macCLOUD FALLS, page 20
Snyder’s company crossed to the east side of the river, while Graham’s group carried on up the west. The former met with no resistance and sent messages ahead, to the Indian centre at Camchin, that they wanted to parley peace, but Graham’s men destroyed everything in their path, food caches and potato fields, although they found few natives to revenge themselves upon. Then one night, a rifle fell over and went off in the middle of Graham’s camp and, thinking they were under attack, they began shooting each other in the dark. Only a handful of men survived.
At Camchin, the leaders of the N’laka’pamux and their allies were holding a war council. The N’laka’pamux war chief tried to incite the warriors to wipe out the white men once and for all, but the Camchin chief Cxpentlum had established good relations with the governor, James Douglas, and he argued for peaceful co-existence. Unwittingly, Snyder marched his men into the middle of this perilous situation. If they’d known thousands of warriors watched from the mountains surrounding, they might not have been so bold, but according to Indian custom they had a right to speak. So, through their translators, they told the assembled council that, if war began, thousands more white men would come to fight. The white men demonstrated their modern rifles, saying that if it came to a battle their countrymen would finally kill them all. The Indians had only a few old muskets and carbines. Six treaties had been made that day, none of which survived, dealing with the peaceful co-existence of the white incomers with the natives, and the working of the imagined goldfields.
Musing on this, he made his way back across the bridge, past the CPR lines, with the intention of spending the afternoon writing. But back at the inn, he found there was a note awaiting him on the front desk. It was from George, the man who he had met the night of the hockey match. Written in a sloping hand, it said he was invited to meet an elder of the band, someone who George said knew about Jimmy Lyle, at 3pm in the band office, if that suited him, in the new community centre in the town – the mysterious new building with the giant eagle schematic he’d seen when he first got off the Greyhound.
So after grabbing a bit of lunch from the cold cabinet Vince had directed him to, he set off again on foot, walking back the way he’d come, wondering just how far he had tramped already since he got to Cloud Falls, how many times he’d crossed that bridge without jumping.
When he reached the band office, the scale of it impressed him. He’d seen the old office on the reservation on his first perimeter walk, a wooden shed broken down and neglected, but as he pushed open the door of this new building, the scent of the 21st century met him. There was something symbolic about its position too, not on the margins of the town in the reservation, but here in the heart of it, half-hidden among the settler houses. This new community centre with its imitation-wood flat-pack furniture seemed a little odd, but then what had he expected, that they would meet in a tipi and pass around a peace pipe? Or some ancient darkened log house where the walls had eyes, like something out of a John Buchan story or a Boas essay? Instead he was shown into a cleanly minimal office of the kind to be found all over the so-called western world.
The elder was a small white-haired, sallow-skinned woman dressed in a white cotton sweater, trainers and well-pressed denims. She looked at him curiously through rim-less glasses, as if her dark eyes were questioning his very presence here in the office of the band - the ‘Indian Band’, as they still styled themselves. But she held out a tiny delicate hand in greeting, and they made their introductions. He looked around him. In the windows were stylish stained glass images that spoke of their specific situation – a rattlesnake, coiled, its tiny yellow eyes staring threateningly; a coyote, neck upstretched, howling presumably; a heron wading in a blue stream. And above the elder’s desk was the magnificent mounted head of a bighorn, the kind of sheep he’d read about, those that roam wild in the mountains around Cloud Falls. This specimen had been a beauty, its huge proudly held head framed at either side by grand curving horns that twisted round on themselves in perfect symmetry.
‘He’s quite a fella, isn’t he?’ she said, following the line of his gaze. ‘Big old ram, he was.’
‘I suppose he would have been a prize,’ he smiled.
‘I guess,’ she said. Her face seemed to remain expressionless, her voice monotone. Was he even welcome here? He couldn’t tell from her manner. ‘I don’t know,’ she went on. ‘He’s been around the Band Office for as long as I can recall. And I’ve been around a long time. We just moved him up here from the old place.’
‘This is pretty new here, this centre? It’s very smart.’
‘Sure, just four years old.’ She gazed around the office too. ‘Yup, it’s sure a big improvement on the old one,’ she added, but again her face gave away no emotion. ‘So George said you’ve come over from Scotland because you want to know about Jimmy Lyle. How come you’re so keen on finding out about him?’ she asked.
‘Well,’ he began, feeling that he was the one being interviewed, ‘I believe he’s a relative of mine. I’ve sort of known the story all my life, of this man who went off to British Columbia. I remember an old magazine my mother had, with a story in it about him. ‘Friend to the Indians’, it was called. About how he married a local woman and learned to speak the language, and then helped the Indian Rights movement. And it always fascinated me. I thought one day I would write about it. I wanted to see where he lived for a long time, to find out if anyone here still remembers him. So here I am.’ He smiled warmly, hoping that her ancient reserve might ease.
She didn’t respond to the smile, but nodded gently, as if she seemed to accept the reasoning. ‘Wasn’t so strange for white men to marry native women back then. Country wives, they called them. Didn’t mean they had any rights, though. Most stayed where they were, if their husband went back home. But Jimmy Lyle, I believe he was a good man and, sure, we still know what he did for us. I only just remember him a little, but my father, he knew him well. They were big friends.’
