Kolymsky Heights (6 page)

The name on his birth certificate was Jean-Baptiste Porteur but from the age of thirteen he had become plain Johnny Porter.

He was a Gitksan Indian, one of the small bands affiliated to the larger tribe of Tsimsheans who inhabited the Skeena river area of British Columbia.

The language of the Gitksans was K’san and only a smattering of it was understood outside the tribe. Few of the tribes were mutually intelligible. But almost as soon as he was talking the young Jean-Baptiste could also talk Nisqa, the language of the Nass Indians. Not long afterwards he had some Tsimshean, too. This was a language so unique that linguists had been unable to relate it to any other on earth. The other tribes found it incomprehensible. By eleven he was fluent in Tsimshean.

It was this ear for language that took him, at thirteen, to the mission school – that and a disagreement with his uncle.

Like all Gitksan males (and males of the affiliated tribes) he had to leave home at puberty and live with an uncle or some other male relative of his mother’s. The society was exogamous – sexual relationships were prohibited between members of a clan. The tabu was incest-based and prevented an individual from sleeping with his mother or his sisters. For the society was also matrilineal: descent came through the mother.

This meant that the children of a marriage became members not of the father’s clan (which necessarily had to be different) but the mother’s. The mother and her children were all members of the same clan. They could marry into other tribes but not into their own clan within the tribes. This was of the first importance and in matters of personal status clan came before tribe.

There were four clans: Eagle, Wolf, Raven and Fireweed. Porter’s mother was Raven, so he was Raven. At thirteen he went to stay with a Raven uncle. The uncle threw him out.

The disagreement arose over the boy’s rebelliousness and his duplicity. (All Ravens are duplicitous. Raven is Trickster. He is very resourceful. He stole the sun and brought light to the world. He does good, but only by accident. He is very cautious. He takes nothing on trust. He is not to be trusted.)

Porter’s uncle didn’t trust him. Apart from not doing what he was told, the boy lied about what he did do.

Because of his facility with languages the uncle took him along whenever he had dealings with the Tsimshean or the Nass. He told him to keep quiet but to let him know privately what they said among themselves. The boy disliked this job and told him so, but was made to do it anyway. After being worsted in several deals the uncle knew that he had been lied to, and he beat the boy. This didn’t make any difference and he went on lying.

The situation was difficult. He could not go on beating the boy, for he was growing too fast. (His father was a Fireweed and Fireweeds grow fast. Fireweeds grow from forest fires; they are phoenix; their ancestress married a Sky Being, and they have a natural inclination towards the sky.) On the other hand he couldn’t keep a defiant boy in his house. Also he couldn’t send him home. And it would dent his authority to ditch him on another relative.

He ditched him on Brother Eustace.

Brother Eustace was at that time the head of a mission school at Prince Rupert. He acquired boys mainly from the major tribes and would not often take a Gitksan. Discipline at the school was strict and the boys were strapped if found speaking a tribal language. The aim was to detach them from tribalism; and it was hoped to achieve it more thoroughly when the school moved that year (for reasons of a financial trust) to Vancouver.

For the uncle the idea of having his nephew as far away as Vancouver was like a light in the darkness. But there were
difficulties. Because of the removal no new entries were being accepted to the school. As a Raven he laid his plans with care. He went to see Brother Eustace. He asked him for religious tracts he could give to some weak people he had observed sliding into wickedness.

Brother Eustace was touched by his concern and gave him the tracts. The uncle thanked him, at the same time expressing the thanks of all progressive Indians for the mission’s work in educating their young and removing them from temptation – in particular the removal to Vancouver, and all the extra work it would entail.

Brother Eustace sighed, and said it was a cross that had to be borne.

The uncle sighed too, and he said the hardest job would be to stop the lads talking their native language. They would do it even more, far from home and feeling nervous. And Vancouver would be particularly dangerous.

Why would it be? Brother Eustace asked him. Why would Vancouver be dangerous?

