The Devil's Making by Seán Haldane

also a spirit dancer – a ‘tanse-wind’, or dance breath, a ‘tamanawis’ or shaman.
    Do the Tsalak people trade with the HBC at Fort Simpson?
    Wiladzap’s reply was lengthy and difficult, Chinook not being up to complicated matters. Eventually he managed to explain that he is amassing money so that eventually he will bear a great name. This name is ‘Legech’. Whoever wins the name will have to do it honour, and give many potlatches. Among Tsimshian, women win names through accumulating material goods, men through accumulating money. Until last year, Tsalak people had traded up the rivers with the Interior Tsimshian, in the mountains. For example, Wiladzap’s blanket is a ‘chilcat’, woven with the hair of mountain goats, traded in exchange for sea otter furs. Now the HBC trades up the rivers and there is no more trade for Indians.
    â€˜I believe the Bay has recently claimed a monopoly of river trading’, Pemberton remarked.
    Wiladzap explained that the Tsalaks do not trade with the HBC or the missionaries. In the past they had traded further South – with the Kwagiutl and the Salish. Now they are in Victoria to trade with the King Georges. Sea otter furs, baskets, and carvings of stone and wood.
    Pemberton asked Wiladzap where he had obtained his knife. Parry laid this on the table as an exhibit.
    Wiladzap said the Tsalak all have knives like these, bought from coastal traders who also sell guns and axes, in exchange for furs.
    Then Pemberton pursued the same line of questioning as Parry had at the camp, and received the same answers, including ‘The heart of the mouse speaks to the eagle.’
    Pemberton observed blandly in Chinook that the eagle attacks and devours the mouse.
    Wiladzap said that he had heard McCrory’s voice inside his head.
    â€˜Ask your question’, Pemberton said, turning to me, ‘about the mouth.’
    After a pause to gather my thoughts I asked whether, when Wiladzap had found the dead man, there was a thing in his mouth.
    Wiladzap’s eyes glittered with more focus, though as with Lukswaas it was not possible to distinguish the pupils, as he looked at me. ‘Itah kop amah’, he said. (‘Thing in hand.’). Then ‘Kulakula’. This meant ‘Bird’.
    â€˜Kulakula?’
    â€˜Tsoowuts’, Wiladzap said, in his own language presumably. He pointed to his lap.
    â€˜He means the member, I suppose’, Pemberton said with a half smile.
    I said to Wiladzap that since there was nothing in McCrory’s mouth, he must have been able to talk.
    Wiladzap said that although McCrory was almost dead he had said ‘King George Diaub.’ Nothing else.
    Asked what this meant, he shrugged his shoulders and repeated separately ‘King George’ and ‘Diaub’.
    Pemberton began to ask about the basket of herbs. Did that belong to Lukswaas?
    â€˜Ah-ha.’ Wikadzap explained that Lukswaas had been collecting herbs with McCrory in the forest that morning, shortly before he had been killed, and that they had come back to the camp, then she had given him the basket to take the herbs away in, asking him to bring it back when he returned next time.
    This revelation, made without any apparent sense of its possible implications, caused, I thought, a sort of shudder around the table. My own heart sank.
    Lukswaas spent time alone with McCrory? Pemberton asked. And when Wiladzap said ‘Ah-ha’ rather mechanically, Pemberton asked quickly:
    â€˜Tyee tum tum sick?’ Was the Tyee not jealous of Luskwaas being in the forest alone with the doctor?
    â€˜Wake.’ Then Wiladzap added that Lukswaas was safe with McCrory. McCrory had asked whether there was a ‘berdash’ among the Tsalak. Wiladzap said now, vehemently, that there may be ‘berdash’, as the traders said, among the Interior peoples, but there were none on the Coast.
    Pemberton raised his eyebrows and