Читать книгу The History of the Northern Interior of British Columbia - Rev. A. G. Morice - Страница 12

Na’kwœl is the first really historical aborigine mentioned by the Carrier Indians of Stuart Lake. His name has come down to the present generation as that of one who was the personification of old age, and after a careful computation based on the various data forming our original chapter and many others not furnished here, the date of his birth cannot be set later than the year 1660. He grew up to attain, in course of time, the honored position of tœneza, or hereditary nobleman, of the Stuart Lake sept, and he is likewise famous as having been the first Déné who could boast the acquisition of an iron axe or adze.

This came to him about 1730, probably by way of Tsechah, an Indian village close to what is now Hazelton, on the Skeena. Whatever may have been the origin of the wonderful implement, [9] it is said that, on acquiring it, Na’kwœl convoked his fellow-tribesmen to a great banquet or ceremonial feast, where all the guests could admire it hanging above them from one of the rafters of the large lodge where they were assembled.

That implement was, of course, considered exceedingly valuable, and its possession was the means of considerably enhancing the notable's prestige among the entire Carrier tribe.

At that time it was customary for those Indians to migrate, at the approach of every winter, to a place where firewood was plentiful enough to supply the needs of the different families grouped around their chiefs or tœnezas, and to erect, for use during the cold season, large huts of slender logs with spruce-bark roofs and doorways covered with brush. One day, when some of Na’kwœl's family were cutting boughs for the entrance to his lodge, the line which fastened his adze to its handle getting loosened, the blade suddenly dashed off and fell among the branches already cut. After searching among these, it became apparent that the instrument must have dropped down in the snow, where it could not be found until the services of the medicine-man had been resorted to. [10]

Physically, Na’kwœl was short and very corpulent, a feature quite rare among the western Dénés. As to his psychological disposition, a little episode is to this day related, which goes to illustrate the man and his times.

As he was, one winter day, on the ice of Lake Greenwood, busy cutting up some cariboo, which friendly neighbors had killed for him, footsteps on the frozen snow told him of the approach of a native from Natleh, Fraser Lake. Immediately seizing his bow and arrows, Na’kwœl aimed his weapon at the stranger, exclaiming at the same time:

"We have decreed against intercourse with people from Natleh. What does this fellow come here for?"

Undisturbed by the threats, which he feigned not to notice, the stranger leisurely limped on and finally joined Na’kwœl's assistants, by whom he was hospitably entertained. Then, bending his own bow, with the arrow aimed at Na’kwœl, this accidental guest exclaimed:

"Now, old Na’kwœl, your pretensions are altogether too preposterous, and you speak like a man without sense. Look at this, my arrow! Were I so minded, I could sink it right now between your ribs."

Na’kwœl had two sons, A’ke’tœs and Chichanit, both of whom wielded great influence among their co-tribesmen. Yet the former, who is the first known to-day of a line of hereditary chiefs, the fourth of whom died of old age some fifteen years ago, met with a tragic and, at the same time, rather inglorious end, being done to death by his own wives. The elder of these was called Chalh’tas, and seems to have been a genuine virago; while the other, known as Atéte, was of a milder disposition.

Now, A’ke’tœs was constantly tormented by the demon of jealousy. He loved, on that account, to isolate himself and force his partners to share his cheerless seclusion, a step which occasioned many a family dispute, at the end of which his groundless suspicions asserted themselves with renewed vigor. On the other hand, he was believed to be endowed with malefic powers, a gift the possession of which is sure to prove fatal among the natives.

One day, as the family stayed on Long Island, at the outlet of Lake Stuart, while the whole tribe was stationed at Tsauche, about five miles to the south-west, on the shores of the same lake, A’ke’tœs had a violent altercation with Chalh’tas, which resulted in the latter accusing him of the death of her two children, but lately deceased. Upon this blows ensued, when the woman, falling on him, called upon Atéte to help her kill him, under pain of being herself done to death if she refused. Then they shamefully mutilated his remains, which they conveyed to the mouth of a stream emptying on the opposite side of the lake, and buried them in the sand.

Then, hiding his quiver among the rocks of the Stuart River, near the water's edge, they hastily fled to Fraser Lake, where they declared that, after one of their usual disputes, A’ke’tœs had tried to put them to death, when they had made off with his canoe, whereupon he had pursued them in the water and gone beyond his depth. On the ground of that story, canoes searched for days every nook of the river, where only the missing man's quiver was found, until later on his mangled remains were accidentally [11] unearthed, whereupon the anger of old Na’kwœl and of his son Chichanit knew no bounds.

Several years elapsed, when Atéte, who had been but an unwilling accomplice in the murder, tired of her exile, and resolved upon returning to her native land and telling the whole truth. But as she neared Stuart Lake her return was revealed to Chichanit, who sallied out and killed her with his bow-point—a sort of spear affixed to one end of his bow, a weapon quite common among the ancient Carriers. Then, repenting of his act, committed just when the woman endeavored to explain that she was innocent, he decided to spare her surviving co-partner on condition that she would come back and allow him to take her to+ wife in memory of his late brother. Messengers were sent who brought her back, and thenceforth she attended upon Chichanit, as was usual with widows preparatory to their being re-married to their late husband's nearest kin.

