t have a lip full of snuff she smoked a smelly old pipe. Ben wasn’t any prize package either, so they were about even. Besides beginning to smell bad again, he was full of mischief and was always stirring up trouble. Once I sold him a gallon of kerosene and he went around to everybody asking how much they’d paid me for a gallon; then he said I’d charged him ten cents less. It wasn’t true, but it brought three or four customers down on my neck before I straightened it out. Ben was always doing things like that. He especially
enjoyed getting people mad at each other by telling them what other people had said about them. In every place that he’d lived he’d eventually get on people’s nerves so much that they’d finally tin-eaten to burn down his cabin if he didn’t get out.

Between sets he told me that he was going back to Chicken when I went back. “These people just don’t appreciate me,” he said, “so I’m gonna siwash it back to my own people.” It was the exact same thing he’d said when he left Chicken, which probably meant he’d worn out his welcome here fast.

After the second set was over I was sitting down for a rest when someone came over and stood in front of me, his moccasin tapping the floor in time to the warm-up music. I looked up. It was Titus Paul. He didn’t say a word, just held out his hands and kept that one foot tapping. Up until then I wondered what Cathy saw in him, although when he walked in earlier all dressed up in beaded leather vest and broad-brimmed leather hat he looked kind of dashing in an ugly way. The way he was looking at me now, though, I automatically gave him my hand and let him lead me out on the floor. He was as good a dancer as Fred, maybe even a little better.

After I danced with him, no sooner did I sit down than there was another Indian standing over me, smiling and tapping his foot. It was that way for the rest of the night.

The dance didn’t break up until after two. Ben Norvall and Titus came back with Cathy and me to her house, the four of us fighting a wind that blew down the frozen river so hard we had trouble keeping our feet. The moon was out, bouncing off the parts of the ice that the wind had polished. We sat around with our parkas on until the fire that Titus built up in the stove was going strong.

“How’d you enjoy the dance?” Cathy asked me.

“I liked it … You’re a good dancer, Titus.”

He didn’t say anything, just glanced at me with those lizard’s eyes of his.

Ben was sitting back in an overstuffed chair that was leaking cotton padding, his feet in front of the open
Stove door. “That all you can do is grunt when a lady pays you a compliment?” he asked Titus.

There was a long pause, then Titus said slowly, “Thank you.”

“That’s the trouble with you Indians,” Ben said, needling him, “you don’t talk. If you did you wouldn’t be in the fix you’re in.”

“What’s talking got to do with it?” Cathy said.

“White people like a man to talk, say what’s on his mind. That’s the way they get to know him. With Indians it’s the other way round. They get the feel of you by just sitting quiet. If they don’t like what they feel they walk away. Isn’t that right, Titus?”

Titus nodded.

“What’s wrong with that?” Cathy asked.

“Nothing at all if this was an Indian world, but it isn’t. It’s a white one. The trouble with these people is they don’t understand that. That’s one reason they’re goin’ under.”

“They’re going under, as you say, because they’ve been used.”

“Used! Aw now, Cathy, where do you get that stuff from? Only person who ever used an Indian is another Indian. You don’t use these suckers. Bulldoze ’em maybe, but you don’t use ’em. What do you say, Titus?”

“I listen what
you
say,” Titus said gruffly.

“See what I mean?” Ben said.

“I’d like to hear it too,” Cathy said. “What do you mean ‘bulldoze’?”

“What I mean is that if it was the other way around, if the white man hadn’t bulldozed these people, they’d’ve bulldozed the whites.”

“That’s some way to look at things,” Cathy said.

“It’s not the best, but what are you gonna do when there’s no cop on the corner and it’s every man for himself? Hell, when I came into this country you didn’t mess around with the Kutchins—none of them—the Vunta, the Natche, the Tutchone. They were tough as they come. They’d walk right up to your cabin and tell you they wanted to make a trade with you, give you so much for so much. Nine times out of ten you got the worst of the bargain, especially if you were all alone.
They didn’t threaten you if you didn’t trade their way, but when there’s just you, or maybe you and a partner, you weren’t about to tempt Providence. No sir, I’m telling you, they were tough. They didn’t steal—still don’t. If they wanted something they went and took it. That was their way.” He looked at Titus. “You tell me if I’m lyin’.”

