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Weena: Thomas McIlwraith among the Bella Coola

by Paula Wild ©

Pioneer anthropologist Thomas McIlwraith did more than observe--he participated--even when he shouldn't have. Published in The Beaver, Dec. 2004/Jan. 2005.

When anthropologist Thomas McIlwraith travelled to British Columbia's remote Central Coast to study the Nuxalkmc (formerly the Bella Coola Indians) in 1922, he had no idea that he would be breaking the law by participating in illegal ceremonies. Nonetheless, on more than one occasion, he wore a Supernatural Mosquito mask and darted around the Nuxalk Hall like a hungry insect.

"I'm supposed to keep up a steady buzz and carry a small stick in my mouth with which I occasionally rush one of the spectators," the twenty-two-year-old wrote his father. "But it's hard to see through the mask and I keep bumping into the wood heater. This job of mine is certainly a queer one!"

A few years later McIlwraith became the first full-time academic anthropologist in Canada at the University of Toronto and also the Keeper of the Ethnological Collections at the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology. Among other positions, he also served as Chairman of the Canadian Social Science Research Council, President of the Royal Canadian Institute and Chairman of the Advisory Board for the Protection of Archaeological and Historical Sites of Ontario. His two-volume book, The Bella Coola Indians, is the most comprehensive study of a Canadian Pacific Northwest culture to date and is used as a reference by many, including the Nuxalkmc themselves.

Born in 1899 in Hamilton, Ontario, McIlwraith studied at McGill University in Montreal before serving overseas in the King's Own Scottish Borders during World War I. After the war, he obtained a degree in anthropology at St. John's College, Cambridge, England. He was teaching there when he received a letter from Edward Sapir, the first director of the anthropology division of the Victoria Memorial Museum (today's Canadian Museum of Civilization) offering him a job studying the Bella Coola Indians.

It didn't take McIlwraith long to find a room in the tiny settlement of Bella Coola; the problem was finding subjects to interview. To begin with, it was early spring and most Nuxalkmc were away working at coastal canneries. Three older men--Joshua Moody, "Captain" Rueben Schooner and Jim Pollard--remained in the village and were willing to speak with McIlwraith but their English was limited and McIlwraith's knowledge of the Nuxalk language was nil.

Although young, McIlwraith was resourceful. He spent several weeks learning Chinook, a combination of First Nations' languages, English and French that was still spoken on the coast. But he soon discovered that while Chinook might be adequate for talking about fishing, hunting and trading, it left much to be desired when it came to discussing religion, philosophy or culture. So McIlwraith began learning the Nuxalk language.

McIlwraith practised the Cambridge style of anthropology where study of a native tribe invariably meant travel to a distant location where a researcher immersed themselves in a foreign culture and language, and, ideally, became a friend of their informants. The objective of these researchers, who usually made only one field trip during their study, was to thoroughly understand their subject, eventually presenting their findings as a cohesive whole. In the United States, anthropologists usually lived relatively close to their subjects so were able to make numerous short visits to the field where skilled interpreters were generally easy to find. As a rule, their reports focused on individual components of a culture.

In Bella Coola, once Moody, Schooner and Pollard realized that McIlwraith was genuinely interested in their traditions, they welcomed him as a confidant. "They resent the condensation with which most white men regard them so that contact with one who was friendly and sympathetic came as a pleasant surprise," McIlwraith noted in The Bella Coola Indians. And he was honoured when he heard a Nuxalk person refer to him as a "good white man." But Moody, Schooner and Pollard were jealous of his time. So, to keep the peace, the anthropologist employed humour and good-naturedly accepted practical jokes and a variety of affectionate and sometimes rude nicknames.

In The Bella Coola Indians, McIlwraith refers to Moody and Pollard as "two of the most intelligent men I have ever met" and describes Moody as "Not particularly practical, subject to fits of anger or moroseness, but with a meditative temperament which delights in seeking biblical parallels and synonyms for Bella Coola practices, he is the kind of man in which in other walks of life would have produced a professor of philosophy."

"Schooner perhaps came closet to the original, uncontaminated Bella Coola type," McIlwraith continued. "Heavy in build, coarse in humour and expression, he had a heart of gold and was a fine example of a native gentleman. He was glad to assist most patiently in recording ancient lore, being intensely proud of the traditions of his ancestors. A friendship developed from this, which is one of the writer's happiest moments. Often in the evenings, life in general was discussed, the war, the rush of progress in big cities, the quest for wealth, the spread of white civilization, and the problems raised by the contact of peoples. . . With sadness but without bitterness he used to speak of the approaching end of Bella Coola culture and his words brought home the tragedy which the spread of civilization brings to so many and the responsibility resting upon the white people as a whole."

McIlwraith's goal was to "record the life of the Indian as it was before white man came." Unfortunately, ancient traditions had already been seriously eroded by the dominant European culture and McIlwraith found the Nuxalk people's lifestyle much different than what it had been before. By the 1920s, the Nuxalk economy was shifting from a traditional way of life revolving around fishing, hunting, and food gathering to one based on industrial values where people worked for wages. And, like many First Nations, diseases such as smallpox, consumption and measles had taken their toll. In 1850 the Nuxalk population was around 2,000; by 1922 it hovered at 300, causing McIlwraith to worry that "within a short time there will be no ethnological work possible (here)."

McIlwraith's contract ended in August 1922 but he was offered another one the fall of 1923. Upon his arrival, he learned that Schooner had died. Unfortunately, Schooner had been the only Nuxalk who remembered all the old songs and stories. On his previous visit, McIlwraith had recorded many of Schooner's songs and the two men had become so close that Schooner adopted McIlwraith. Because of this--and also because there was no one else to fill the void--the Nuxalkmc made the unusual decision to allow McIlwraith to take Schooner's place in the upcoming winter ceremonials. (During the spring, summer and fall, the Nuxalk hunted, fished, gathered food, and worked in the commercial fishing industry; the winter months were reserved for elaborate ceremonies. As the early Nuxalk did not have a written language, these rituals were an important way for people to establish their status and commemorate significant people, places and events.)

