Chapter 6 THE WHITE CHIEF MAKES MEDICINE

Sunless and softly grey morning came to Katleean. The water, smooth as satin, stretched away to the mist-shrouded hills. Owing to some odd, mirage-like condition of the atmosphere trees bordering the lagoon across the bay stood high and clear above a bank of fog. The liquid music of the surf was hushed as if to give place to a new sound that pulsed unceasingly on the quiet air: the strange and thrilling boom of Thlinget drums. Up from the great Potlatch-house in the Village floated the savage resonance adding a barbaric note of announcement to the placid beauty of the scene.

Above the roofs of the native houses and straight between the totems of the Thunder-bird and the Bear, rose the black smoke of the Potlatch fire.

Though it was early, the double doors of the trading-post stood open for the White Chief had been abroad several hours. After a night of revelry in Katleean there were always knife-wounds to dress, battered heads to bind up, bullets to extract, and even broken bones to set. The nearest doctor was five hundred miles away and Kilbuck, often the only sober man at the post, with the exception of Kayak Bill, performed these services.

Some said that he had learned all he knew of medical science from the row of gold-lettered volumes tucked away in one corner of his dusky living-room; others claimed that a great eastern medical college had known him as a student in the far-off days before Alaska took him for her own. Whatever was the source of his knowledge he did his work with a degree of rough skill, and humanely, using as an antidote for the pain he inflicted during these operations, stupendous quantities of the very liquor which had brought about his patients' troubles.

Among the Kagwantans of the Thlinget people he had been given the rank of Shaman, or medicine man. To further his own ends and to keep his hold on the natives, he had always donned the robes that went with this conferred honor and had taken an active part in the Potlatch ceremonies. As the years went by, with but four steamers a twelve-month to disturb his voluntary exile and but a waning interest in anything south of Dixon's Entrance, he had grown to have a real enjoyment in these affairs. They served to banish any lingering inhibitions imposed by civilization.

As he walked across the courtyard toward the little cabin of Silvertip and his squaw, Senott, there were thoughtful lines in the White Chief's brow. Today he would have an opportunity to impress the white women with his importance among the wild people of the North. Today Ellen Boreland should see him as the great chief and Shaman, banisher of Thlinget sorcery. But-how far might he go in this character without running the risk of becoming ridiculous? Never before had such an audience taxed his powers of discrimination. True, by subtle speeches, he had prepared his visitors for anything that might happen, and he knew they would excuse much that was bizarre on his own part because of his explanation that such ways were necessary in handling a primitive people. But he also knew that there is but a thin dividing line between savage pomp and ludicrous ostentation.

As he neared Silvertip's door he raised his head decisively and mounting the steps entered without knocking.

His glance swept the small room with its snowy sand-scoured floor, its rectangular box-stove of sheet-iron, and two corner bunks, one above the other.

"Well, Silvertip, you and Harlan are the last ones on my list. I can't find him any place, but I see you've come to anchor all right. What's the matter with you?" He addressed the wan-looking Silvertip in the lower bunk.

A long-drawn sigh quivered up from the blankets, and with a shaking hand the Swede indicated his head.

"My ol' ooman (groan) . . . lick hal outen me . . . (groan)!"

Kilbuck bent down and parted the fair, blood-matted hair on the side of his patient's head.

"Oh, you're not much hurt, man. You and Senott ought to learn to take a little drink together without beating each other up this way." He laughed as he made ready to cleanse the cut. "May I inquire where the lady is this morning?"

Between groans the injured husband profanely unburdened himself:

"She go down de tarn Injune house vit dat tarn Injune hunter,

Hoots-noo!"

"Trouble with you, Silver, you're too good to women. Now, instead of using the iron hand on them you show the yellow streak--"

"Me-jallow streak?" The indignant Swede raised his battered head to glare into the eyes of his satiric physician. "Vy, tammit, Chief, ven ay ban cook on Soofie Suderlant ay--"

"That reminds me, Silvertip," interrupted the White Chief. "You remember telling me about stopping for water on the Island of Kon Klayu when you were whaling? Yes? . . . Well, while you are lying here sobering up, I want you to think about that island, Silver. I want you to remember every little thing about it that you can, and after the Potlatch I'll be in to talk to you-perhaps. I'll go and hunt up Harlan now. Damned fool! He raised hell last night-something started him off. No doubt he's down around the Point swimming it off now. Queer how that fellow loves water-on the outside of his skin."