“You tell truth,” Titus said.

“You betcha it’s the truth,” Ben went on. “They were a strong bunch. Why you couldn’t hammer a nail through the muscles of some of those braves.”

“Then what happened?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Ben said. “They got soft, I guess, lazy. Never thought much about it.
You
know?” he asked Titus.

Titus thought it over, then he said, “Nothing.”

“What does that mean—‘nothing’?” Cathy said.

“Nothing. We are same as always.”

“But you’re not,” Cathy said, “that’s just what we’re talking about.”

“We are same,” Titus insisted. “We think same as before. Before white men came.”

“What kinda thinkin’ is that?” Ben asked him.

“Like hunter. Something turn up. Today hungry. Tomorrow big cook.”

Cathy didn’t understand and neither did I, but Ben seemed to. “Huh!” he said. “I never thought of it that way. ‘Something’ll turn up.’ Damned if it isn’t the truth.”

“How about letting us in on it?” Cathy said.

“Think of it this way,” Ben said. “Before
we
came these people lived in sweathouses. They’re like igloos,” he said to me, “a wood frame with snow built up around it. The Indians weren’t any more sociable than they are now, so there was just maybe two or three families traveling together—one family to a sweat-house. They just drifted from place to place. Well, imagine living out there in all that wind and ice and the only thing between you and starvation whatever game you can take. Half the time they starved. Sometimes they’d go so long without eating they’d chew the rawhide off their snowshoes. They had a tough time of it
even before the white man came—the women in particular. These people never did think too much of women. The squaws had it so miserable that sometimes if they had a little girl-baby they’d kill it so it wouldn’t have to suffer like them.”

“They really did that?” I asked Cathy. She nodded.

“They sure did,” Ben went on. “Now you ask yourself something—if them suckers had it so hard there must have been something kept ’em going, something that kept ’em alive. And they did. They had faith.”

“You mean like faith in God?”

“Their
gods, the Spirits. Same thing, I guess. Anyway, they had faith, real strong faith—kind of faith the wolf has.”

“What do you mean?” Cathy asked.
“Animal
faith?”

“I mean hunter’s faith,” Ben said, “any kind of hunter, man or beast. Wolf’s got it. No matter how much his ribs are stickin’ out, he’s got the courage to go on, the faith that somethin’s gonna turn up. White men, they don’t think that way. They think like the beaver, put somethin’ away for tomorrow. The real hunter, and again I’m talking about man or beast, he doesn’t do that. That’s what the Kutchins were—hunters. They were born to it. Why they hunted moose by runnin’ ’em down on snowshoes. They could run all day, most of ’em. Try to put people like that to workin’ for wages, doing manual labor and they’re no good at it. That’s why white people think they’re lazy.”

“What does all this have to do with faith?” Cathy asked.

“Everything,” Ben said. “You’ve heard that faith moves mountains. Well, it does. Gives people strength. And it gave those Kutchins strength too. Faith. Today I’m going to bed so hungry I could eat my dog,’ they’d think, ‘but tomorrow I’m gonna come across a nice fat caribou and the whole bunch of us’ll have a big cook and eat till we’re sick. Something’ll turn up.’ Something always did, too. And one day something else turned up—the
unjyit,
the white man. Yep, the white man. And by God, here was the answer to a hunter’s prayer. ‘Behold!’ that Indian said, ‘Just look at that white critter, will you? Comes into this country out of
nowhere and before you know it he’s building himself cabins ten times bigger than a sweathouse. And grub? Great Spirit, look at it all! He’s got it stacked in tin cans, in sacks, in boxes, shoots it without the least trouble.’

