Among the Nootka

John Jewitt despised everything about the Nootka: their clothing, their food, their ceremonies, their Gods . . . until Chief Maquina began swimming in a river at the waxing of the moon.

He entered the river and swam slowly in counter-clockwise circles, then he dove under, and upon surfacing, he floated motionless, as if dead. After leaving the river quietly, he scrubbed his body with nettles, a plant with burs on its leaves that stung and reddened the skin.

Next he dressed in a bearskin robe and a headband of cedar bark. After painting certain marks on his face, he entered the house, he was accompanied by YA-tintia-no, his wife. She tied a rope around his waist and held on to the other end. As the chief pulled her in circles, he said, "this is how Mah-hack will act." It was one of many scenes Jewitt witnessed that made no sense at all, at first.

The ceremony was repeated in December and twice more in the spring, when Maquina swam in the ocean and dragged his body over reefs covered with barnacles. His rowers scrubbed with nettles during the ceremonies and kept toughening themselves, until the waxing of the moon in April. At the chief's signal, four canoes were launched in a rush, and the entire village was drumming.

Soon Maquina's Boat was on the trail of a 40-ton gray whale that measured fifty feet in length. The fact that Nootka hunted whale - and had been hunting whale for 2,000 years without the use of metal products - hit Jewitt like no other event in his captivity. He could not believe that they dared to do it. He could not understand how they hoped to succeed. He wondered what the first hunt was like thousands of years ago, and how many Nootka had been killed over the years. He had finally found adventure and the wonders of the unknown.

The hunt began miles from the village and often in rough seas. As the lead canoe gained on the whale, other boats stayed in a line behind, so the animal couldn't see them when it surfaced for air. When the lead boat neared the animal's tale, the chief readied his harpoon, a ten-foot shaft of yew wood tipped with barbs made from antler. Because the harpoon wasn't thrown but was thrust into the whale, it was necessary to get within a few feet. And the whale had to be stuck while diving, or the chief's boat would be smashed by the thrashing. At just the right moment, when he was close enough and the whale was about to dive, his canoe sprinter from the back to the left side. Leaning over the prow as far as he dared, he struck the whale at a spot just behind the flipper.

The nest two minutes was the most dangerous time for hunters. After striking the whale, the chief dropped beneath the prow, rower swung the canoe to the left, and six hundred feet of cedar rope started zinging out of the boat. The rowers on the left watched for tangles in the coils of rope on the bottom of the boat. The rowers on the right ducked to avoid being knocked overboard by the rope. Bouncing and rolling from the wake of the whale, the canoe was hit with sheets of water, until the boat was behind and was being towed across the ocean.