Not Vancouver itself, the uncle said. Vancouver as a large sinful city. And not the language itself, but the foolish myths
embodied
in the language; which as a matter of fact did not sound foolish in the language. He explained this. He said that in K’san the Bible stories sounded even stranger than tribal stories. It was only in English and as a committed churchgoer himself that he had been able to distinguish the truth of Bible stories from the foolishness of tribal ones. For instance, in English Jesus sounded wonderful, but in K’san he sounded crazy. The boys had to be discouraged from even thinking in native languages.

Brother Eustace frowned and said the boys already were punished if caught speaking these languages.

And a good thing too, the uncle said. But first you had to catch them. And to know what they were saying – not easy in a Vancouver dormitory. For a Nass would not tell on a Nass, nor a Tsimshean on a Tsimshean, and others could not understand their languages. He knew these devious people,
and in dealing with them himself he had lately taken the precaution … In fact it would be a very good idea if – But no. No, it wouldn’t. It would be a bad idea, and too great a sacrifice for him.

Brother Eustace looked at him closely.

What sacrifice? he said.

Falteringly, the uncle explained. He happened to have a nephew who understood both Tsimshean and Nisqa as easily as K’san. The boy was naturally gifted in that way, and a wonderful help to him. He accurately reported what these tricky people said among themselves, and had saved him much time and money. Just at that moment it had struck him that the clever boy would be as great a boon to the mission as to himself. But no. He couldn’t give him up. All the same … He didn’t want to stand between the mission and such a useful aid. Or between the boy and a proper education. But still –

But still, Brother Eustace said, he would see this boy.

A week later Jean-Baptiste Porteur joined the mission school (and lost his fancy name for the no-nonsense Johnny Porter) and ten weeks afterwards accompanied it to Vancouver. Six months later, despite high promise as a pupil, he left, by way of a window, sick of being strapped for not telling on his schoolmates.

He found himself in a quandary. He couldn’t go back to his uncle, and he couldn’t go home. He went to the harbour and hung about there, washing up in diners and bars, before coming to the conclusion that the only thing for him was to get on a ship. Shortly afterwards, he found one that would take him and signed on. For the following three years, he sailed the world. There was regular traffic between Vancouver and Yokohama, and between Yokohama and everywhere else, so that for lengthy periods he did not see Vancouver again. But he was back in the port and walking in the street one day when a hand fell on his shoulder and he turned to find Brother Eustace.

‘Porter? It is Porter – surely!’

The last time he had seen the hand, a strap had been in it. Now it was being held out to him to shake.

‘Hi, Brother,’ he said, and shook it. He now towered over Brother Eustace.

‘I am delighted to see you, Porter! I can’t tell you how delighted I am! Whatever happened to you, my boy?’

Soon afterwards, over a meal, he was telling Brother Eustace what had happened to him. And Brother Eustace in turn was telling him the reason for his special delight. It was providential, he said. It was an act of God. Porter had been the most promising boy in the school, and here, today this very morning, he had been asked by the government to forward the names of promising Indian boys for special treatment, for an assured life of leadership and prominence, for higher education. He had been racking his brains, and here – Porter!

School, Porter thought, no.

I can’t go back to school, he told Brother Eustace.

My dear boy, it isn’t school! Not school! his old teacher said excitedly. You will need preparation, surely. Which I will be more than happy to undertake. The exam isn’t the normal one but an assessment of intelligence, ability. You’ll sail through it.

Well, Porter thought, he had sailed enough sea. He was now sick of the sea. Maybe this was worth a turn.

But he gave no answer then.

First he made a trip back to the Skeena river, which he had not seen for three years. The first thing he did there was to find his uncle and beat him up. He beat him thoroughly and methodically, without rancour – as any Raven would, simply repaying old injuries.

Then he visited his parents and told them his intentions, at which his mother, a well-known seer, went at once into a trance, exclaiming, ‘O Raven, Raven! You bring light to the world but will die in the dark. It will end in tears.’

‘Okay,’ Porter said.

He had often heard his mother pronouncing in this way, and common sense told him that people mainly did die in the dark and all things ended in tears.

