I Heard The Owl Call My Name

Mark is invited to perform a service at a potlatch (a ceremonial feast at which possessions are given away or destroyed) in a neighboring village and observes Keetah talking with her sister, who is visiting and is dressed like an outsider. After the ceremonial dances, Mark asks Jim if he can meet the fiancé of Keetah’s sister; Jim reports that he has left but will be in Kingcome the following day. Mark asks Jim about the potlatch tradition, and Jim explains that while it is true that some families would ruin themselves by spending all they had on ceremonial gifts, the tradition is about generosity, not social power. Jim reveals that at a potlatch in his honor, he danced the hamatsa, the ceremonial dance of the young man bewitched by the cannibal spirit, and he calls it “the greatest moment of [his] life” (71). When Mark and Jim return to Kingcome in the morning, they find the elders packing canoes in preparation for a trip, with Mrs. Hudson among them. Jim discovers that the white man Keetah’s sister plans to marry had gotten Gordon’s uncle drunk and convinced him to sell the family’s valuable ceremonial mask for 50 dollars. Consequently, Keetah and the elders of her family were leaving Kingcome in “shame and sadness” (72)to live in one of the nearby deserted villages. Before she boards the canoe, Mrs. Hudson addresses Mark: “What have you done to us? What has the white man done to our young?” (73). Mark, distressed, writes to the Bishop, who reassures him with an anecdote that recognizes the burden the situation places on Mark.

In February and March, the men can neither fish nor hunt. Mark realizes he is beginning to understand some Kwákwala. Jim visits Keetah and her family and supposes that the white man who tricked her family was working with a dealer who already knew about the mask. Mark does not believe Keetah’s sister knew of the plan and worries about her well-being. The óolachon (candlefish) season begins in late March, with accompanying rituals and a feast at which the elder T.P. tells a myth recounting a season where the óolachon did not come because the young people of the tribe didn’t care about the custom. An RCMP arrives and informs Mark that the fiancé of Keetah’s sister abandoned her, leading her to fall into prostitution and drug addiction. He says that she is dead, and Mark identifies her from a picture the RCMP shows him.

The fishing season begins in May, and in early June, Gordon’s mother dies giving birth to her sixth child. On her deathbed, she instructs Mark to help Gordon get an education. Mark and Marta prepare her body for burial, and on the way to the new burial ground, Mark reflects that the ugliness of death felt natural and “as unimportant as the fir needles which made the path soft beneath his feet” (85). Gordon expects he will have to return to Kingcome to care for his siblings, but Mark tells him to go back to school, and that he and the village would take care of the youngest children. Keetah’s family returns from their self-imposed exile and Chief Eddy tells Mark that the men of the village have offered to help him build a new vicarage.