Pilgrim in the Palace of Words Read online

  It’s bizarre, really. It seems the Maya, whose every particle of being was consumed with the measurement of time, whose astronomical calculations were single-mindedly focused on predicting the cycles of birth and destruction, had — in one of the many great ironies of history — completely miscalculated their own collapse.

  Mayan mythology speaks of four cycles before them, of four destructions. They were fanatical about trying to predict the fifth, and sure enough the fifth did come upon them. After 900, in the space of a generation or two, the great cities imploded. The people left and disappeared without a trace, and the jungle took over once more.

  There are many theories, of course. Most centre on the idea of ecological collapse. The thin forest soil could no longer sustain the agriculture it took to feed the cities. The plots of corn became barren, and in addition, all those vast temples and plazas had been coated with thick layers of lime plaster. It took young trees, green wood, to burn a fire hot enough to melt the limestone into plaster, and for this literally millions of trees were cut down and burned.

  Added to the ecological collapse was the fact that the city states were seemingly in an almost constant state of war with one another. Furthermore, the kings and astronomer priests grew rich while the peasants, overwhelmed by a harshening environment, grew poorer and more desperate. The final events are unknown. Did the underclasses rise and slaughter their masters? Did hunger, disease, or war sweep across the continent like a forest fire? Perhaps we’ll never know for sure.

  Scattered along the beaches of the Yucatán in southern Mexico, there are Post-Classic Mayan ruins, and it seems that at least a dribble of the civilization was still around when the Spanish landed in 1511. There’s a famous story that says when the first Europeans finally arrived and saw the stone temples shining in the sun already falling into ruins, they asked the Maya what the place was.

  The people answered by saying, “Malatina’at kat’an.” As nearly as I can figure it out, the prefix ma’ is the negation not, and the root na’at means “to understand.” T’an in the second word means “language” so that what the Maya were actually saying was something like: “Sorry, but we can’t understand a damn thing you’re trying to say to us.” The Spanish thought they we’re hearing the name of the place and jotted it down quickly, writing it as Yucatán, and the name has stuck.

  At a place named Xcaret, on what is now called the Mayan Riviera, there’s a sort of Mayan theme park built directly over the ruins of a few beachside temples. I don’t know what to think of that. The place is like a giant wax museum, like a ride at Disneyland — Maya World. It’s all a bit unsettling. On the other hand, I snorkelled through an underground river there, through caverns and passages that reminded me of the stories of Xibalba, the underworld, and that at least wiped away some of the place’s tourist facade.

  In the centre of the theme park a reconstructed Mayan village dredges in sightseers. A young Maya sat in front of a thatch house, carving masks out of wood, and I struck up a conversation with him. I asked him to teach me a few words in Maya. There is, surprisingly, really no single word that directly translates as hello. Instead the Maya greet one another with ba’ax ka wa’alik, literally meaning “What do you say?” Nor is there a word for yes. In Maya you merely rephrase what’s been said positively: “Are you from Canada?” “I am from Canada.”

  I asked the Maya if he could go back to the Classic age of his people, would he be able to talk to them. “I would be able to talk to them,” he said, reforming the positive. “Of course, there would be some differences. If we want to say yes now, we all use the Spanish sí. It is common. But I think I would understand most of the old words they spoke. A turtle is still ’áak, and a snake is still ’kung. Even your English word jaguar comes from our old language. We call the jaguar, chac war. You see? You have borrowed this word from us.”

  He held up the small face he was carving and told me to look at the moon later that night. It would be full, he said, and he told me that just as we say there’s a man in the moon, the Maya say there’s a tu’ul up there — a rabbit.

  That night, when I gazed at the full moon, I clearly saw in the shadows and craters the two long ears and wiggling snout of a rabbit. I don’t know why no one in our culture has noticed it before. It’s really quite obvious.

  One thing is certain. The various peoples of the world construct their symbols and languages according to specific internal logics. There are always reasons for their semiotic choices. And whether or not they actually form the bedrock of some sort of universal human consciousness, they’re the fundamental building blocks of our cultures, the foundation of our many world views.

  When I consider the Maya, I think mostly of their calendars and endless rounds of ritual — like that of the ball court. I wonder what those stepped temples with stone buttresses rising against time really tell us about the culture of the people — not the kings and high priests — but the stonemasons and the corn farmers.

  A thousand years from now, after our own Long Count, what will visitors make of the shells of our modern skyscrapers? Surely, the suburbs will be gone, all the carefully manicured lawns, the strip malls, and gas stations. But what will the towering steel scaffolds of office buildings and shopping malls really tell future archaeologists about our time on Earth?

  I suppose shrewd observers will know they’re monuments to finance, to the wild market economy we live under, and if they do, they’ll have nailed down something true about us. Certainly, it’s plausible to suggest that we’re obsessed with money, with the acquisition of wealth and material things.

  In the same way, Mayan temples, markers of their obsession with time, really do illuminate something essential about the Mayan view of the world. The Mayan calendar, all fifty-two spinning years of it, was marked by an almost continual round of ceremonies, each day having its own special meaning. That makes me think, in my very best Joseph Campbell imagination, that maybe we aren’t really so different from them at all.

