I’m lost in research for my current novel. It feels like mining for gold. I'm digging through articles, making connections and interviewing people. It's such a thrill to find strange and specific information about a place only known through local lore. One connection leads to another. One person refers to another, and people are full of stories.
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My latest research rabbit hole began with a desire to understand the history of the geographical region I’m writing about. My fiction/fantasy book takes place on Hornby Island in BC and the surrounding area. The story revolves around a fictional legend about a mystical sea guardian referred to as the witch of the Salish Sea. As I imagined the witch’s lore, I delved into the area’s history. I've learned about the local Coast Salish Peoples, notably the Pentlatch and K’ómoks tribes, now known as the K’ómoks First Nation. The KFN continue to steward the land today--despite smallpox and warfare, bringing their population from around 14,000 to 200 between the 1780s and 1860s. I am shocked to read about the tragedy and loss of life; this tale of heartbreak only continues under European colonization.
My story is, however, not an indigenous one. I am a descendant of settlers, and my ancestors’ connection to the natural world was severed hundreds of years ago. Somewhere, maybe during the industrial revolution, my European ancestors exchanged stewardship of the natural world for ‘resource management. (And our resources have been and continue to be managed into oblivion).
The Witch of the Salish Sea is about a descendant of settlers exposing the hidden past, accepting painful truths, and seeking to rediscover a spiritual connection with the world that sustains us all. To write this book, it is so important that I understand the earth beneath my character’s feet.
And so, I have been lost in research, pouring through pages recording the degradation of paradise.
Don’t get me wrong. BC remains breathtaking. However, human memories are short. What we see now is only a shadow of what once was. Since colonization, we have lost up to 90% of our old-growth forests, fish, and shellfish resources. Our waterways are known worldwide for our killer whales, but the truth is the coastline here used to teem with the largest mammals in the world: blue, grey and sperm whales. I suspect the orcas survived the coal-powered whaling ships of the 19th century simply because they were too small to be much profit.
According to oral history, the sound of salmon leaping from the waters during the spawning season in the Salish Sea was loud enough to keep villagers along the coast awake all night. Now the whales that are left struggle to find enough to feed their small family pods.
And I thought: if there was an elemental spirit living in these waters, how would she feel witnessing the destruction of the natural world around her? What would she do?
And that’s when I heard a new-to-me story. There is an ancient petroglyph on a private, protected swath of land where a seasonal spawning river meets the sea. It is carved into the rock in a riverbed that is dry in the summertime but flows in the winter. I found a local resident with a photograph of a rubbing from the petroglyph that is at least 50 years old. This rubbing is of a woman squatting, arms raised, birthing a salmon. If you were to visit the petroglyph now, the fish has completely worn away, leaving modern supposition to believe it to be a dancer.
But it is so much more.
A source from the K'ómoks nation says that the carving predates oral tradition and guesses the carving to be about 3000 years old. This particular squatting pose is associated cross-culturally with life cycles and primordial elements. The woman in the petroglyph is dancing while giving life: the bent legs are the birthing position, and the raised arms are jubilant.
This figure seems to me to resemble the tale of the Salmon woman. A well-known story among the Coast Salish Peoples. The salmon woman is a spiritual being who gave her children (the salmon) as gifts to the Coast-Salish. The people could eat and be full, with one rule: they must not fish from spawning beds but only from the ocean. A wise lesson.
The position of the petroglyph upon the river bed is significant. I’ve been told that it was probably carved as part of a shamanic ritual. When the water flows during the spawning season, the petroglyph is submerged as a blessing and a prayer.
As I write about my mythical sea witch, I find the discovery of this spiritual elemental woman carved into the rock to be a beautiful coincidence. I explore the history of the land I’ve loved since a child, and I find it curious that the stories I carry in my heart echo those who have walked the land before me. Again, I do not presume to tell an indigenous story but a settler one. I want to learn from the past and repair my own relationship with the natural world. I dig deep and try to unlearn the harmful practices of my European predecessors; I listen to the sea and try to understand its stories…
And then I write.
With love, Charity
References*
Sacred Display: Divine and Magical Figures of Eurasia by Miriam Robbins Dexter and Victor H. Mail
Thanks to Sara de Rose for her insight and information.
SALMON WOMAN AND HER CHILDREN Lummi Culture Protection Committee https://www.lummi-nsn.gov/userfiles/190_Story%20of%20Conservation%20of%20the%20Salmon(1).pdf
https://www.vicnews.com/opinion/b-c-whaling-an-uncomfortable-history/
