2014/06 Haida Gwaii trip - Skedans |
|||||
We took the Kwuna Ferry back to Skidegate and drove into Queen Charlotte. I was still very keen to see one of those ancient Haida villages, so we booked up for a floatplane trip with Inland Air the next day at noon. This kingfisher was one of a bunch hanging out at the floatplane dock. We camped at Kagan Bay again, with showers rolling in across the channel.
Monday June 30th
It was a perfect day for our trip: no rain or wind but misty and cloudy, a melancholy atmosphere for the ruins. The floatplane was not at its dock and the office was closed; this is a one-man operation and he was off on a morning trip. We took the opportunity to send our postcards off and do some shopping for food; we’d be on the ferry all the next day and it was also a holiday. I spotted this tee-shirt in a window.
When the plane returned we met Peter the pilot. He was fuelling up and I commented that his pumping operation was preferable to the bucket and funnel used on our last floatplane flight in the NWT. He said he’d flown out of Hay River for a while, also in the NWT, so he was familiar with the technique. The floatplane was a de Havilland Beaver, famous as a Canadian bush plane. This one dated from 1951, the same age as my Vincent motorcycle.
 |
Flight to Skedans (16.33) |
 |
|---|
This was a charter flight so we were the only passengers and we agreed on a circular route, approaching Louise Island and Skedans from the west and coming back along 
the coast and over Sandspit. We took off from the harbour, crossed the channel and the forests of Moresby Island. We recognized Skidegate Lake and then Moresby Camp and Cumshewa Inlet. Then we were rounding Louise Island and we splashed down in Skedans Bay, which faces the open water of Hecate Strait. Peter jumped out 
onto a float and paddled us into shore. We also got onto the floats for our jump to the beach.
We’d had to pay entrance fees for Gwaii Haanas park, for even though the site isn’t geographically inside the park it’s treated as part of Gwaii Haanas. The park is 
enormous, covering nearly all of Haida Gwaii to the south of us. The fees help pay for the watchman program, which the Haida had started before the park was created.
I expected the Haida watchmen to be a bunch of crusty old guys like those on the poles, but they turned out to be two young Haida girls from Skidegate, who live in the on-site cabin while on duty; Natasha would be our guide. The first thing Natasha told us was that we Europeans had got the name wrong, as Skedans was the chief’s name and his village’s name was actually Kuuna .
This deer was happily munching away just few feet from us.
There was already a group taking a tour, with their own guide. It was the tour we’d tried to sign up for. They’d started in Queen Charlotte, were loaded into a van, ferried across the channel and driven over the logging roads to Moresby Camp where they’d all piled into a tiny boat for the trip along Cumshewa Inlet to Skedans. Sandie had been a bit dubious about their “covered boat” and it looked to be covered by a tarp on four sticks. The group was wearing oil skins – Sandie was happy to be traveling by air even if it was twice as expensive.
Skedans used to have dozens of long houses and hundreds of people but it was abandoned in the 1880s after a series of smallpox epidemics had reduced the whole Haida nation from tens of thousands to a few hundred. The survivors abandoned all their southerly villages and moved to Skidegate and Old Masset on Graham Island. 130 years of decay has almost obliterated Skedans and the other villages. Natasha thought all the Skedans poles would be gone in twenty years, with perhaps just the foundation pits left. The old photograph is of Skedans decades after it was abandoned.
The pictures show one of the longhouse pits with the wall foundations still in place. The propped up pole has been overtaken by vegetation but the eagle wing carvings are still visible. 
Until recently nobody cared for the villages. There were no watchmen and the best house poles and all the coppers were stolen by museums, collectors, and anyone who came along with a big boat. Coppers were decorated copper shields, symbols of wealth. The house poles tell the story of the family and often included a hole which gave access to the house and ensured that any visitors would have to bend forward on entry, making it easy to club them if necessary. Unfortunately the hole also weakens the pole.
What remains today are house foundation pits, mortuary poles and remembrance poles. Bodies were put into a bentwood box and then the box was put on top of one or t
wo mortuary poles, and sometimes placed inside a cavity in a large remembrance pole. Some of the poles have carved cylinders, a count of how many potlatches the person had held; a potlatch was a celebration of wealth, a feast and the person would give gifts, sometimes even canoes and coppers.
The poles are at strange angles now and the carvings are almost gone, hard to make out, though we could see some bears and eagles. Sometimes seedlings have taken root inside the pole so it’s now part of a tree. It’s all interesting but difficult to separate the poles from dead trees, and hard to get a sense of place. I think it would be better to have cleared all the trees as would have been done in 1880 and leave just the poles and pits exposed.
Natasha told us about the two Haida moieties or social groups, the eagles and ravens. Until recently they were expected to marry someone from the other moiety. It was also a matrilineal society and children would leave the family at about eight to go live with uncles or aunts on the mother’s side. Natasha was pleased that this was not followed in her day.
Our tour took about an hour and a half. Then the girls called our pilot, who was anchored offshore, and we set off back. He finished our circular route, flying over Gray Bay (in the picture), Copper Bay, and Sandspit’s airfield. He waved to his partner as we passed over their home in Sandspit and then we splashed down back at Queen Charlotte.
|
Return from Skedans (15:18) |
 |
|---|