Meanwhile, Na’kwœl was constantly smarting under the pain caused by the untimely death of his eldest son. Though he was now well advanced in years, he used to visit Chichanit's lodge and reproach Chalh’tas with her crime, in which case blows would generally follow words, to all of which she had to submit with as much equanimity as her own haughty nature would allow.

One day, when she was unravelling with a small stone knife the strips of willow bark, the filaments of which were intended as the material of a fish net, her father-in-law became so violent that, unable to stand his abuse any longer, she grabbed him by the hair, and, throwing him to the ground, stabbed him in the neck with her diminutive implement. Fortunately for her intended victim, her knife broke in the old man's collar-bone before it could inflict serious injury, whereupon Na’kwœl called for help in terms which are still recited for the sake of their quaintness, and his son, running to his assistance, killed the woman with his bow-point.

Na’kwœl was now aging considerably. After many years passed in the company of his only remaining son, he grew to be so old that, according to tradition and the accounts of eye-witnesses, his hair, after having been snow white, had become of a yellowish hue. He fell into such a state of decrepitude that his knees and elbows were covered with scaly excrescences, resembling a sort of parasitic moss. His hearing failed him, and his eyelids drooped until he became the very picture of old age. Basking in the sun on a rock emerging from the shallow water, which is still shown near the outlet of Lake Stuart, he would at times send forth loud cries, as of rage at seeing himself so powerless against the ravages of time; then, bathing in the tepid waters, he would exclaim, on coming out:

"Ha! tcilhyaz nasœstlœn a!" (Ah ! here I am, a young man again!)

Some time before his demise, he is reported to have assured people that it was not without some design from above that he had been permitted to live so long, and that when he should die, Na’kal, the mountain which rises from the eastern shore of the lake, would dance in his honor. The natives date from his death the fall of part of a spur thereof, which the infiltration of water detached from the main body of the mountain.

The exact date of Na’kwœl's death can, of course, only be guessed; but from all accounts it cannot be far from 1765, as the old chief was certainly more than a centenarian when he passed away. Indeed, considering the longevity of the Indians, especially those of the old stock, he probably lived to see his hundred and tenth birthday. [12]

About twenty years before his death a most melancholy event, which was to cause a permanent change in the ethnographical map of the country, had happened at the confluence of the Stuart and Nechaco Rivers. There stood at that time a flourishing village called Chinlac, the population of which was allied by blood and dialect to the Lower Carriers of what is now called Stony Creek. The principal chief was a certain Khadintel, a man who enjoyed the consideration of his subjects, and who must have been well up in years, since he had two wives with a large number of children.

For some time previous to 1745, the report had been current amongst his people and their friends of other localities that the Chilcotins intended to avenge on him the death of one of their notables, and, agreeable to anticipations, a very large band of those Southern Dénés did come in due time, and in one morning practically annihilated the whole population then present at Chinlac. A few only owed their life to their temporary absence or to a speedy flight.

At the time of the catastrophe the head chief, Khadintel, was on a tour of inspection of his snares, some distance down the Nechaco. He had reached the rapid next to the confluence of the two rivers, paddling up in a large canoe with two other men, when he suddenly caught sight of a large number of canoes coming down stream.

"The Chilcotins!" he exclaimed. "Run up the bank and flee for your lives. I am the one they want, and I alone ought to die."

His companions were no sooner out of sight than a volley of arrows was whizzing around him, which he so dexterously dodged that, partly because his life appeared charmed to his aggressors, and partly because they thought it prudent to keep for any possible emergency the few remaining arrows in their possession after the great expenditure of them they had made in the morning, Khalhpan, the captain of the war party, ordered a suspension of hostilities. Then, addressing his bold adversary, he said:

"Khadintel, you have the reputation of being a man. If you are such, dance for me."

Whereupon the Chinlac chief commenced the dance of a tœneza on the beach of the river, just to show that his heart was above fear and emotion. When he had finished he warned his departing enemy that, in the course of a few years, he would return his visit.

The spectacle which met Khadintel's eyes on his return to his village was indeed heart-rending. On the ground, lying bathed in pools of blood, were the bodies of his own two wives and of nearly all his countrymen, while hanging on transversal poles resting on stout forked sticks planted in the ground, were the bodies of the children ripped open and spitted through the out-turned ribs in exactly the same way as salmon drying in the sun. Two such poles were loaded from end to end with that gruesome burden.

Aided by his two companions, Khadintel religiously burnt all the bodies, and placed the bones which had partially escaped destruction in leather satchels adorned with long fringes which, in the course of time, he entrusted to the care of the surviving relatives of Khalhpan's victims. Then he prepared the vengeance due to such an unprovoked crime and, early in the spring of the third year after the massacre, he found himself at the head of a large band of braves he had gathered from among the few survivors of the Chinlac population and the allied villages of Thachek, Nulkreh (Stony Creek) and Natleh (Fraser Lake).