He was shocked. ‘You actually remember him? How old are you?’ It sounded impolite after he’d blurted it, but her expression registered no offence. It seemed barely possible that anyone from that era would still be alive, but he supposed it was, just.
‘I’m ninety-nine,’ she said, with a little touch of pride in her voice, and seemed to wink from behind her glasses.
‘Wow,’ he breathed. ‘That’s amazing.’
She didn’t respond to that, but carried on taking about Lyle. ‘I do remember him, yes, at least a little. I think I was about eleven when he died. Course he’d moved over to Merritt by then, so he’d be close to a doctor, cause he wasn’t too well for a long time, but he’d still come back here to see my father on the train. When there was still a station. The CPR doesn’t stop here anymore. CNR neither.’
‘It seems strange, these big railway lines here, and no station.’
‘Well, I guess so for a stranger. It’s just how it is. Now everybody drives. And with the new highway, nobody really stops. Just pass on through.’ She looked right though him again, her face impassive, but her words seemed friendly. ‘So what can I tell you, Bert? What are you so curious about?’
He tried to choose words carefully. ‘I suppose, what I want to know is, how do local people feel about him now. I mean, your people – the N’laka’pamux. How do you say it?’ He wondered whether he’d even pronounced the name correctly.
‘Okay, sure. I understand what you’re asking.’ She slowly pushed her chair away from her desk and took from a drawer a copy of Jimmy Lyle’s book, his account of the culture of Indians of the territory which Franz Boas had published. ‘You ever seen this?’ she asked.
‘I have a copy. I’ve read it,’ he answered and the elder smiled for the first time. Her eyes twinkled behind her frameless spectacles. She waited for more information, so he went on, ‘I know he wrote a lot about the traditional way of life, the stories he heard. And I do understand that these days, a lot of the writing done by settlers in English back then is considered to be – well, the term is appropriation – like, what right did these Europeans have to take the native stories – I mean, First Nations – translate them and claim to be doing them justice. To be telling the truth. Because every story loses something when it’s translated, doesn’t it?’
There was long pause while she appeared to be considering her response. When it came, the sentences were punctuated by further sighs, further pauses. ‘There’s some people who object to that, you’re right… and it’s true what you say, a story is different when you tell it in another tongue… every storyteller has their own versions, they kinda tweak it, like they say today… to suit themselves or who they’re telling it to… Jimmy Lyle was just working from memory, writing down what he could remember, he had no tape recorder like people today, and so he kinda pieced together the stories from different versions… That was what old Professor Boas wanted...’
She looked at him to see if he knew who she was referring to, and smiled again when he nodded to assure her he did.
‘So we don’t know, when we read Jimmy Lyle’s book, who told him what…’ she said, and smiled slightly ruefully, as if reflecting on those lost voices, people like her father who had been one of his source informants. ‘But you know, Jimmy wrote a lot of things down, not just stories, but all kinds of folklore, things that we would have lost otherwise. There’s not too many people around now to ask how things used to be, and not many who can really speak the old language. So Jimmy did a lot, saved words even, medicine, ceremonies. All these things we later lost. Or would have done, if he hadn’t written what he did.’
He nodded. She seemed to be opening up to him. ‘You’ve heard about the residential schools, I guess?’ she went on.
He nodded again, thinking there was something regal about this little old lady, a grace, a presence. ‘Some, yes.’
‘Well, when they took us away there, we weren’t allowed to use our own language. They gave us new names, new clothes and all, tried to teach us new things to believe in. All the old knowledge, that was supposed to be forgotten. I remember that well.’
Again, he felt that incredulity he’d had when she told him her age. ‘You were at a residential school?’
‘Sure. We all were, just about. From age four. Me and my two brothers. It was a hard place for little kids. And you know they used to beat us? Just for speaking our own language? It was a cruel, cruel place. Cruel people. We were abused, all kinds of ways. Some of the kids never recovered from it. Broken for the rest of their lives, spirits crushed.’
She stopped, gazing to the stained glass image of the rattlesnake in the window, lit by the sunshine outside. He looked too, as those little yellow snake-eyes seemed to shine with an impenetrable foreign quality, an opaque enmity which spoke only of hatred, of ill intent and possible death. He felt himself, in his white-skinned complacency, to be culpable somehow, and searching for some way to say he understood, cleared his throat. ‘You know, back home in Scotland, in some places it wasn’t so different. In some parts, like the northwest where people had a different native culture, Gaelic as we call it, or in the north like Shetland where Jimmy Lyle came from, where the people had once been part of Norway, their native tongues were suppressed. Kids were punished for speaking, like you say. They were seen as barbarians by people in the south.’
‘Huh,’ she said, for the first time lost for words.
‘One of the things I’ve been wondering about is whether he, Jimmy as you call him, saw what was happening to native culture here and recognized the same imperialist British policy as he’d witnessed back home, growing up.’
She seemed to breathe deeply, to relax at this, as if understanding that this visitor wasn’t simply some white settler’s descendant or distant cousin, but someone who had some parallel experience, who was offering some kind of insight into Lyle and his life.