Just two months later, on a date that happened to coincide
with his seventeenth birthday, he enrolled in the University of Victoria.

At Victoria the preferred course for the new intake of Indians was forestry studies. Forestry was a major industry of British Columbia, and one well suited to future native management. At the muscle end of the business, large numbers of Indians were engaged in it already.

Porter became engaged in it. The first required subject was botany, which he liked well enough. But after a few weeks he discovered biology, and decided to specialise in it. Switching studies so early was discouraged, but care was being taken not to disaffect the Indian students and his application was reluctantly approved. This was when his career took off. He learned with exceptional rapidity. He learned in all directions.

It took him no time to find out that although the meeting with Brother Eustace might have been an act of God, the reason for the delight was probably an Act of the US government.

The US government, in a settlement of claims with the Indians of Alaska, was planning a cash payment of half a billion dollars, plus a further half billion in royalties, plus 15 per cent of the territory of Alaska. This bounty was to be administered through Indian corporations.

The Canadian government, with similar problems ahead, was thinking on different lines. Rather than separate the Indians, and pay them, it was better to integrate them. Full partnership in the common weal was surely of higher value than dollars, or royalties, or title deeds to portions of Canada. To do the job successfully it was necessary to select the brainiest and immerse them in the value.

Porter appreciated the value, and knew why he was getting it, but for the time being he kept his head down in biology. Before he was twenty he took a first-class degree in it, and as the outstanding student of his year was urged to go at once for his doctorate.

Instead he dropped the subject and immediately began studying another, 2000 miles away, at McGill.

Although he was wayward, this was not a wayward action. There were good reasons for his choice. McGill was in Quebec, at the other side of the continent, but it had old connections with Victoria, which had indeed started life as a far-western affiliate of the older university.

But the main reason was Quebec itself, and Montreal. Ethnic issues were high on the agenda there – French separatism the principal one but with Indian questions also to the fore. These were the questions he planned to study.

In his last year at Victoria he had started numbering Canadian−Indian claims against the government. There were 550 of them, few properly documented, all poorly prepared. In the absence of a written language, oral traditions had to be relied on, and the Department of Indian Affairs did not rely on them.

Porter addressed himself to this. He broke the problem into two. In the first part he aimed to demonstrate the reliability of tribal records, and in the second to get the ones relating to claims admitted as evidence.

He began reading anthropology. He not only read it but famously added to it. (His
Amended Syllabary of Tsimshean
, unique as an undergraduate publication, won him a gold medal.)

‘Syllabaries’, in the absence of any developed writing among the Indians, had been recorded for several of the languages. These sound-dusters had been taken down by anthropologists, none of them Indian. Porter was the first Indian at the work, and he soon found that many of his predecessors had had a tin ear. The languages were exceedingly complex, and a misheard click or vowel frequently altered, or even reversed, the meaning of whole passages.

He followed up with other publications, and learned more languages – all for his main work: a comparative study of tribal legends, designed to show their line-by-line similarities. For as it happened there were many similarities.

As a child it had not struck him as strange that the stories of the Gitksan, the Nass and the Tsimshean should be so similar.
They were grown-up stories that everyone knew; why shouldn’t they be similar? But now it seemed strange. These tribes were almost unintelligible to each other. Yet their stories, which took hours or even days to recite, were identical almost to the smallest detail. Without writing, by word of mouth, they had been faultlessly transmitted from generation to generation over vast periods of time.

All this was useful evidence for the first part of his task, and he published it to acclaim. And before he was twenty-three had taken a First in anthropology also.

His energy at the time was prodigious, and his waywardness a byword. His supervisors found him impossible to control. In this period he became strongly politicised, and he also contracted a marriage – a sadly unfortunate one. And his movements were erratic. Before publication of his
Comparisons
he suddenly took off to Russia for seven months – this the result of a letter from an institute there commending his earlier work and enclosing syllabaries of some native Siberian languages. The translations struck him as unreliable and he set out to learn the languages himself.