Shaman Pass (15 page)

“It was the same way if a woman was having a baby. She couldn’t be around other people. She had to go out in a hut or snowhouse by herself and have the baby all alone. No one was allowed to help or go around her for a few days. If she had a hard time, maybe she or the baby would die.

“Some taboos, maybe they were just to have fun with your kids. Like if the northern lights were out, you couldn’t whistle or they would come down and cut off your head, that was one taboo. But even today, a lot of old people still won’t whistle if the northern lights are out.

“A lot of other taboos had to do with food. Like how you couldn’t cut caribou skin during fishing season or you would die. Or if you ate beluga whale the same time you ate berries or anything else from the ground, you would die. Or during the dark of the moon, you had to put ashes on your food, or you would die unless you got an
angatquq
to help you.”

“The people let the
angatquqs
do this?” Nathan asked. “They believed what the
angatquqs
said?

“The people in those days never really believed anything. They just had fear. Their whole life was based on fear. They never had anybody to teach them any different till Natchiq came along.”

There was a tap at the door and everyone paused. The aide returned, now bearing a tiny paper cup with a tablet in it. “Time for his blood-pressure medicine,” she said.

She spoke to Jacob in Inupiaq, and he obediently downed the tablet, chasing it with the last of his tea. He raised the teacup and spoke to her, and she lifted her eyebrows and took it away with her.

Jacob noticed the pill cup in his hand and gave it to Lucy, who dropped it into the waste can beside his bed. Then he looked at Nathan and began speaking.

“Pretty soon, word started to spread about Natchiq, because everywhere he went, he would talk about his source of intelligence and he would act different from other people. When he put up his tent, he would put down willow branches for his bed, instead of spreading his furs on the ground. And he took baths and kept himself clean, like we do now, which people never did in those days.

“And always he carried a long pole with him, and he would put it up outside his tent wherever he camped. Every seventh day, he would put a strip of sealskin on top of that pole, and he wouldn’t do any work. He would just play a drum and look like he was thinking, maybe in a trance or something.

“People laughed at him when he did that. They would say, ‘You’re just lazy, that’s why you don’t work.’ And Natchiq would say he was only doing what his father in the sky told him.

“Then they would ask, ‘What did he tell you?’ and that’s when Natchiq would start to talk against the taboos. He would tell the people they didn’t have to live in fear, and he would break all the taboos.

“Like the taboo about a young girl having to live alone when she first became a woman, he broke that taboo. He came to this camp up on the Katonak River where there were people living, and there was a young girl off in a sod house by herself. He went there and he drank from the water bucket in front of her house, and everybody thought he would die. But the next morning, he was alive like anyone, and people started to wonder about the taboo. When he got down to Chukchi, he did the same thing again. And he told the people that the old taboo about women having their babies all alone was wrong too, and pretty soon it would go away like all the other taboos.

“He kept breaking all kinds of taboos. When he came down to Chukchi, he went across to that place Tatuliq where everybody hunts beluga. Everybody was afraid to eat beluga at the same time as berries or any other food that came from the ground because of the taboo. So Natchiq, he went and picked some wild rhubarb and cooked it in his tent. While it was cooking, he went along the beach asking people for a piece of beluga blubber to eat with the rhubarb. People were so scared by this, a lot of them went in their tents and wouldn’t even talk to him. But finally someone gave him some blubber and he took it back to his tent and ate it with his rhubarb and nothing happened. Never got sick; the next day he was healthy and strong as any of them. After that, a lot of people started eating beluga with any other food, just like we do now.

“Any other taboo, he would break it whenever he could and tell people they didn’t have to be afraid. He said, ‘If we don’t believe in the taboos, then they don’t have any power over us.’”

Jacob stopped talking. Lucy queried him in Inupiaq, but he waved her off and motioned Pauline over. He spoke into her ear in Inupiaq and she responded, “
Arigaa
.”

Then she eased him off the bed and helped him hobble into the bathroom.

Nathan and Lucy watched this without a word.

Finally, Lucy broke the silence. “Aren’t they beautiful together? I just hope—” Apparently having thought better of whatever was to come next, she kept it to herself, and neither of them said anything more until Jacob was back on his bed.

He spoke in Inupiaq to Lucy, who turned and looked at Nathan. “He says where was he before he went to the bathroom?”

“He was talking about how Natchiq broke all the taboos.”

Lucy translated this. Jacob lifted his eyebrows and said, “Ah-ha.”

“BESIDES BREAKING the taboos, Natchiq always made prophecies, too. He said a new kind of people, white people, would come into the country and then everything would change for the Inupiat.”

“Nobody had heard of white people in those days?” Nathan asked.

“Maybe a few people had heard of white-man ships passing by the coast, or maybe when Siberian people came over to trade, maybe they talked about seeing white people, but there weren’t any around Chukchi and nobody here had ever seen any. This was right before all the whalers came into our country with their ships, I think.

“Anyway, Natchiq said everything would be different for the Eskimos when all the whites come. People would wear different clothes, eat different food. Some Eskimos would be made rich and some would be made poor.

“He predicted there would be thin pieces of birch bark that people could write on. He said boats powered by fire would ride in the sky. ‘This is what some of you will travel in someday,’ he told them, ‘a boat powered by fire.’

“And he said there would be boats that could go up the river without anybody poling or without people and dogs on the banks pulling them up by ropes
.

“A lot of people didn’t believe him. ‘That will never happen,’ they said. ‘You’re going crazy, that’s why you talk like this.’

