Posted by Shamanka
on Sat 31 Oct 09, 9:26 AM to Shamanka's blog.
It was coming on Hallowe'en and the whole village was getting itself involved. The people had stacked driftwood in a hollow square on the beach until it was too tall for a man standing on another man's shoulders to add anything more, and then they all set about filling up the hollow centre with burnable junk, garbage, old newspapers, what ever was lying around that would burn. We kind of clean up the village every year this way. Every window had a scary black cat or a big orange pumpkin scotch-taped to it, ad the closer it got to being the end of the month, the more frantic the kids got in their search for costumes. Liniculla was driving us all crazy. First it was a pirate, but she decided her legs would get cold in the raggedy-bottom cut-off pants, then it was a Princess, but she changed her mind about that too. I was just about ready to tell her to go as a sack of spuds, and I had the sack to dump her in to too, when Granny put in her two-bits worth.
“A clown,” she suggested.
“Everybody goes as a clown!” Liniculla shot that idea down in a rush. “Going as a clown means you couldn't think of a real costume to wear.”
“Not a circus clown,” Granny corrected quietly,” An Indian clown. Like in the days before the invaders came.”
“We didn't have clowns did we?” Liniculla asked, already making herself comfortable at Granny's feet, waiting eagerly for another story.
“We had clowns,” Granny smiled and reached for the brush for Liniculla's long hair. “Not clowns like you see now, with red noses and baggy costumes. Our clowns wore all different kinds of stuff. Anything they felt like, they wore. And they didn't just come out once in a while to act silly and make people laugh, our clowns were with us all the time, as important to the village as the chief, or the shaman, or the dancers, or the poets.”
“A clown was like a newspaper, or a magazine, or one of those people who write an article to tell you if a book is worth botherin' with. They made comment on everythin', every day, all of the time. If a clown thought that what the tribe council was getting' ready to do was foolish, why the clown would just show up at the council and imitate every move one of the leaders made. Only the clown would imitate it in such a way every little wart on that person would show, every hole in their idea would suddenly look real big.”
“It was like if you were real vain about your clothes, all of a sudden, the clown would be there walkin' right behind you all decked out in the most god-awful mess of stuff, but all of it lookin' somehow like what you were wearin'. Maybe you had a necklace you always wore and showed off, well the clown would have bits of bark and twigs, and feathers and dog shit, and old broken clam shells, and anything else you can think of, and it'd all be made up in a necklace lie yours. And if you walked a certain way because you were vain, the clown would walk the way you did. Where you had on your best clothes, the clown would be in rags and tatters and old bits of fern and you-name-it, and the clowns hair would look like a birds nest, all mud and sticks an crap, and everywhere you went, the clown would go. Everythin' you did, the clown did. And nobody would ever dare blow up at the clown! If you did that, well you were just totally shamed. A clown didn't do what a clown did to hurt you or make fun of you or be mean, it was to show you what you looked like to other people, let you see for yourself just how foolish it is to get yourself all tied in knots over some clothes and stuff instead of what counts, like bein' nice to people, and being lovin', and trying to fit in with the people you live with.
“Or if you thought every word you spoke was gospel, the clown would just stroll along behind you babblin' away like a simple mind or a baby. Every up and down of your voice, the clowns voice would go up and down until you finally Heard what an ass you were bein'. Or maybe you had a bad temper and yelled a lot when you got mad, or hadn't learned any self control or somethin' like that. Well the clowns would just have fits. Every time you turned around there'd be the clown bashing away with a stick on the sand or kickin' like a fool at a big rock, or yellin' insults at the gulls, and just generally lookin' real stupid.”
“We needed our clowns, and we used'em to help us all learn the best ways to get along with each other. Bein' an individual is real good, but sometimes we're so busy bein' individuals we forget we gotta live with a lot of other people who all got the right to be individuals too, and the clowns could show us if we were getting' a bit pushy, or startin' to take ourselves too serious. Wasn't nothin' sacred to a clown. Sometimes a clown would find another clown taggin' along behind, imitatin',and then the first one knew that maybe somethin' was gettin' out offhand, and maybe the clown was being mean or using her position as a clown to push people around and sharpen her own axe for her own reasons.”
“But mostly the clowns were very serious about what they did. And the most famous clown was a woman who wasn't even one of us. She lived on the other side of the island with the Salish people. Or maybe it was the Cowichan, I guess I'm not too clear about that. Must be getting' old. Anyway, this woman had been a clown all her life. |Ever since she was a girl she'd been able to imitate people, how they walked, how they talked, so she was trained to do it properly for the right reasons, not just to get attention.”
“The Christian people were dividin' up the island. This bunch got this part and another bunch go another part, and they built their churches and set about getting' us into them. There's people used to say that it used to be the Indians had the land and the white man had the Bible, now the Indians got the Bible and the white man's got the land, and when you look at it, that's not far from wrong, except lots of us don't even got the Bible. Anyway, they built this stone church on a hill, with a cross on top of it pointin' up at the sky, and the preacher, he was getting' people to come by givin' out little pictures and mirrors and such things we didn't have. Might not seem like much now, a mirror, but they were as rare as diamonds, and it's bein' rare makes a thing worth a lot. Like roses are worth more than dandelions because there aren't as many of them, but they are both flowers.”