The trader left the cabin and started across the courtyard. It had gradually filled up with multi-colored, grotesque figures that might have stepped from the pages of some weird, fantastic fairy-tale. The never-ceasing beat of the Potlatch drums made a throbbing, low accompaniment to their guttural tones and laughter. They stalked about wrapped in heavy broadcloth blankets adorned with designs and borders made of white pearl buttons-thousands of buttons-a style which had come in when the white traders came to Alaska. Many wore the native Chilcat blanket of ceremony made of the hair of the mountain goat. These were marvels of savage embroidery done in conventionalized designs that might have startled a Cubist painter had they not been woven with the softest-toned native dyes-yellow, pale-blue and green and rust. Huge, fierce detached eyes, the Thlinget symbol of intelligence glared from some. Mouths with queer, squared lips and large teeth grinned from others. A school of killer-whales with dorsal fins aloft, disported themselves in rectangles of black on the back of another. From the bottom a two-foot fog-colored fringe dangled about the wearer's legs.

Above the fantastic robes black eyes looked out from painted faces rendered fearsome by red and blue and green designs representing mythical gods of the clouds, waves, and beasts, fish and birds. Heads were crowned with the skulls of grizzly bears and small whales. A few figures were disguised by pelts of animals, but instead of paws, huge wooden hands with fingers more than a foot long, dangled from the forearms.

Swimming Wolf, brave in a dance-blanket which bore the wolf emblem of the Kagwantans, held his head proudly under the sacred hat of Kahanuk, the Wolf, and on his face in red and blue was the Kia-sa-i-da, the red mouth of the wolf when the lips are retracted.

As the White Chief made his way through the throng he noted with satisfaction that Ellen Boreland and her sister were standing spellbound in the doorway of the trading-post watching the primitive masquerade. Even as he looked a creature broke suddenly from the crowd and rushed toward them, half-running, half-flopping like a wounded bird. To one side of its face half a moustache was attached. The other cheek was adorned with red and blue paint. The hair was twisted into a high peak and further decorated with the wings of a seagull. A man's hair-seal waistcoat trimmed with red flannel hung from the shoulders and from this streamed yards of brilliant colored calico strips an inch wide.

As the figure reached the platform, the two white women shrank back in the doorway. The half-portion of the moustache was raised in a delighted grin.

"Heavens, Ellen!" gasped Jean, clutching her sister's arm. "It's that jolly little Senott, Silvertip's squaw. The one that brought us the strawberries the other day!"

Senott, proud in her Potlatch finery, came close and gazed with friendly eyes at the white visitors.

"Ha! Ha!" she laughed. "You not know Senott? Senott all same kate-le-te-all same seagull!" She threw out her arms raising them up and down and lifting high her feet to represent a seagull alighting at the edge of breaking surf.

"Bime-by you white 'oomans come along Senott-" she pointed in the direction of Kilbuck's living-room windows under which he had caused a great grave to be dug. "You come. Senott show you t'ings."

With a wide smile and a wave of her hand the gay Senott, apparently forgetful of the white spouse at home nursing the broken head she had given him, flapped away to join her Indian lover, Hoots-noo, Heart-of-a-Grizzly, the handsome young husband of Old-Woman-Who-Would-Not-Die.

At noon every soul in Katleean had assembled in front of the trading-post. The boom of drums was louder. There was a feeling of expectancy in the air. The few whites, with the exception of Kilbuck, sat on the platform in front of the store. The natives formed a shifting, motley crowd in the courtyard. Kayak Bill, sitting next to Ellen, smoked his pipe as he contemplated the scene.

"Wall, Lady," he drawled, leaning toward her, "I seen a heap o' this sort o' jaberwocky doin's in my time up here, and it used to make me feel like as if them Injines had a tank full o' doodle-bugs under their hair-but I don't know- Take us white folks down in the States now, when we're a-celebratin' o' Decoration day without our speeches and our peerades and our offerin's o' posies and such. It's the same principle exact--"

The old man ceased speaking abruptly. Out of the door behind them and down the platform steps walked the White Chief of Katleean and the little Thlinget woman, Decitan. About her shoulders was draped a fringed black and yellow blanket of wondrous design. On her dark, thick hair she wore the crest of the Eagle clan-a privilege accorded only to a chiefess.