“So the Indian went to this white man and he said, ‘Bud, I like your style. Want to live the way you do. How do I do it?’

“‘Bring me furs,’ the white man says, ‘all kinds—lynx, muskrat and marten, black fox, red fox and wolf. I’ll take ’em all.’ ‘Easy,’ says the Indian. And he did it—stopped hunting food and started hunting fur, started trading for axes and traps and guns, flour and tea.

“He stopped traveling from place to place and settled down where the white man was. For a while he didn’t do too bad. Missionaries came around and taught ’im all about Jesus Christ, which was fine with him, because the one thing he wanted to know more about was the God that had made this white critter so rich and powerful.

“Well, I tell you, for a good many years that Indian was like a bear in a blueberry patch. He did real fine, kept them furs comin’ and lived better than ever he did before. Until the day came when it all went bad. The price of fur went down. Where maybe it took a stack of fur halfway up a man’s shin to buy a sack of flour, one day it took a stack up to his waist, then up to his shoulder. Then for a while the white man hardly wanted any furs at all. That Indian was stuck. From living in one place and eating the white man’s food, he’d gotten weak. Flour, sugar, biscuits—none of that stuff can keep you going for long. You need meat in the winter, good fresh meat with plenty of fat on it. But there wasn’t any meat around, at least not nearby. The white man had chased it away and the Indian, not being a hunter anymore, didn’t have the strength to go any long distance for it.

“He was stuck all right. Every winter things got worse for ’im. Weak as he was, he picked up all the white man’s diseases—influenza, whooping cough, TB. The only thing that made him feel good for awhile was liquor, so he drank that whenever he could get enough
money to pay for it. He got weaker and weaker, sicker and sicker. But no matter how weak or sick he got, he still held onto the faith that’d kept him going when he was a hunter—‘Something’ll turn up. Somehow I’ll make it through the winter.’ And that’s what keeps all these people in this village going even today—the faith that something’s bound to turn up. And that’s the awful part of it. This time it looks like it’s not going to. These people are on their way to the big El Dorado up in the sky. They’ve hit the sunset trail and they’re dying. All because of faith.”

When he finished we were quiet. Even Cathy was moved.

Titus reached over and touched Ben’s arm. “You tell story good,” he said, and when Ben remained silent he pointed a finger at him. “Why you no say thank you?” He broke into a big smile and it made us all laugh.

I couldn’t get over what Ben had said, though. “Does it have to be that way?” I asked him. “Isn’t there anything that can be done about it?”

Ben shrugged. “I don’t know. Schoolin’, I guess.”

“It’s not doing it so far,” Cathy said, “at least not here. The only reason most of these kids come to school at all is because it’s the warmest place in the village and I give them a hot lunch.”

“Well then what
can
be done?” I said.

“Raze this place to the ground,” Cathy said. “Burn it and move everybody up to the Chandalar country.”

“Where’s that?” I asked.

“Northwest of here,” Ben said. “There’s a tribe up there won’t even let white men come near ’em except to trade once a year. They mushed up there to get away from the white man. Doin’ pretty well too.”

We all looked at Titus. He shook his head.

“No. We live here. We stay here.”

“And die here,” Cathy said. “Maybe I’m pessimistic, maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t see how this village is going to make it. We’ve got two children and a newborn babe dead so far, and the worst part of the winter is yet to come. And when it’s over, when spring is here again, what’ll happen? The old people and the women and children will go to the fish camp and some of the
men will go to Eagle to find jobs. They’ll cut wood for the riverboats, work on the boats as deckhands, then they’ll all come back here and go through another winter. What you said is true,” she said to Ben. “Almost everybody here is living in the past.”

“Not everybody, Cathy,” Titus said. “Some, they learn. Little children get educate, every year learn more. Read. Write. We
learn,”
he said emphatically. He went on to say that the Indians had never had it easy, that for them to go north and try to live the old way wouldn’t accomplish anything. Their life was here.