T.F. Mcilwraith and the NUXALK (BELLA COOLA INDIANS)1
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INTRODUCTION T.F. McILWRAITH AND THE NUXALK (BELLA COOLA INDIANS)1 John Barker "What you come for?" asked the Indian bluntly. To explain the quest of an anthropologist seemed impossible in broken English, so the investigator tried flattery: - "To talk with you , Joshua." "Thenyou one [very] wise man" ...2 thnographies begin as conversations between anthropologists Eand their hosts. The best, those that retain a sense of humanity and authenticity, reflect the underlying conversations: if you listen closely, you almost hear the voices. The Bella Coola Indians ranks among the finest ethnographies of a northwest coast people. Part social analysis, part compendium, part encyclopaedia, it conveys the ancient wisdom spoken eloquently by Nuxalk (Bella Coola) elders like Joshua Moody. At the same time, it conveys the fascination and the profound respect that a young Canadian anthropologist, Thomas McIlwraith, developed towards the Nuxalk elders during months of intense conversations. Although McIlwraith's name appears on the title-page, The Bella Coola Indians is a collaboration to which both anthropologist and Nuxalk contributed. McIlwraith's goal was to collect surviving informa- tion about Nuxalk life as it was before the arrival of the Europeans. The Nuxalk co-authors had a different aim. Relating ancestral stories, details of past potlatches, notions of healing, and the like, 1"Bella Coola" derives from a Heiltsuk name for all the speakers of the Nuxalk language. Although formerly only the inhabitants of the Bella Coola valley called themselves Nuxalk, it is now the preferred name for the whole population (Kennedy and Bouchard 1990:338). 2McIlwraith (1987:52). x INTRODUCTION they pointed more to the enduring essence of Nuxalk culture. These pespectives combine to enrich The Bella Coola Indians. One could write several very different introductions to The Bella Coola Indians. One could look at it as a contribution to northwest coast ethnography, focusing upon social organization, religion, the potlatch, and the secret societies. Or one could examine the book within the framework of Nuxalk struggles to maintain their cul- ture in the face of European hostility. I touch upon these subjects, but my main concern is to trace the anthropologist's own journey of discovery; or, to change meta- phors, to examine the conversation from McIlwraith's side of the table. This choice reflects in part my own predilection. I first began reading about northwest coast people several years ago as part of a study of T.F. McIlwraith's career (see Barker 1987). This is commonly the way most people first learn of other peoples and other cultures. We arrive peering uncertainly over the shoulder of our guide, whether this be an anthropologist like C. Marius Barbeau or George Hunt, or a local story-teller. This introduction is thus addressed first to outsiders who have picked up this book to learn about the Nuxalk culture. But I hope that it will also be of interest to Nuxalk themselves. McIlwraith did not long remain a stranger. He was welcomed into the community. The elders came to trust and respect him enough to share many of their most sacred traditions with him. McIlwraith became the adopted son of Cap- tain Schooner, he took a major part in the winter ceremonials of 1923-24, and he is still remembered in Bella Coola by his Nuxalk name, Weena. I hope this introduction will help Nuxalk people know McIlwraith better, to understand what he was doing in Bella Coola and his part in the conversation that resulted in The Bella Coola Indians. This introduction traces the conversation between McIlwraith and his Nuxalk teachers through several phases. I start with McIlwraith's fieldwork, focusing on his methods. I then chronicle the book's difficult passage through the National Museum. The next section discusses the text itself, examining its blending of anthropological and Nuxalk perspectives and voices. In the final INTRODUCTION xi section, I examine the continuing conversation between The Bella Coola Indians and the Nuxalk people as they rediscover and revitalize their culture. ANTHROPOLOGISTS ON THE NORTHWEST COAST T.F. McIlwraith was bom in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1899. After serving with the British army in France in 1918, he enrolled at Cambridge University, planning to enter the British colonial service. He instead came under the influence of A.C. Haddon and W.H.R. Rivers, who convinced him to study anthropology. McIlwraith did well, receiving a First in the Anthropology Tripos of 1921. Paul Radin, visiting Cambridge in 1921, recommended McIlwraith to Edward Sapir, the Chief of the Anthropology Division at the Victoria Memorial Museum in Ottawa: "He really would be a remarkable find if you could secure him."3 McIlwraith eagerly accepted Sapir's invitation to undertake a few months' fieldwork in Bella Coola. The coastal area of British Columbia was an obvious place for ethnographic fieldwork. European