Tom did not always have the name of Sayach’apis, nor need he keep it to the end of his days. He assumed it over thirty years ago on the occasion of his great potlatch, a puberty feast in honor of his now deceased oldest daughter. At that time he had the young man’s name of Nawe’ik, now borne by his oldest son, Douglas. It is a name belonging to the Nash’as’ath sept or tribal subdivision of the Ts’isha’ath, and was first dreamt by Tom’s maternal grandfather. It is thus a name of comparatively recent origin, nor does it possess that aura of noble association that attaches to Tom’s present name. Its exact meaning is unknown, but it is said to have been a command—“Come here!”—of a spirit whale, dreamt of by its first possessor. Tom assumed it at a potlatch he gave to his own tribe when he was not yet married. It was just about the time that the discovery of placer gold in the Frazer river was bringing a considerable influx of whites to British Columbia.
Before this, Tom was known as Kunnuh, a Nitinat young man’s name, “Wake up!”, which is again based on the dream of a spirit whale. The Nitinat Indians are a group of Nootka tribes that occupy the southwest coast of the island, and Tom’s claim to the name and to other Nitinat privileges comes to him through his paternal grandfather, himself a Nitinat Indian. The name originated with his grandfather’s father’s father’s father, who received it in a dream as he was training for “power” in whaling. It was assumed by Tom when he was about ten years of age, at a naming feast given the Ts’isha’ath Indians by his Nitinat grandfather. It displaced the boy’s name Ha’wihlkumuktli, “Having-chiefs-behind,” this time of true Ts’isha’ath origin and descending to Tom through his paternal grandmother’s father’s father, who again received the name in a dream from a spirit whale. This ancestor was having much success in whaling and, becoming exceedingly wealthy, was “leaving other chiefs behind him.” Tom was given the name at an ordinary feast by his paternal grandfather.
The earliest name that Tom remembers having is Tl’i’nitsawa, “Getting-whale-skin.” When the great chief Hohenikwop had his whale booty towed to shore, the little boys used to come to the beach for slices of whale skin, so he made up the name of “Getting-whale-skin” for his son. The right to use it was inherited by his oldest son, but was also passed on to the chief’s younger sister, who brought it as a dowry to the father of Tom’s paternal grandfather. Tom himself received the name on the occasion of a mourning potlatch given by his paternal grandfather in honor of his son, Tom’s father, who had died not long before. Before this, Tom had a child’s nickname, in other words, a name bestowed not out of the inherited stock of names claimed by his parents, but created on the spot for any chance reason whatever. Such nicknames have no ceremonial value, are not privileges, and are therefore not handed down as an inheritance or transferred as a dowry. Tom has forgotten what his nickname was.
At the very outset, in the mere consideration of what Tom has called himself at various times, we are introduced to the two great social forces that give atmosphere to Nootka life. The first of these is privilege, the right to something of value, practical or ceremonial. Such a privilege is called “topati” by the Indians, and one cannot penetrate very far into their life or beliefs without stumbling upon one topati after another. The second is the network of descent and kinship relation that determines the status of the North West Coast Indian, not merely as a tribesman once for all, but in reference to his claim to share in any activity of moment. The threads of the genealogical past are wound tightly about the North West Coastman; he is himself a traditional composite of social features that belong to diverse localities, and involve him in diverse kinship relations.
As far back, then, as he can remember, Tom has been steeped in an atmosphere of privilege, of rank, of conflicting claims to this or that coveted right. As far back as he can remember, he has heard remarks like this: “Old man Tootooch has no right to have such and such a particular Thunder-bird dance performed at his potlatches. His claim to it is not clear. In my grandfather’s days men were killed for less than that, and the head chief of the Ahous’ath tribe, who has the primary claim to the dance, would have called him sharply to order.” But he has also heard Tootooch vigorously support his claim with arguments, genealogical and other, that no one quite knows the right or wrong of. And as far back as he can remember, Tom has been accustomed to think of himself not merely as a Ts’isha’ath, though he is primarily that by residence and immediate descent, but as a participant in the traditions, in the social atmosphere, of several other Nootka tribes. He has always known where to look for his remoter kinsmen, dwelling in villages that are dotted here and there on a long coast line.
The first few years of Tom’s life were spent in a “cradle” of basketry, in which he was tightly swathed by sundry wrappings and braids of the soft, beaten inner bark of the cedar. Even now he has a vague recollection of looking out over the sea from the erect vantage of a cradling basket, looped behind his mother’s shoulders. He also thinks he remembers crying bitterly one time when left all by himself in the basket, stood up on end against the butt of a willow tree, while his mother and four or five other women had strayed off to dig for edible clover roots with their hard, pointed digging-sticks.
