"Tsolo (A Novel)"

[Mike Cleven]

At 03:01 PM 7/25/99 -0700, David Robertson wrote:
>...by Mary Lake, published by the Hobson Book Press, New York, New York,
>1946.  I couldn't resist buying this romantic, not very good book at the
>used-book store today.  On page 19:
>
>
>"Then they packed their cayuses and departed to the hills where they
>gathered gallons and gallons of huckleberries...
>
>"As they traveled along two or three miles down the mountain they passed a
>log house...Gertrude, the eldest, ran into the house exclaiming, 'Mother,
>I saw a prospector and a handsome dark man riding along behind the Indians
>to the Huckleberry Mountains...the handsome man said, "Klautawa."  I guess
>he must have thought me an Indian.'
>
>"'Oh no!  I think not,' the mother answered.  'But he is the new
>prospector I heard of the other day.  He has probably learned that much of
>the Indian language and is proud of it.  It means either how do you do or
>goodbye.'"
>
>...There are other bits of Chinook Jargon in the book, most of them more
>somewhat more accurate than this one!

It would be fun to anthropologically deconstruct it, especially if we could
take it as a genuine chunk of historical diary instead of a dime novel (if
that's what it is).  If this is the historical Northwest, say mid-19th
Century, then the good possibility exists that the "handsome dark man" was
one of the many "tlale men" who were prominent among the earliest pioneers
and workers in what became the colonies and the Oregon Territory.  In this
context, the woman's context might have been racist in suggesting that a
"dark man" could have no knowledge of "the Indian language" (the Jargon) if
he was a new prospector, and could only have known that one word.  In
truth, black people were much in evidence in the Northwest from the
earliest times of the mysterious ship "Venus" and its crew of "negroes of
Lolo".  Throughout BC native mortuary and totem art depicts the presence of
blacks, particularly West Indians (mostly freedmen), who evidently
intermarried with or at least lived among the native peoples of various
places.  I remember at least five depictions of native burial grounds in
the Fraser Canyon showing such figures, one bigger than all other figures
and polka-dot pantalooned and kerchief, given a place of honour in the
burial shed.  The same is true throughout the Coast and even up into the
Skeena.  Blacks were also typically part of fur company fort operations, at
least HBC and maybe NWC if not the Astoria Company, and many prominent
old-timers in the British-run Northwest including (as noted before) Gov.
James Douglas (who took a native wife).  One obscure latter-day
interpretation of the Haida myth of Raven posits an escaped "blackbird"
slave ship that crashed on Naikoon spit (possibly the Venus, but that would
put the shipwreck in the 1790s), where 'Raven awoke from his shell'
(heretical, I know, but interesting) and brought the crafts of (among other
things) metal working and music (? I'm not saying this is valid Haida myth,
only to the account of the interpretation that I remember); this is
supposedly backed up by the presence among the Haida of some rare.

The first police in British Columbia were West Indian regulars brought in,
I think when the Island Colony was founded in 1843.  They were pushed aside
quietly during the Gold Rush of 1858 as the American miners who dominated
the Colony would not submit to blacks in uniform, British freemen or not
(Southerners were in abundance), and their role taken by the armed builders
of the Royal Engineers and a new system of posses (in the Interior) and
militias (on the Coast).  A fairly unknown bit of BC history is that among
the possibly thousands of victims of the Fraser Canyon War (maybe only
hundreds; no one's sure what the pre-War population of the Canyon was)
included many of the Gold Rush's many black miners - West Indian and
American; from the grave burials and local memory, it seems that the blacks
of the day had already mingled with the native peoples and would rather
live among them than in the white camps (given the race politics of the
day, it's easy to see why).  People more familiar with published BC
histories could readily question that there were that many casualties, or
that the Fraser Canyon War was all that bad; the problem is that no one
really knows, since no clear record of the settlement and population of the
canyon by either miners or natives really exists; only that the Americans
predominated among the miners and went on a rampage to rid the Canyon of
its natives and other "undesirables" before the British authorities could
get to Yale and get the Yanks to apologize and say they wouldn't do it
again.  This wasn't the same, I believe, as the so-called "Ned Turner's
War", which describes an armed posse foray into the Canyon from the South;
the Fraser Canyon War seems to have involved Lillooet and Spences Bridge as
well as the Yale-Boston Bar area; little is know about it, although there
is a small display at the historical museum in New Westminster (the old
Mainland Colony capital); an interesting area for study if there were
sufficient documentation......

One other black-history item; one of the warriors on the Chilcotin side in
1864, who shared the gallows with Klatsassine, was named "Tlell"; I don't
know if this is a Jargon name or if it has a Tsh'ilqotin meaning; maybe
Terry knows.  Even if it was a Jargon name, it could be a representation or
tribute something like the blacks on totem poles or among the burial
figures rather than a reference to the warrior's identity or ancestry.  I
know at one of the Seton Portage blockades of the BCR a few years ago, the
chief of the fountains (Tmicws, aka Roger Adolph) painted his face black as
an emblem of resolve and courage; but this too could be an inherited legacy
from an old friend of the family or even perhaps an ancestor.

Somewhere I think someone wrote a book on the history of blacks within the
HBC.  Terry?  Barbara?

Gotta pack for New York; write y'all from there; hope none of my tangential
history has offended....  Don't know if I can make it to the workshop now;
work's getting busy.  Klonas; nika tly.

Also, gallons and gallons of huckleberries is hilarious.  I was in the
woods today and had a few.  It would take days for a few kids to get
"gallons and gallons".  Blackberries or salmonberries maybe....