The waiting Indians stood back from about these two principal figures in the courtyard, and Paul Kilbuck, with the Indian woman beside him, turned to face the white woman on the platform whose favors he hoped to win.

He felt himself splendidly barbaric in the costume of a Shaman. The greens and blues and yellows of his royal Chilcat blanket and dancing shirt set off his dark beard and dead-white skin. Carved wooden eagle-wings on each side of a tall hat crowned his hair. Below this emblem of the Shaman spirit, the Unseeable, his eyes, narrow, pale and dangerous sent straight into those of Ellen a look that might have come down through the red pages of history.

She turned her face away with a frightened quickening of the pulses.

The White Chief and Decitan took their places at the head of the Indian procession which had been forming, and the long, fantastic line wound about the courtyard and down the trail that led to the Village. Before the graveyard, with its totems and curious architecture of the dead, they stopped and began a mournful ululation.

The wailing gradually gave way to the Potlatch songs in honor of the deceased-songs of curious rhythm and halting cadences; songs with a haunting plaintiveness that floated high above the throbbing of the drums.

On the platform the white inhabitants of Katleean waited in silence until the procession came back once more to the courtyard. Then one by one they attached themselves to the line.

About the excavation under the windows of the White Chief the funeral party halted. Kilbuck, his handsome, barbaric head towering above all, spoke to the natives in Thlinget a few moments. Then one by one the small boxes containing ashes of the dead were handed to him. He lowered them into the grave. As the last one settled on the bottom he stepped back, flinging one corner of his fringed blanket from his shoulder. He exulted in the sense of power such an occasion gave him. He liked to feel that in the hollow of his hand he held every soul in Katleean.

Perhaps in his heart there still lurked some faint respect for the dead. Perhaps he merely intended to impress the white women in his audience, as from under the bizarre robe of his heathen office he produced a prayer-book, and in the voice he knew so well how to modulate, read the service for the dead. At the close he swept the gathering with an inclusive glance. First in Thlinget, then in English he addressed his listeners:

"People of the Kagwantans, of the Wuckitans, of the Yakutats, and the Ganahadi,"-His voice made music of the Indians names.-"Listen to the talk I make and remember. Always, while I am the White Chief and Medicine Man of the Kagwantans, I will watch over the ashes of my brown brothers and sisters. Always, when the nights of the Big Snows come to Katleean and the spirit-lights whisper in the North in the moon of Kokwa-ha, I, the Unseeable, will watch. . . . Always, in the moons of the Big Salmon run, the Hat-dee-se, when there is no darkness in the nights of the North, I, the Unseeable, will watch. . . . I, who have brought you the great white medicine of the Letquan, the Snow People, I make the Big Medicine now-I make it with the sacred book of the White Shamans." He held one corner of his Chilcat blanket tightly against his breast with the prayer-book, and with the other out at arm's length, swept the fringes slowly back and forth over the grave. "I make the Big Medicine. . . . My brothers and sisters may rest in peace at Katleean, for no witch can dig down into the grave below to work evil spells. . . . I, the White Chief, the Unseeable, I am always watching."

The solemn old Indians of the tribe nodded their masked heads approvingly and gave grunts of satisfaction. Kilbuck turned away as if a bit weary of his role and walked toward the trading-post. The white members of his audience followed him.

After the departure of their foreign visitors the natives assumed an alertness strangely at variance with their usual stolid demeanor. Kilbuck, with his white guests, watched them from his living-room windows.

Blanket after blanket was spread over the boxes of ashes in the grave. Bolt after bolt of bright calico was torn into streamers and flung into the open space. Cooking utensils and food came next; then trinkets of every kind that might cheer the souls of the departed on their journey over the Spirit Trail. At the very last, Swimming Wolf, who had heretofore taken little part in the ceremonies, stepped forward with a tiny phonograph, a rare possession since it was the only one in the Village. The Indian carefully wound it up and lowered it into the hole. There was a craning of masked heads, . . . a period of grunting approval, . . . and then faintly from below came a whirring, a sputtering and a high, cracked voice of announcement. The White Chief's face wore its sardonic smile as the gravel was being shoveled into the grave for the little tin phonograph was bravely playing: There'll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.