Having reached the Chilcotin valley, at a place which, from the topographical details now furnished by the old men, must be identified with the plain where the modern village of Anarhem stands, the avenging party beheld from the top of the third terrace, or last of the superposed plateaus, in the thickets of which they discreetly passed the night, a long row of lodges, indicating a very large population.

Khalhpan, the Chilcotin chieftain, had a younger brother known as ’Kun’qus, a man most powerfully built and of a very amiable disposition. Expecting reprisals for his brother's misdeed, that influential Chilcotin had built a palisade round his house, wherein he lived with a wife taken from among his own tribe and a second partner, a Carrier woman, with her little brother, whom the members of Khalhpan's expedition had brought him from Chinlac.

He had just gone to prepare laths for the erection of a salmon trap, when, early in the morning, he was surprised to hear, all of a sudden, the uproarious clamors of the avenging party who, from different points of vantage, were storming his village. Running home in all haste, he gave the alarm to the sleeping population, and as he rushed into his house he passed his Carrier wife and her brother escaping in the direction of their attacking countrymen. He lost some time in trying to pursue them armed with a war-club which, to defeat his purpose, the woman had previously fastened to the wall of the lodge.

By that time, several Chilcotins had already fallen before the rage of the Carriers, when ’Kun’qus, aided by his first wife, hastily donned his double armor, consisting of a device made of dried rods of hardened amelanchier wood, over which he spread the pesta, a sleeveless, tunic-like cuirass of moose-skin covered with a coat of glued sand and gravel. Thus attired, he went out and started shooting wildly until his supply of arrows was exhausted, keeping between his legs, till he fell pierced by an arrow, a little son of his, whom he loved above all his other children.

The Carriers, who now recognized him, seeing him practically powerless, assailed him from all parts. But with a large stone dagger, whose blade he had mounted at the end of a stick, he kept them all at bay, so that they could hardly hurt him, inasmuch as their missiles were of no avail against his double armor. In this predicament they remembered the boast of a confederate, a little man of insignificant parentage named Yœntœlh, who had previously offered to catch the big Chilcotin for them. Bidden to make good his boast, Yœntœlh rushed at ’Kun’qus, leading him to use his lance, which he skilfully dodged at the very instant that he seemed doomed to destruction, and grasping its shaft before ’Kun’qus could strike again, gave his countrymen the long-sought-for opportunity. Seizing the warrior from every available quarter, they snatched from him all the native finery in which he was attired, a beautiful ceremonial wig adorned with dentalium shells, a costly breastplate, and a necklace mostly of the same material. Then, under a heavy stroke from a war-club launched on the forepart of his head, ’Kun’qus fell down never to rise again. Then, falling on his helpless body with all kinds of weapons, they made of it an unrecognizable mass of flesh.

The Carriers had now gratified their lust for vengeance. Indeed, the destruction of Chinlac was more than avenged. There the Chilcotins had set up two poles loaded with children's bodies, while the Carriers did not return to their country before they had put up as a trophy three such poles with similarly innocent victims.

Meanwhile, Khalhpan, the primary cause of the whole trouble, had been vainly sought for by the avenging northerners. He was absent, and did not come back until a short time after their departure. His feelings can be imagined when he came in sight of his village, now transformed into a solitude, peopled only by dogs howling around the mangled remains of their masters. Taking with him a few of the fugitives he found gloomily prowling about the field of carnage, he set out in pursuit of the retreating Carriers.

These had just forded a river at a point where a sand-bank in the middle cut it in two, and they were in the act of putting on their foot-gear again, when Khalhpan was sighted on the opposite side of the stream. Khadintel immediately advanced to meet him.

"People say that you are a man, and you would fain pass yourself off as a terrible warrior," he said, in the best Chilcotin he could command. "If you be such, come on, Khalhpan; come on, and retreat not."

Whereupon the Chilcotin chief advanced as far as the sand-bank; but at the sight of his powerlessness against such a host of enemies, he began to cry and to turn back.

"Now, Khalhpan," insisted his triumphant foe, "when, all alone against your people, I was cornered on the river bank and you wanted to kill me, I danced at your bidding. If you are a man, dance now for me, as I did for you."

But his adversary merely returned as far as the sand islet, when the sight of the multitude facing him, and the remembrance of all his relatives gone and of his beloved daughter, now dragged into slavery, were too much for him. He requested his adversary to spare her life, and broke into violent sobbing, which seeing, Khadintel, in tones full of scorn, cried across the river:

"Khalhpan, it is upon men that we came down to avenge a great wrong. I see that you are a woman, therefore I allow you to live. Go in peace, and weep to your heart's content."

The affront to the Carrier tribe was thus washed out in blood, but the destruction wrought by the Chilcotin marauders remained irreparable. In the course of time, the few persons who had escaped the massacre of 1745 settled among their friends of Thachek and Lheitli (Fort George). As to their own village, a bare spot on the right bank of the Stuart River, and the several trails leading out of it, are all that now remain of what was formerly the home of a thriving community. [13]