‘I didn’t know that about Scotland, that there was natives there too,’ she said, after a while.
He wondered how much she needed to know, whether to embark on a historical lecture, to explain the effects of the aftermath of Culloden on the culture of the Highlands, the repression of Gaelic and the breaking up of the clan system. Maybe it wasn’t quite the right moment. Or even all that relevant?
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘There were natives there – still are. Though it’s not quite the same, you know. In Scotland the natives don’t really look different. It’s more a matter of culture, of language. Not so obviously racist.’
‘I see,’ she said. ‘I’m kinda curious now. If Jimmy Lyle was a native in his own country, that would explain a lot. But he did kinda look different from the other white people, and he seemed to know how things were for our people. At least that’s how I understood it, from my father. Seemed to want to be useful, you know, writing down what the people wanted. You know about the letter to the premier of Canada they wrote?’
‘I read about it. About a hundred years ago, wasn’t it?’
‘Hundred and one years now. Jimmy Lyle was the one who wrote it down. The chiefs all came here, told him what they wanted it to say in their own language, and he turned it into English. They presented it to Laurier. We had a ceremony last year, on the anniversary. The centenary. We built a new place, up to the north of the town, near the reservation. For meetings, you know. Jimmy Lyle was mentioned. We even put a plaque up to him. You should go see it. It’s beautiful. Cedar wood, but in a modern design.’
This was still news to him, though George had mentioned something about it. He hadn’t known, even imagined, that Lyle had been so recently on the lips of people, that the centenary had been celebrated. ‘I’d like that,’ he said. ‘Whereabouts is it, exactly?’
The elder took a little slip of paper and drew a rudimentary sketch of the river and the town, with the two bridges, one old one new, then marked a cross where he would find the memorial. He realised that there were two reservations, one to the north he hadn’t known about, and asked where else he should go, what other places she could recommend that had to do with Lyle’s life here. She thought for a while, as if scrutinizing him again, wondering could he be trusted.
‘You could go to his wife’s grave, maybe?’
‘Lucy?’
‘That’s what the missionaries called her, but her name was really Antko. Her stone is in the Indian graveyard by the old church. Right in the corner. It’s a big one. Jimmy Lyle put it there.’ She stared once again at the stained glass in the window, her black eyes full of something very deep, a pool of night, he thought. ‘Course you know, to us, it was Antko who was the important one. Like I said, Jimmy wrote things down, but it was her who made all that possible. She was a very special person. My father used to say she was a wise and patient woman. And it was a great loss when she died, to Jimmy Lyle and everyone. Just 33 years old.’
Again she drew on the little map. ‘Then I guess you’ll want to see the houses he lived in.’
‘Houses? More than one?’
‘Yeah. He lived in a few different places. One he built, down by the CNR line, that’s near here. There’s a couple live there, very keen on Jimmy Lyle’s writings about plants. Then he was up at High Ridge after Antko died, when he married the Dutchwoman.’
He pointed to the photo on the cover of the book, where Lyle was in Stetson, looking like a proper cowboy, his fair hair longish with a moustache, his native wife by his side, and the big dog in the foreground. Her hair was tied back and she was wearing a smart western dress. He had on a fringed buckskin shirt. The black dog curled at their feet, panting.
‘Where was this taken?’ he asked.
‘Ah, that’s the cabin they lived in, in the early days.’
‘Is that still around?’
‘It’s a ways off from here. Up in the Echte Valley, back from the highway. Not so easy to get to. Echte valley is a kinda sacred place for us. The cabin’s hidden away. They lived there for years, before Jimmy Lyle met Boas and started making himself some money out of all that. That’s when he built the new house down by the railway.’
She pushed her chair back from the desk and stood up. Such a small woman, but such an intense regal presence.
‘It’s not where the white folk think it is,’ she said, looking out the window, her back to him. ‘They think they know, but it isn’t there. That’s another cabin, not theirs. Theirs is a way further back, up the trail.’ She turned and smiled at him. And did she wink, conspiratorially?
He didn’t have time to consider, as a shouting began outside the office. He couldn’t hear what exactly was being said, but one loud voice seemed to dominate. Suddenly the door opened and a striking figure filled the frame, a younger woman whose thick gloss-black hair was the antithesis of the elder’s neat white. She wore a short jacket with a bold native design imprinted, like the work of the Haida Gwaii artists he’d seen in Vancouver. When she glanced at him sitting there, black eyes flashing, he thought she could be Elvis’s sister.
‘Deeanna,’ the elder said. ‘I’m busy. What is it now?’
‘I wanna put this poster up. Gilly says I have to ask you.’
‘What’s it for?’
The intruder became a little defensive. ‘A meeting.’
‘Let me see.’ The She-Elvis came into the room, her boots clicking loudly on the tiled floor, and presented a sheet of paper. He couldn’t see what was on it. The elder read it through, then handed it back. ‘I can’t put this up here, Deeanna. It’s going to cause a lot of trouble. You know that.’
‘Yeah, I know that. But I’m puttin them up all over town, anyways.’
‘Chief is going to be mad.’