“But Natchiq just said it was what his source of intelligence told him, and he kept doing whatever he wanted. Another thing he predicted was that the newcomers, the whites, would find something of great value to them up by where the Walker River runs into the Isignaq. A big city would grow up there, that was what he said, with lights that stretched to the mountains on both sides of the Isignaq.

“Later on, after Natchiq was gone and his predictions started coming true, like about all the white people coming into the country and the boats that could run by their own power, some of the Eskimos that still remembered him started to think he wasn’t crazy after all. They thought maybe he could be right about the whites finding something they want at Walker River, too. So they moved up there and started Walker Village, thinking they would get rich when the whites finally made their strike. Maybe they still think that, ah?”

Jacob looked Nathan’s way as Lucy translated this. Nathan gave the nod that seemed to be called for, and Jacob continued.

“Ah-hah. But the rest of what Natchiq said about Walker was not so good. He said that after it became a big city, there would be two winters together and no summer in between, with snow up to the treetops. Then, when breakup came, the flood would reach all the way to the shoulders of the mountains and a great big whale would surface on the river, right where Walker used to be. Then there would be a day that was split in half.”

“What did he mean by that?” Nathan asked. “The end of the world?”

“He never explained it. When people would ask him, he would just look sad and not say anything. Maybe he was sad because his father in the sky didn’t explain it to him, or maybe he did know what was coming next, but it was too sad to tell.”

There was another break as the aide returned with Jacob’s teacup, refilled. Then he continued.

“Of course when people started to listen to Natchiq about the taboos, the
angatquqs
got worried. They said, ‘Don’t believe anything Natchiq says—he’s crazy.’

“But Natchiq answered that he was more powerful than the
angatquqs
, because their power came from the earth but his power came from his father above.

“At that time there were lots of
angatquqs
around Chukchi and the biggest one was Saganiq. He and the other
angatquqs
tried to find some way to kill Natchiq. In those days,
angatquqs
could do what they call—”

Lucy interrupted the proceedings with an apologetic look at Nathan. “I don’t know how to translate what he’s saying—it’s a new word to me. I have to talk to Pauline.”

She turned to her grandmother, still perched on the foot of the bed and now sipping from Jacob’s teacup. Inupiaq flew back and forth between Jacob and the two women for a few moments, and then Pauline said, “He mean soul travel.”

Lucy nodded in recognition, smiling. Then she continued the translation.

“Those old
angatquqs
could do soul travel. Their spirits would leave their bodies and fly around, sometimes they would even run into each other and have big fights on these trips. At least, that’s what people thought, in those days.

“So Saganiq decided to use soul travel to find Natchiq’s soul and kill him. He went out flying and pretty soon he came to Natchiq. Natchiq was sitting on his chair and all around him was this bright glow. Saganiq tried to attack his soul, but the glow just got brighter and then Natchiq’s chair started to rise upward. Saganiq tried to attack again, but the glow got even brighter and Natchiq’s chair rose even more. Pretty soon, the glow was so bright that Saganiq couldn’t even look at it, and he knew he couldn’t kill Natchiq that way.

“When Saganiq come back to his body, there was Natchiq waiting, and he said, ‘The one of the earth has tricked you. He is weak, not strong. Only my father in the sky is strong.’

“But Saganiq wouldn’t give up. Him and two other
angatquqs
, they put a spell on some food to poison it and they gave it to Natchiq. But when Natchiq ate it, nothing happened. He just laughed and said, ‘Even the poison you make doesn’t hurt me. I eat it up. I could swallow you up if I wanted to.’

“Now Saganiq was really mad and he said, ‘I think something might block the passage if you tried.’ And he pulled out his
kikituq
, this amulet of a snowy owl that he always carried in his clothes, and he waved it in Natchiq’s face. Natchiq just laughed again and said, ‘I could swallow that, too.’ He tried to take it, but Saganiq put it back in his clothes and he walked away.

“Not long after that, Natchiq was out hunting one day, and he caught a baby snowy owl that got lost from its parents. He brought it back, made a cage for it out of willow branches, and he kept it that way. He tamed that owl and he named it Saganiq and whenever anybody would come around, he would show them that tame owl named Saganiq sitting in its cage. Until finally one day, Natchiq killed that owl and ate it, to show people that Saganiq and the old-time
angatquqs
didn’t have any power anymore.”

Nathan shivered, and interrupted despite himself. “He ate Saganiq’s
kikituq
?”

“Ah-hah, Natchiq cooked it and ate it and everybody thought he would die for sure that time. But he didn’t die, he stayed as strong as ever. And after that hardly anybody would listen to Saganiq or the other
angatquqs
. The people didn’t worry so much about taboos, either. Our people finally started to have a happier life. They did it themselves, even without the whites and their Christianity.

“Well, the
angatquqs
didn’t have their power anymore, and Natchiq started to think it was time to go north, to tell the people up there what his father in the sky said about the taboos and the
angatquqs
and what would come in the future. So one day when it was just starting to be spring, like now, Natchiq told the people he was going to what we call Barrow now, where there was also lots of
angatquqs,
then maybe Canada. Him and his wife, they took off up the trail and they never came back.”

“What became of them?” Nathan asked.

“I guess nobody ever found out for sure, or at least I never heard. Some people thought Natchiq made it through the mountains to Barrow, and then went to Canada. Some people thought Saganiq’s
kikituq
flew up there and killed Natchiq’s soul somewhere in the mountains, but maybe his wife made it back to Chukchi, only she was so weak by then she died, too. This was right about the time the
naluaqmiut
missionaries started to come in, and they told people not to talk about anything to do with
angatquqs
if they wanted to go to heaven. So everything after that kind of got lost from not being talked about, even though lots of people had memories of what happened with Natchiq before the missionaries came.”