Part I: The Gathering Storm (1809-1810)
Chapter 4: The Bear
The rain rested long enough for the women to gather fern roots from the forest in the warmth of the sun. A sliver of light broke through the clouds, illuminating the forest into shades of brilliant emerald and warm cedar brown and ochre. It was its own living cathedral, the forest larder of the Quileute.
The leaves of the ferns were just beginning to exchange their summer green for their dry, winter brown, but the roots still lived and were good to eat. Anna kept her digging stick in hand and carefully harvested the tubers from the damp soil. She placed the tuber in her backpack and followed after the other women. They sang a song together as they harvested. A few chanted a prayer for their guardian spirits to grant them success in their efforts to foraging. Children meandered through the group, gathering plants of their own, along with sticks and rocks and insects. They joined together in their own songs along with those of their mothers.
Anna understood bits of words and phrases now. After living with the Quileute for weeks, she could at least understand how to greet the other inhabitants of the longhouse in the morning and the terms used for basic foods. She understood when she was being called and when she was told to go and fetch firewood or clams or baskets of water.
But food in the community was plentiful and the work was no more difficult than her life on the Russian farm or during her years at the outpost on Kodiak. The winter along the Pacific Coast was milder than the dark, frigid days of her Russian youth, though the rain proved itself indomitable. Day and night, the constant drizzle kept the forest resolutely damp and she felt as though her hair and feet were never fully dry. In Russia and on Kodiak Island, the darkness of winter fell upon the lands like an impenetrable curtain, slowly squeezing out the daylight into a canopy of unending stars and lights and snow. Here, the entire world was bathed in the fluctuating tones of soggy grey forest.
The brief respite from the rain evaporated as quickly as water from a boiling pot and a thick, dark blanket of clouds rolled over the forest canopy. The women murmured to themselves, gathered the children back to them, and turned to return to the beach. They did not make it before the sudden thunderstorm broke overhead, shaking the trunks of the trees and the earth beneath their feet with the peals of thunder. Then the torrential downpour caught them.
The Quileute women, well-accustomed to travelling bare-footed in the rain, continued on towards their destination as if nothing had changed. Anna, however, slipped and fell in the mud again and again. The others gained more and more distance ahead of her until she could not hear their voices through the warring sounds of river rapids and raindrops.
She slipped over a mossy rock and dropped her basket. By the time she regathered all her fern tubers, she realized she would only be able to find the others by following their footsteps through the forest. She swung her basket over her back and gingerly made her way through the undergrowth. Callouses had slowly emerged on her feet to protect her from the many sticks and thorns and pine needles, but in so much rain, her callouses soaked through and gave her little protection from the elements and she wished, not for the first time, for a sturdy pair of boots.
The thunderstorm tired itself out almost as suddenly as it had begun. Yet Anna knew she was now lost. The footsteps she had been following evaporated in a grassy meadow. She began to circle the edges of the meadow, seeking for where the footsteps would resume, when a sound behind her made her heart leap out of her chest like a startled bullfrog.
It was a deep, reverberating growl.
The thud, thud, thud of heavy feet on grass followed the disturbance. Closer and closer behind her, the footsteps sounded.
Anna swung around to see a bear. A ginormous brown, grizzly bear stood not a house-length away. Her sudden movement startled him and the creature stood on his hind legs, overshadowing her with his massive girth.
She had not survived a shipwreck and captivity to be killed by a bear. So, as the bear opened its jaws to growl at her again, Anna did the same. She growled right back with all her strength. Then she pulled her basket of tubers into her arms and began to throw the tubers at the bear, shouting at the bear with each throw. One after another, she threw the roots and they met their mark and fell with a muffled thwak into the grass. The bear, confused by the onslaught, fell back on his haunches, turned, and trundled back into the forest without a backward glance at Anna or her tubers.
She heaved a sigh of relief and collapsed back against the comforting bark of a tree. She placed her hand against her hammering heart and tried to catch her breath. Before she could, the sound of laughter made her startle again. She jumped and strained to find the source of the noise. There, not a stone's throw from where she stood, a man was nearly doubled over in amusement. In his hands, he held a bow and a loosely notched arrow.
She had not escaped from a bear only to come to harm at the point of an arrow. She threw her shoulders back and pulled herself up to her full height. Still armed with her tuber she wound up to throw it, but then she realized his bow was pointed in the direction of the bear and not her. The man, understanding what she was trying to do, dropped his bow to the ground and pointed at her tuber, slapping the sides of his legs in another bout of raucous laughter. She grumbled a Russian curse under her breath. She stayed motionless, tuber in hand, while she glanced around for nearby rocks she could use in case this man proved to be more of a threat than the bear.