scholars had long admired the spectacular artistry and ceremonialism of the coastal peoples. This interest had led the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Museum of Natural History to sponsor Franz Boas's frequent visits to the coast. Upon his appointment to the new Anthropology Division at the Victoria Memorial Museum in 1910, Sapir pushed for a systematic survey of Native peoples in Canada in which the coast received top priority (Sapir 1911; Cole 1973). Sapir himself worked among the Nuu-Chah-Nulth (Nootka) on Vancouver Island, while C. Marius Barbeau began work with the Tsimshian in 1915. By the time McIlwraith arrived on the scene, ethnographers, including Native researchers like George Hunt and William Benyon, had recorded a substantial body of information on the major coastal cultures of British Columbia (Suttles and Jonaitis 1990). 3 Radin to Sapir, 7 Sept. 1921, ESMU. xii INTRODUCTION Nuxalk culture, however, remained relatively undocumented. Although a small group, the Nuxalk had provided a focus of anthropological interest at several key historical moments. In 1793, Alexander Mackenzie completed his famous overland trip to the Pacific Ocean through the Bella Coola valley. His journals provide "valuable comprehensive data concerning Bella Coola village sites, technology, and Native use of European trade goods" (Kennedy and Bouchard 1990:336). In 1885, two Norwegian brothers, Captain J. Adrian and Fillip B. Jacobsen, assembled a team of nine Nuxalk dancers and took them to Germany. Franz Boas, then an assistant at the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin, studied their language, stories, and music (Cole 1985:72; 1982). This experience helped convince him to undertake studies of the northwest coast. Boas met up with the Nuxalk dance troupe again upon his arrival in Victoria in 1886 and visited Bella Coola itself in 1897. A few articles by the Jacobsens4 and Boas's 'The Mythology of the Bella Coola Indians' (1898) made up the entire literature on the Nuxalk when Sapir began looking for a fieldworker. In 1916, Sapir tried unsuccessfully to secure a contract for Paul Radin. From 1920 to 1924, Harlan I. Smith, the archaeologist at the Victoria Memorial Museum, surveyed Nuxalk material culture, subsistence, and medicines.5 Sapir asked McIlwraith to study the remaining aspects of Nuxalk culture, particularly social organiza- tion and religion. By 1922, the Nuxalk had been greatly affected by more than a century of interactions with Europeans. At the time of Mackenzie's visit in 1793, they occupied several autonomous villages dispersed along the Bella Coola valley, the North and South Bentinck Arms, Dean Channel, and Kwatna Inlet. Smallpox and other introduced diseases devastated their population throughout the nineteenth 4The Jacobsens wrote on Nuxalk mythology and ceremonialism. See Kennedy and Bouchard (1990) for a full bibliography. 5The arrangement of Smith's fieldnotes suggests that he may have planned to publish a book on Nuxalk material culture (Margaret Stott: personal communication). Smith's articles on Nuxalk medicine, healing, and material culture are listed in Kennedy and Bouchard (1990). INTRODUCTION xiii century.6 The Hudson's Bay Company ran a post at Bella Coola from 1869 to 1882. In 1883, Chief Tom of Bella Coola invited a part-Tsimshian Methodist minister, William Pierce, to begin a mission to the Nuxalk (Pierce 1933:44). Meanwhile federal sur- veyors now reduced Nuxalk lands to small reserves. In the 1890S, a colony of Norwegian families settled at Hagensborg and the Bella Coola townsite (Kopas 1970). Over the years, the Nuxalk survivors gradually congregated on a reserve near the mouth of the Bella Coola River. The last of the outliers, the Kimsquit, moved to the reserve in 1922. By this time most of the Nuxalk were at least nominally Christian and many were employed seasonally in the local canneries and in logging. FIELDWORK IN BELLA COOLA, 1922-24 On 7 March 1922, McIlwraith boarded the comfortable coastal steamer Camosun, arriving two days later at Bella Coola. The white community was located at the townsite near the wharf. Most of the Nuxalk lived in frame houses on the reserve about two kilometres further down a muddy track. A few more Nuxalk lived in decaying traditional houses at Qw umkw uts7 across the river from the Indian settlement. McIlwraith rented a room at a boarding-house run by Mrs. Andy Christenson at the townsite. This was to be his base during his two seasons of fieldwork. Many years later, McIlwraith recalled his inauspicious intro- duction to fieldwork: "Indians all in houses, not very friendly, no English, dogs nasty, solid rain" (McIlwraith n.d.). Undaunted, he threw himself into his work. He first approached Joshua Moody,8 a man in his mid-fifties who had previously worked with Harlan 6 Boyd (1990) estimates that the Nuxalk population declined from 2,910 people in 1774 to 402 in 1868. When McIlwraith arrived, the Native population still hovered around 400 and was only just beginning a slow climb upwards (Duff 1964).