Gathering the Bones, XXXI: Raven And The First Men

 

This morning I am thinking about Raven the trickster, creator and king. but I also travelled on the weekend and visited my world-travelling doctor brother and his wife, who in conversation chanced to mention how much better the Pacific Northwest art held at the British Museum is than that shown here in its homeland.

"After the great flood had at long last receded, Raven had gorged himself on the delicacies left by the receding water, so for once, perhaps the first time in his life, he wasn't hungry. but his other appetites, his curiosity and the unquenchable itch to meddle and provoke things, to play tricks on the world and its creatures, these remained unsatisfied.

Raven gazed up and down the beach. It was pretty, but lifeless. There was no one about to upset, or play tricks upon. Raven sighed. He crossed his wings behind him and strutted up and down the sand, his shiny head cocked, his sharp eyes and ears alert for any unusual sight or sound. The mountains and sea, the sky now ablaze with the sun by day and the moon and stars he had placed there, it was all pretty, but lifeless. Finally Raven cried out to the empty sky with a loud exasperated cry.

And before the echoes of his cry faded from the shore, he heard a muffled squeak. He looked up and down the beach for its source and saw nothing. He strutted back and and forth, once, twice, three times and still saw nothing. Then he spied a flash of white in the sand.

There, half buried in the sand was a giant clamshell. As his shadow fell upon it, he heard another muffled squeak. Peering down into the opening between the halves of the shell, he saw it was full of tiny creatures, cowering in fear at his shadow.

Raven was delighted. Here was a break in the monotony of the day. But how was he to get the creatures to come out of their shell and play with him? Nothing would happen as long as they stayed inside the giant clamshell.

They were not going to come out as long as they were so afraid of him. So Raven leaned over his head, close to the shell, and with all the cunning and skill of that smooth trickster's tongue, that had so often gotten him in and out of so many misadventures during his troubled and troublesome existence, he coaxed and cajoled and coerced the little creatures to come out and play in his wonderful shiny new world."

"Raven and the First Men" is a Haida creation myth, here truncated. The second image is a rattle, used in shaman and healing dances. The specific meaning belongs to the owner who commissioned it, but the general theme is the transfer of power, which is another way to understand the creation myth. Deprived of its context by the decision to sell it to an outsider, it remains an eerie symbol of the relationship between Raven and one man, no doubt privileged.  I would be stretching nonexistent wings in a ludicrous play at exegesis to go any further (Raven would approve!), but we can reasonably ask how it was made around here.

The Burke Museum's excellent historical collection includes Coast Salish pieces collected in 1792. Design and execution seem crude by comparison with the gorgeous raven rattle, although to be fair it is a full figure. An archaeologically recovered bone comb from Esquimalt in the heart of Coast Salish territory (it's a suburb of Victoria) dating to perhaps 500 CE shows the continuity of characteristic features of Coast Salish art in low relief execution. Not to be too crude or reductionist about it, but the artist hasn't done any more carpentry than is necessary. Plenty of stone tools have been recovered archaeologically, with some of the prettier ones being handed down as family heirlooms. Noty much mystery about what a sculptor's adze looked like! Per the collector, the one below was used by a Quinalt paramount known as Captain Mason, who used it for canoe-making. The sculpted figure is the spirit who helped carve the canoe, and who "was a helper and when they'd get tired, he'd help them keep going."

Traditionally, the difficulty of reconciling obviously iron-cut sculptures with their provenance has led to the theory that Northwest Pacific sculptors recovered iron from Japanese shipwrecks which floated to the coast. Such things did happen, and there is a pleasing synchronicity with the settlement of the Tohoku, the far northwest of Honshu, by Yamato people, which we associate, after an extended prehistory, with the expansion of Date clan during the lordship of Date Masamune (1567--1636). But perhaps we are piling up too many synchronicities. The core story, after all, is that when the traders arrived, the art was low relief, and as the Nineteenth Century wore on it exploded in elaboration and vibrancy with the availability of iron tools. 

It's something to think about when we reflect on the original coming of iron and the Sacred Spring. And when we have to deal with Raven, in all his sociopathic, greedy glory, bringing us into the world.