The man wiped at his eyes and motioned to her, saying something she did not understand. She shook her head. He curled his hands to imitate claws and growled and pointed in the direction the bear had gone. Then he motioned back at her from her head to her feet. She followed his motion, still confused. She did manage to recognize one word.
"Good?" he said. She assumed he was inquiring after her well-being.
"Yes," she responded in her stilted, clumsy Quileute, hoping she understood his meaning.
He looked her over again and nodded. She realized, then, that he was one of the men from her own longhouse, a close enough relative of the chief that he was treated with high deference by the other members of the village. He was tall, towering over her by at least a foot, and his lean frame was populated by layers of muscles. Parallel stripes were tattooed on his arms and the backs of his legs. He wore only one deerskin hide, tied at his shoulder. His long, black hair was piled on top of his head, which was slightly elongated as if part of the ascent up a mountain. The intimidation roused by his appearance was ameliorated by the brilliant smile, which did not leave his face.
He knelt to help her gather the projectile tubers back into her basket. As he did, he began to chuckle quietly. He held up a round tuber, feigned throwing it, and his laugh exploded with such fervor that she nearly startled again. Then he pointed threw his head back in the direction of the bear, growled, and mimicked her growl in a high-pitched voice.
When the tubers were returned to her basket, he took the basket from her and picked up his bow from the ground. He motioned for her to follow after him back to the beach. He easily found his way through the forest back to the familiar clearing where the collection of wooden houses stood sentry over the confluence of the river and the sea.
There, waiting for them, were the other members of her foraging party. A chorus of questions assaulted them when they were within hearing distance. The man gave the basket to the nearest woman so his hands were free to use for demonstrating his tale. While Anna could understand little of his words, she understood his actions enough to know he was relating to them the whole story, animatedly acting out both her part and the part of the bear. When he grabbed one of the tubers from the basket, growled, and threw it at some of the gathered children, they gasped and squealed in delight. Then he bent onto all fours, trundling off away from Anna as the bear at done.
With a motion of his hand and a sideways arch of his head, he presented Anna to his audience and said a phrase. He repeated the phrase, simplifying his grammar until she could understand.
"No name ho-kwat woman….Name 'Growls-at-Bears'."
Three of the children fell onto all fours, imitating the sounds of a bear and charging at the other children. The other children chased after them, delightedly squalling and throwing tubers at the "bears." They ran up and down the beach and between the longhouses until one of the mothers intervened and rescued the tubers. She sent the children back out to chase each other with fistfuls of sand and pebbles instead and brought the tubers into the house to be prepared for their evening meal.
Rambling groups of men and women returned to the longhouses after them, and Anna realized they had sent out search parties to find her when she failed to find her way back to the beach. She was not sure whether to be comforted or discomfited by that. It meant her odds of escaping were not good but it also meant her well-being was valuable enough not to let her stay lost in the forest. Each returning party was regaled with the story of her confrontation with the bear and each shared her discoverer's amusement.
Another woman took Anna into the longhouse. When she was proved free of injuries, she was sent directly to take a bath.
"Dirty mud, bear," she was told. "Go bathe."
Anna complied.
That night, after the family meal, the man with the whitest hair gathered the children for stories around the fire. His voice changed cadences as he shifted through the different characters. Raven and Bear and Deer and K'Wati, the Transformer, all had their own voices and the children laughed and clapped with glee as they welcomed each familiar character into the tale.
Anna was busily cleaning up their meal in a corner of the longhouse, listening to the children's happy chatter, when something hit her in the back. She dropped the basket of water from her hands in surprise. Familiar laughter only grew louder when she retrieved the offending object from the floor. She held up a fern tuber and turned to hear the man growl like a bear from his hiding place behind one of the support columns holding up the roof.
She let out an exasperated huff, dropped the tuber back where the others were kept, and returned to her work. She heard him scratching his fingernails against the wood and snorting like a bear and she bit back a chuckle. She slyly retrieved the tuber, peered over her shoulder, and hit the man directly in the back of the head.
He pretended to collapse onto the floor from injury, his dark eyes sparkly merrily from the shadows. His grin overflowed into his eyes and poured into the warmth of the longhouse.
She smiled back. It had been long since she last smiled – really smiled.