“So the people started goin' to this church, and pretty soon it was just like the same old story. They started getting' told what to do, and what to wear, and how to live, and this particular preacher, he was big on what they ought to wear. He didn't want men wearing kilts, he wanted 'em wearing pants, an he didn't want the women in anythin' but long dresses that covered them completely. And he kept tellin' everyone to learn to live like the white man, dress like the white man.”
“Well, one Sunday didn't the clown show up. She was wearin' a big black hat, just like a white man, and a black jacket, just like a white man, an old rundown shoes some white man had thrown away, and nothin' else.”
Liniculla giggled and her eyes sparkled, and Granny just kept brushing that long hair and telling her story.
“Well the white preacher, he just about had a fit! Here's this woman more naked than not, walkin' in to his church, and what's worse, the people in the church are all lookin' at her real respectful, not mockin' her or laughin' or coverin' their eyes so they wouldn't see her nakedness. And she moved to the very front and sat there and waited for the church service to start.”
“Well that preacher, he ranted and raved about nakedness, and naked women, and sin, and havin' respect for God, and then he came down from that pulpit and he grabbed a hold of that clown to throw her out on her bum.”
“The people just about ripped him apart. You don't put violent hands on a clown! But the clown, she stopped them from hurtin' him, and then she went up to the front where he'd been, and she spoke to the people in their won language. She said we were all brothers and sisters because we all have Copper Woman as our first mother, and were all descended from the four couples who left after the flood. And she said different people had different ways of doin' things, and that didn't mean that any one way was Right or any other way was Wrong, it just meant all ways were different. And she said we ought to think how would we feel if there were only a few brown faces and lots of white ones, because maybe the preacher felt that way about bein' almost alone with us. And she said just because he ha done a forbidden thing and got violent with a clown didn't mean we ought to get just as mixed up and do a forbidden thing like get violent with a religious man. And she said we all had to find our own way in the world, we had to find what was true, and what Meant somethin'. She said there was more than one kind of mirror. There was the white man's mirror that you get if you went to church, but there was the mirror you get in the eyes of the people you loved, and what it meant to them when you listened to someone who was so mixed up they'd do the forbidden things.”
“And then she walked out of the church and all the people got up and walked out behind her and left the preacher alone. And that church is still there today and it's still empty.”
“Tell me more Liniculla begged.”
“Not without a cup of tea for my windpipe, I won't,” Granny teased, and Liniculla ran to put the kettle on the boil. She rinsed out the teapot and warmed it up, and measured the tea carefully, then got the cups and saucers, sugar and milk, and had everything all ready by the time the water was bubbling. Granny just sat watching her, smiling to herself, and it made me think of being 10 myself and wanting to help, and how she always let me, even if it made more work for her. And after she'd had a cup of tea and was sipping a second, Granny started rocking slowly, and soon she was in to a second clown story.
“The people were goin' down to Victoria a lot and tradin' with Hudson bay for things they couldn't get anywhere else. They'd kill seal and otter, more than ever before so they'd be able to trade the skins, and even though everyone knew the animals wouldn't be able to survive, nobody seemed to be willin' to be the first not to do it. It was like they figured it was gonna happen anyway, they might as well get some out of it for themselves. And not all of the stuff they traded for was worth anythin'. You make a long trip with a big bundle of furs, and you don't feel like bringin' it all home just because the Hudson Bay man doesn't want to trade for somethin' you want. More and more the company was just handing out junk, and private traders were steppin' in with a few blue beads and lot of rum, and it was all a real mess.”
“And the same clown woman, she took herself down to Victoria and she set up shop right next to Hudson Bay. Hudson Bay would give beads, so she had bits of busted shell. They'd give molasses, so she had wild honey. They'd give rum, so she had some old swamp water. And she just sat there. That's all she did, was just sit there. And the people goin' to Hudson Bay saw her, and saw the stuff she had to trade, and they knew what she was tellin' them. Some of 'em went inside and traded anyway, but some of them just turned around and went back home, and some of 'em even went over and traded with her, and she treated them all real serious, took their furs and gave 'em bits of shell and stuff, and they wore it same as they'da wore the beads.”
“After a while the Hudson Bay man came out to see why hardly anybody had come to trade and he saw her sittin' there and he just about blew up, took himself off to the Governor and complained about the clown woman. The Governor, he took himself outside and had a look and then told the Huson Bay man a thing or two, and from then on we got good tradin' stuff.”
“The clown woman, she went home, and she thought about what had happened, and she decided that maybe the Governor wasn't such an ass after all. He knew what se was sayin', all right. She decided maybe she could get him to listen about the rum trade. The Americans were sendin' of ships up here, wand they wouln't trade for nothin' but rum for furs. First they'd just put a small barrel of rum on the beach, free gratis, and then when the men were all in to the rum, why the Americans would come and trade, and the result of that was pretty awful.”
“The clown woman, she set off for Victoria again, and all the people knew she was gonna see the Governor and stop the rum trade. She didn't show up in Victoria, so the people went lookin' for her. Found her dead alongside her dugout , she'd been shot in the head.”
“Hadda been a white man done it. We would never do violence to a clown.”
Liniculla just stared at Granny for the longest time and even before she opened her mouth we knew that there'd be one little clown at Hallowe'en, all decked out in shells, and bark, and feathers, and bits of stuff, trickin'n'treatin' all over the village, giving us all a chance to see things as they could be.”
'Daughters of Copper Woman' Anne Cameron
Happy Samhain everyone
Bev
x