  12

  Haida: The Surface People

  A dark shadow appeared in the water. From high above, the ocean seemed green and still, but the shadow cruised below the surface, moving at a good clip. The pilot dipped the plane toward it. “Humpback whale,” he said, turning to me. As he spoke, the whale broke the surface. A spout of water shot up like a geyser. The creature must have been twenty metres long, as big as two buses parked end to end.

  We circled toward the underwater beast, and four or five more whales materialized, breaching the waves behind the first one. The pilot glanced at me and grinned. My mouth had formed a silent “Oh.” I’d never seen whales this size before.

  We were flying in a floatplane, a Cessna, one hundred kilometres off the Alaska Panhandle, heading across the open ocean to a chain of islands known as the Queen Charlottes or, more properly, Haida Gwaii — the land of the Haida.

  The Haida are celebrated for their totem poles. They were great artists, these Haida, and they lived in one of the most remote places on the planet — on the very knife edge of North America.

  The pilot took the plane down farther, and we sailed over a rocky outcropping, the first sign of land. On it several hundred sea lions wallowed in the rare sunshine. They stampeded off the rock and into the water at the sound of the airplane. Ahead of us the mountains of Haida Gwaii swelled into view, and a few minutes later we landed, skimming across the water to stop at a place called Rose Harbour at the extreme southern end of the island chain.

  An inflatable Zodiac bounced out through the waves to meet us. Rose Harbour used to be an old whaling station, but the only person who lives there now runs tourists from here out to the Haida ruins. We clambered out of the plane, standing for a moment on the float before stepping into the boat. In the relative safety of the harbour I was handed a survival suit to put on. It looked like a large orange snowsuit. I struggled to get it over my clothes and finally sat down, feeling ridiculous, encased in something like a full-body life jacket.


  Still, this was the only way to get there, and should we be hit by a sudden squall, or should I tumble into the ocean, I’d have a few minutes at least before the dark waters of the North Pacific sucked my life away.

  The Zodiac launched out of the harbour and into the swells. We had twelve kilometres of ocean to cross before we reached our destination.

  An eagle glided from the black line of spruces, soaring across the beach and over the water toward us. We were approaching the island, skipping across the surf. Overhead, the eagle circled and flew in front of our boat, as if guiding us into shore. When the Zodiac finally beached on the rocks, I lumbered awkwardly and gratefully off the front and onto solid ground again.

  This island is called SGaang Gwaii in the ancient Haida tongue — the Wailing Island. On stormy days waves the size of four-storey buildings surge through a hollow in the reef. In the winter the rushing waves give off an eerie, wailing sound, a mournful, haunting noise like the breaths of past spirits.

  I managed to get my survivor suit off, not an easy task and not a graceful event to watch, and left it sitting, almost human, on the beach. A small trail wound into the forest, and we set off on it, almost immediately finding ourselves lost in a grove of old-growth cedars, among the tallest trees in the world. Their trunks were carpeted in moss, and a reverential silence accompanied our footsteps. This was untouched northern rain forest, and it reminded me of a giant green cathedral.

  Before long the trail led into a clearing. A small wooden cabin sat there. This was the watchman’s home. All the abandoned Haida villages have watchmen, guards who watch over the old totem poles. They’re keepers of the spirits, these watchmen, and they know these islands better than anybody.

  A young man stepped out of the cabin. James was the watchman here and wasn’t at all what I had expected. He was about twenty-five and wore a hockey jersey and big basketball shoes. James clomped onto the porch of the cabin and waved us up. There were various forms to fill out, since this is a protected place, a United Nations World Heritage Site, in fact. James didn’t say much to begin with, though the forms made it clear he would guide us to the village site and that we couldn’t deviate off the trail. We weren’t to touch anything and we were certainly not to take any souvenirs. The poles we were about to see were fragile. Many of them were almost two hundred years old. They were wind-worn and cracked, and in a few more years they would be completely gone.

  James finally spoke up. “How many of you have seen the poles in Vancouver?” he asked.

  I put up my hand like a dutiful student. I’d been to the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver only a few days earlier. The poles there were well preserved. They even had some of their original colour still on them.

  “Those poles were taken from this village,” James said, not pleased.

  I put my hand down quickly.

  “The totem poles,” he went on, “are meant to be here. They’re not meant to be kept in museums. They’re supposed to decay. When a totem pole falls over in one of our villages, we don’t put it back up. It comes from a tree, and it’s meant to return to the earth.” He took a deep breath and shook his head, easing up a little. “It’s hard now. We want to preserve our history, of course, but we must respect the old beliefs. So please, you’re welcome to take photographs, but you must only walk where I tell you to. You have to do what I tell you.”

  James wasn’t particularly tall, but he was barrel-chested, a strong guy who could kick the crap out of most anyone if he ever felt the need to. He got up and signalled us to follow him. Down the steps we went, back into the forest. SGaang Gwaii is a small island, and I realized that we had come in on the far side of it. We were going to walk across the island from one beach to another on the other side. It didn’t take long. Through the trees ahead we soon saw the ocean again, and as we came out of the forest, the old village appeared.