Oooooo
When the snows came, the Quileute spent more and more time within their longhouses and close to the beach. The entire tribe, now gathered for the winter in the longhouses at La Push, numbered nearly 300. Nets were mended, cedar bark was pounded and woven into clothes, and wood was carved into elaborate masks and painted boxes. They filled their nights with games and songs and stories. Visitors from the peoples of the north and south trickled through, joining in with competitions and celebrating the naming of babies, new marriages, and new adults. It was a merry time, despite the harsher weather outside.
Anna continued her work. She was the one to fetch firewood when the snow piled up outside and she was the one to tend to the smallest children so their mothers were free to socialize with their visitors. She was one of many slaves, but she stood out from the others.
She was used to being alone in a crowd of people. On Kodiak, there were only a handful of Russian women, but she rarely spoke with them. Her husband's love burned with a jealousy so fierce that if he heard tales of her spending time in another man's house, even if she was only visiting the wife, his anger overflowed into his fists and she wore his bruises for days.
"I love you too much to share you with any other," he told her one night. "I cannot bear to have you out of my sight or around any other men. You are mine and only mine."
He apologized profusely after and showered her with praises and promises of his undying devotion to her. She was grateful his professions of violent love outnumbered those of his violent anger and she did what she could to ensure she did not upset him.
Nikolai's love reminded her of a smith's forge - it burned fierce and bright and melted all within it into the shape he wished to mold them into. He had always taken care of her and made sure she was fed well, but his tempers and fits of jealous rage melted much of her initial hopes for a peaceful existence.
He did not approve of her spending time with the Aleut women either. He said it was because they would "corrupt" her with their "savage" ways.
"But Russian men marry them and raise families with them," Anna protested. "Surely they are amiable enough for me to be acquainted with."
He flew into another rage at that and swore that if he caught her with those women, she would be punished.
"You have me," he told her. "What else can you need, my little Rose?"
Later, she came to wonder if more than jealousy undergirded his aversion to her befriending the Aleut women. During their journey south from the coast of Alaska to Washington, surrounded by nineteen men and two other women, Nikolai still bristled any time she conversed with the Aleut women.
It was from below deck that Anna overheard one Aleut woman speak to her Russian husband of the status of their navigator's Aleut wife and children. Nikolai had never mentioned a prior family and, most likely, preferred her to remain ignorant of their existence. She did not mention it to her husband and he continued to glower and fume whenever another crew member glanced her way or she happened to wish someone other than him a "good morning."
Now, among the Quileute, she was similarly in a crowd of people and yet often alone. The wall of vastly different languages and customs kept her barricaded from understanding much of what went on around her. She was watched it all with as much curiosity as she was met with by the eyes of those around her. She felt herself the perpetual object of attention and scrutiny-so much so that it made her skin twitch on the back of her head and made her limbs clumsy with self-consciousness. It made her even more aware of her isolation.
Nikolai had told her tales of how dangerous and barbarous the natives of Russian America were. They were supposed to be fierce and blood-thirsty. It was true that they had been terrible and frightening at first and their attack on the crew of the Sv. Nikolai had been violent. However, in the warmth of the fire on a cool evening in the longhouse, surrounded by laughter and warm blankets and with full stomachs, they did not seem so very different from Russians. They raised families, worked for their food, protected their homes, and sought to live and live well. They sang and danced and laughed and wept. She could even appreciate the individual personalities as she grew more accustomed to life in the village.
At first, she thought the natives she met looked all the same. Yet, as she grew accustomed to their voices and faces and personalities, she realized she had been wrong. There were distinct variations and individual differences. She noticed that the chief's youngest wife refused to eat any kind of seaweed. She turned up her nose in disgust and the others teased her for it every time. The chief's eldest wife sang to herself in Makah whenever she wove baskets. A little boy named Good-Hunter sneezed every time it began to rain and the chief beggar of the village begged the most on the days visitors had come bearing gifts.
She continued to learn words until she understood that the warrior who witnessed her attack on the bear was named "Rolling-Thunder" and he was the chief's second son by his eldest wife. He took it upon himself to teach her new words, cackling with glee when she mispronounced a phrase or mixed up the complicated grammar. Then he instructed her again, with the aid of the children of the village, whose patience in language instruction was unrivaled.
She could easily stay as she was, but one fact of life remained unchanged. Her life was never hers to command. Her fate seemed to always be held in the hands of others. Landowners, kings, empresses, chiefs, and fur-trade barons set her adrift again and again on currents not of her making. Whether Russia or Quileute, she was rarely asked what fate she would set for herself, if given a choice.
It was not long before a bustle began to stir around the long houses, preparations for a great feast began to be made, and a large fleet of canoes arrived on their beach.
It was time for another change.
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