During the cradling period, Tom was having his head, or rather his forehead, gradually flattened by means of cedar-bark pads, and the upper and lower parts of his legs were bandaged so as to allow the calves to bulge. The Indians believe that they do not like big foreheads and slim legs, nor do they approve of wide eyebrows, which are narrowed, if necessary, by plucking out some of the hairs. Later on in life Tom was less particular about his natural appearance, having been well “fixed” by his mother in infancy. Like the other men of his tribe, he has never bothered to pluck out the scanty growth of hair on his face. Some of the Indians of Tom’s acquaintance have tattooed themselves, generally on the breast, with designs referring to their hunting experiences, or to crest privileges—a quarter-moon or a sea lion or a pair of Thunder-birds,—but Tom has never bothered to do this. Aside from the head-flattening of infancy, Tom has never had any portion of his body mutilated, unless the perforation of his ears and the septum of his nose, for the attachment of ear and nose pendants of the bright rainbow-like abalone, strung by sinew threads, be considered a mutilation. These pendants, which he and other Indians have long discarded, were worn purely for ornament; they had no importance as ceremonial insignia.
In spite of the fact that neither razor nor tweezers have ever smoothed out the hairy surface of his face, Tom has not altogether neglected the care of his body. To prevent chapping, he has often rubbed himself with tallow and red paint, and in his younger days he was in the habit of keeping himself in good condition by a cold plunge, at daybreak, in river or sea. The vigorous rubbing down with hemlock branches which followed, until the skin all tingled red, helped to give tone to his body. He could not afford to miss the plunge and rub-down for more than two or three days at a time, if only because to have done so would have brought upon him the contempt and derision of his comrades. No aspiring young hunter of the seal and the sea lion could allow himself to be called a woman. In the course of his long life Tom has painted his face in a great variety of ways, whether for festive occasions, or in the private quest of supernatural power in some secluded spot in the woods. Some of these face paints—and there are hundreds of them in use among the Nootka—are geometrical patterns, others are emblematic of supernatural beings and animals. Many of them, like the songs and dances with which they are associated, are looked upon as valuable privileges.
It is long since Tom has worn or seen worn native costume—what little there was of it—but he distinctly remembers the blankets and cedar-bark garments that his people wore when he was a boy and, indeed, well on into his days of manhood. The heavy rains of the Coast, and the constant necessity of splashing in and out of the canoes along the beach, made tight-fitting garments and cumbrous foot- and leg-wear undesirable. The Nootka Indians wore no clinging shirts or leggings or moccasins. They are a barefoot and a bare-legged people. Those of the men who could afford more than a breechclout wore a blanket robe loosely thrown about the body, either a hide—of bear or the far more valuable sea otter—or a woven blanket, whether of the inner bark strands of the “yellow cedar” or the long, fleecy hair of the native dogs. The women wore cedar-bark “petticoats,” which are nothing but loosely fitting girdles, fringed with long tassels of cedar bark. In rainy weather, they also wore woven hats of cedar-bark strands or split root fibers, round topped and cone-like. When the weather was thick and heavy with rain—and this happens often enough in the winter—both men and women wore raincapes of cedar-bark or rush matting. The children ran about completely naked.
The food that Tom was accustomed to in his early days did not differ materially from his present fare. It was then, and is now, chiefly fish—boiled, steam-baked, spit-roasted, or smoked. In all his early haunts, in the houses and along the beach, everywhere he was immersed in grateful, fishy odors. From the earliest time that he can remember anything at all, he has been daily confronted by some aspect of the life of a fishing people, whether it be the catching of salmon trout by the boys with their two-barbed fish spears; or the spearing or trolling or netting of salmon by the older men; or the getting in the sea of herrings with herring rakes, of halibut with the peculiar, gracefully bent halibut hooks that every Indian even now has kicking around in his box of odds and ends, of cod with twirling decoys and spears that have two prongs of unequal length—“older” and “younger”; or the hanging up of salmon in rows to dry in the smoke houses, so that this all-important fish may still contribute his share of the food supply, long after the last salmon of the late fall has ceased to run; or the splitting up of the salmon by the women as a first preliminary to cooking; or any one of the hundreds of other scenes that make of a fisher folk a fish-handling and a fish-eating people.