Written in Stone Read Online Free PDF

year, when we came to the camp on the meadow at the east end of the lake, Grandma’s nephews teasedPapa and Uncle Jeremiah about the foolishness of chasing after whales in the ocean.
    “If you wait long enough, one will wash up on your beach,” they said. “No mess, no danger, just a free gift.”
    But when Papa told the story of how it was to touch a living whale out on the open sea, nobody laughed, and he held a place of honor at the summer feasting.
    This summer was quiet. When our canoes pulled in, the Quinault relatives glanced up from their work and said
“Oo-nu-gwee-tu”
and nothing more. Everyone knew we had lost our whale. Everyone knew we were not alone in our troubles. None of the whaling families of Vancouver Island had seen a single whale on any of the usual ocean paths. There had been no feast messenger and no gathering of families to sing the praises of the whalers and share in the meat and oil. I missed visiting with my friends from Nitinat and Alert Bay, and I wondered if they felt the same spooky feeling of looking over the ocean and not seeing the spouts of whales.
    Were the whales punishing us for not keeping the old ways? Would we suffer because other nations chose to hunt with disrespect? If it was true, there was no way for an Indian to live at all—put in prison by white men for keeping the old ways, and abandoned by whales for losing them.
    I stepped onto the grass at the meadow, my armsshaking from the paddling and my legs stiff from hours in the canoe. Aunt Loula took one look at my blistered hands and growled.
    “Foolish girl,” she hissed at me. “You ruin your hands when we have all this work to be done.”
    “I’ll work,” I said, holding my voice steady so I sounded more grown up than her. “I’ll go up to the mountains and gather goat wool for my weaving.”
    I could see she was dying to tell me weaving was not real work, not useful work. “Fine,” she said. “If Susi will take you.”
    I walked off with my head low so she would think she had won, but inside I was dancing. Aunt Susi, my favorite person!
    That night, there was dancing under the summer constellations. The meadow grasses were tamped flat in a circle around the fire. The drummers and singers gathered. Robes of power were unpacked from cedar chests and suitcases. Uncle Jeremiah took his rifle for signaling and went out in the dark to watch the road. Ida and her little friends taught the grandmothers to sing the happy birthday song and giggled at their mistakes. It was Grandpa’s turn to pretend to have a birthday. Charlie put a tall candle in a loaf of store bread.
    “Listen, Grandpa,” he said. “After everyone sings, you close your eyes and make a wish.”
    Grandpa listened carefully. “And do I sing? Tell a story?”
    “No, all you have to do is blow out the candle.”
    “No dance? No magic? These people do not know how to make a proper feast.”
    “I’ve noticed,” Charlie said. “They seem to prefer their celebrations very plain. But if we pretend it’s a birthday party, we can even give gifts. The sheriff in these parts leaves Indians alone, so long as we are having a white person’s party.”
    Other summers Aunt Loula brought carved and painted canoe paddles for me and Ida. We always did the paddle dance together to represent the Makah side of the family. But not this year. We would wait a whole year after my father died before we danced again.
    But my Quinault kin brought out their best regalia and lined up to dance. Papa had promised me a new robe of power this year. He would have bought me wool and pearl buttons on our trip to town before we came to the lake. I would have worked on it all summer, with my aunts and girl cousins pitching in. It would have been a thing to gossip over and admire. When many women worked on a robe, each one put some of her strength in it. That strength would have been mine to wrap myself in,and mine to show at winter ceremonies. I had last year’s coat from the