McIlwraith's second visit to the valley was dramatically different than the first. After a full day of interviewing, he along with most of the Nuxalk community and some other valley residents, gathered at the Nuxalk Hall at 6:00 p.m. Part of McIlwraith's role in the ceremonials was to give a welcoming speech in Nuxalk and invite everyone to enjoy the feast. As master of ceremonies, McIlwraith was supposed to serve himself first. The first night the food was a mixture of ooligan "grease" (the oil from fermented smelt-sized fish) and crab apples. "Grease" has a particularly pungent aroma and McIlwraith was sure he was going to be sick. But, good sport that he was, he managed to perform his duty graciously.

As everyone ate McIlwraith ducked into the back room to don his dance regalia. When he reappeared, the crowd shouted, "Weena! Weena!" one of his nicknames. Weena means warrior or raider, and is a shortened version of Winwina, the central character in McIlwraith's favourite Nuxalk story. After McIlwraith's performance, various Nuxalk presented other dances and songs. In ancient times, the role of a singer was an honoured position and several people dedicated themselves to memorizing the words. But after Schooner's death, Pollard was the only one who remembered any of the old songs. Since Pollard found it difficult to always recall all the words, he asked McIlwraith to write them in his notebook.

Once the novelty of McIlwraith giving the welcoming speech and serving the food wore off, he was allowed to concentrate on his role as recorder and prompter. He sat next to Pollard scribbling notes or waiting for the Nuxalk to jab him with an elbow indicating that he had forgotten the next verse. By the end of the ceremonial season, McIlwraith had recorded approximately 120 Nuxalk songs. And even though he was often up until midnight, he still had enough energy to attend dances in the Norwegian community (a group of Norwegians moved to the valley in 1894), administer first aid when the local doctor was drunk and serve as best man at a wedding.

Of course, the ceremonials had changed radically. To begin with, they no longer took place in a longhouse lit by an open fire. Instead, they were performed in a European-style building equipped with kerosene lamps. And traditional potlatch gifts of dried berries, salmon or mountain goat wool had been replaced by sacks of potatoes and carrots or cans of peaches. But even though some elements had changed, the rituals were still taken seriously. At each event, there was always a certain amount of tension and the very real possibility of violence if a person performed a story, song, or dance that they did not own the rights to. In 1915, just seven years before McIlwraith first visited the valley, two women from Kimsquit had been murdered over a dispute regarding the use of ancestral names. And, according to McIlwraith, one of the names he inherited from Schooner gave him the right to kill anyone who made a mistake while performing a ceremony. While European influence had pretty well put an end to this practice, suspicious deaths still occurred--rumour had it that Schooner had been killed by witchcraft.

Whether he knew it or not, by participating in the ancient Nuxalk dances, McIlwraith was committing a criminal act. In 1884, as part of its effort to assimilate natives, the federal government banned potlatches. Those that enforced the law usually interpreted the prohibition to include all First Nations' gatherings. For the most part, however, possibly due to the isolated location, Nuxalk ceremonies were generally practiced openly. In fact, McIlwraith's interest in the rituals actually led to a mini-revival of the old dances and songs. And McIlwraith found taking part in the dances an invaluable experience, writing "Although the old customs had broken down enormously, this actual participation enabled me to understand the winter dances in a manner impossible from mere description."

When McIlwraith left Bella Coola in February 1924, he had accumulated an enormous body of research. His acceptance by the Nuxalkmc, and close friendships with many of them, had provided him with extraordinary access to traditional songs, myths and ceremonials. In Ontario, McIlwraith converted his notes into a 2,000-page manuscript but when he presented it to the museum, they were horrified by the inclusion of what they considered crude and obscene stories. Numerous Nuxalk stories contain graphic references to extraordinarily long penises, sexual organs on foreheads, and various activities related to the anus. In an effort to placate the museum, McIlwraith rewrote the entire book, cutting some of the text and translating offensive words into Latin. Unfortunately, by the time he finished, Canada was in the midst of the Depression and there was no money available for publication.

McIlwraith's manuscript languished in the museum archives until the Canadian Social Science Research Council took over the project in the mid-1940s. The Bella Coola Indians was finally published in 1948, twenty-three years after McIlwraith had completed his first draft.

In the preface, McIlwraith expresses his deep appreciation of the Nuxalkmc: "Without their generous, kindly, and helpful cooperation, this book could never have been written. I came as an uninvited stranger; they treated me as a friend and a guest and I left with intense regret. The aid of these men and women is one of my pleasantest memories." McIlwraith sincerely felt that the Bella Coola were "my people, not a group in which I was interested because they had, or had not, certain culture traits with which I was concerned."

Throughout his career, McIlwraith strove to make anthropology readily accessible and to expand its acceptance as an academic discipline. In doing so, he often went against accepted practice and encouraged students to handle exhibits even if it meant the occasional artifact got broken. From 1925 to 1933, McIlwraith was the only anthropologist teaching in Canada. But by the mid-1940s, he was heading a department of three at the University of Toronto and, when he died in 1964, there were seventy professional anthropologists employed throughout the nation. McIlwraith believed that anthropology was "everybody's business" and frequently lectured on the topic in an effort to convince people that knowledge of different cultures could promote understanding and tolerance worldwide.

Paula Wild
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Last updated: July 12, 2005 http://www.islandnet.com/pwacvic/wildp04.html