Ghost Canoe by Will Hobbs

marshal.”
    â€œI can’t. I’m going to have to sell the trading post. If news of this got out, it would cripple my bargaining position. People would think me desperate. Promise you won’t tell.”
    â€œI promise.”
    Nathan had another secret to keep.

12
The Arrival of the Nitinats
    Nathan was sitting on the front stoop of the cottage, looking out to sea, when he first saw them, far off in the waters of the Strait. He studied the shimmering shapes, trying to figure out what they could be. For a long time they appeared to be sea serpents, twenty or more sea serpents lifting their tall heads above the waters.
    They were nearing Neah Bay, very gradually nearing. Suddenly he recognized them for what they were—high-prowed, very large canoes. Then he remembered that this was the day that the Makahs’ distant relations from the west coast of Vancouver Island were arriving for the big potlatch. Jefferson was celebrating an event in his family; a marriage, Nathan thought it was.
    Even from a mile away, Nathan could see that largenumbers of Makahs were gathering on the beach to welcome the Nitinats. He called to his mother, and she came out of the cottage to watch the flotilla of canoes approaching. “Let’s go see the welcome together,” she said.
    It proved a pageant Nathan would never forget. Long before any faces were visible in the canoes, there came the beat of drums across the water, to which the Makah responded in kind. At last the two canoes in the lead, and their occupants, began to take shape. Dancing on a plank across the gunwales just behind the prow of one canoe, a grizzly bear was raking the air with one paw and then the next. “Surely it’s a man inside a bear skin,” Elizabeth MacAllister whispered, but the deception was so complete that Nathan had to wonder for a moment.
    A man-sized raven with a bill nearly three feet long was dancing at the prow of the other lead canoe. Wings, shaggy throat feathers, and body feathers completed the mischievous caricature suggested by the carved black mask.
    From the corner of his eye, Nathan noticed that Bim, at the rear of the crowd on the beach, was watching as well. Earlier in the summer, Nathan would have gone to him to hear his comments. Nearly two weeks had passed since Bim had accused him of stealing all his money, and still it was difficult to be around the trader. They both knew they were avoiding each other; the feelings between them were much too strong. He hadn’t even asked Bim what he thought when the Makahs reported another fishing canoe missing just two days after Bim’s money was stolen.
    As the high-prowed canoes of the visitors hoveredon the swell just outside the breaking waves, the Makahs sang a welcome song. The visitors responded by removing their paddles from the water and resting them upright on the gunwales of the canoes, blades in the air. There were no fishing canoes here; these were the great canoes, every one. Each canoe carried upward of fifteen men, women, and children.
    Holding a carved staff, a white-haired chief at the stern of the grizzly canoe stood and made a speech, which was answered by one from the hyas tyee of the Makahs, old Jefferson, who was clutching a similar emblem of his office.
    As soon as the people disembarked and the canoes were unloaded and skidded above the high-tide line on the beach, a parade ensued, with the Makahs and their visitors walking up and down the beach in all their finery and singing. Like many of the women, Rebecca wore a dress fashioned from a red blanket and festooned with white buttons. Lighthouse George, in addition to a grand red cape, was wearing a three-piece suit with abalone buttons that matched the abalone earrings he wore for the occasion.
    The parade was followed by canoe races to Waadah Island and back, with bets of jewelry and blankets being placed all during the race. Four canoes from each tribe, seven men pulling plus the rudder