  All along a grassy pitch, just up from the beach, were the totem poles, many slanting over with the weight of years. Twenty-six poles still stand at SGaang Gwaii llaana, and they’re all that remain of the great village that once stood here.

  This was the village of the Ganxiid Haida, the Red Cod People. (The underlined letters are voiced uvular stops, sometimes written as gh or xh, and they’re sounded way back in the throat.) The Red Cod People were terrifying warriors, pirates really, who launched their war canoes from here, raiding up and down the coasts of British Columbia and Alaska, even going as far south as California.

  They weren’t to be messed with. When the first European ships arrived offshore, the Ganxiid battled them ferociously. In the space of five years the Ganxiid destroyed two of these ships and got into vicious scraps with two more.

  James led us to the remains of one of the houses. It was only a tumble of fallen cedar timbers now. In front were four or five slanting totem poles. James halted in front of one of them. A column of mythical spirits gaped at us, and even though the pole tipped precipitously, even though its cedar grain was weathered and cracking, exposed to two centuries of fierce sea winds, the mastery of the carving was evident.

  “This is the pole of Chief Xoyah’s clan,” James said. “Do you see? It’s a sort of family crest, though we don’t really know much about this chief, really. Xoyah, in Haida, means Raven.” He looked at us seriously. “That’s probably not the chief ’s real name.

  It’s his group.”

  “His clan name?” I asked.

  “No, his group.” James paused for a moment. “There’s not really an English word for this. Look, all Haida are born either Raven — Xoyah — or they’re Eagle. An eagle in Haida is Gud.”

  “So that’s like a person’s tribe?”

  “No, no. Look, in this town, SGaang Gwaii llaana, half the people would be Raven and half would be Eagle. Even in one house, even in one family, you’re going to have some people who are Raven and some who are Eagle.”

  I must have looked pretty confused. James was doing his best, though. “If a young woman is a Raven,” he continued, “then she can only get married to an Eagle. All her children will be Raven, though. They don’t take this from their father. It comes through the mother’s line.”

  I still didn’t completely get it.

  We moved over to another group of totem poles. “This one,” James said, “is a mortuary pole. Do you see at the top there?”

  I glanced up. There was no figure at the top. Instead it had a sort of hollow carved out of it.

  “Up there,” James said, “they would have stored the bones of an important person, one of the elders, maybe a house leader. And these carvings would have been his or her personal crest. Some people say you read totem poles like books — you know, from top to bottom or whatever — but that’s a load of bullshit. They’re more like a coat of arms — either the symbols of a family or the personal crest of a single powerful person.”

  I studied the figures carved into the pole carefully. The only one I could identify with any certainty was the small human being near the bottom. The rest were animal spirits. I really wanted a good crack at figuring out these symbols. I wanted to do a sort of Joseph Campbell analysis of them, but I didn’t even know where to start.

  “Can you tell us what all these animals are?” I asked hesitantly.

  “Well, some of them are real creatures. Some even come from the mainland. This one —” James pointed at a figure halfway up the pole “— is a grizzly bear. But we have no grizzlies on Haida Gwaii.”

  “And this one?” I indicated a large figure below the grizzly. It seemed to be holding the human in its arms.

  “First you have to know that some of the animals are mythical spirit beings. Many of these spirits lived under the water. This one is a sea wolf. The old Haida believed it was a creature that lived at the bottom of the sea, and when people drowned —”

  “So you mean … like this guy?” I pointed at the little human figure. Maybe it was meant to be inside the belly of the sea wolf or perhaps lying on its chest.

 
“Yeah, like that guy,” James said. “The people who drowned would be caught in the fur of the sea wolf, and they couldn’t get themselves untangled. On this totem pole you can see that the grizzly bear has come down to shake the sea wolf and free the drowned person from his fur. Maybe it means that this mortuary pole is for someone who drowned. I don’t know for sure.”

  I nodded sagely.

  “On the other hand,” James continued, “like I said, don’t go thinking the totems tell stories. This one is about as close as you’re going to get to any kind of story. Probably the grizzly bear was the person’s personal animal, and that’s why it’s depicted as coming down to free the soul from the sea wolf. It’s usually not like that, though.”

  I scanned the beach. There had been seventeen houses here, each holding an extended family of maybe twenty or thirty people. The houses were important things, too. They each had their own names, wonderful ones like “House That Is Always Shaking,” or even more poetically, “Clouds Sound Against It (as They Pass Over).” The house at the far end of the beach had the impossibly fine name of “People Think of This House Even When They Sleep Because the Master Feeds Everyone Who Calls.”

  Names are important here — marking a particular identity within a clan or the moiety groupings of Raven or Eagle. This obsession with identity is a key to understanding the Haida and their totem poles. The totem poles aren’t stories. They’re signatures, ubiquitous markers that say, very clearly, “We were here.”

  The Haida did have stories, of course. At the turn of the nineteenth century an anthropologist named John Reed Swanton showed up with pen and paper and set about taking down Haida myths. He transcribed them in Haida phoneme by phoneme, sounding out the unfamiliar words, making sure he got each one exactly right.