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National Geographic : 1987 Jul
Contents
a place to store surpluses-the basis of wealth. Subtract cedar and you don't have Northwest Coast culture." Bill and I threw our duffles aboard the 70 foot sailboat Darwin Sound II at Moresby Camp, south of Sandspit, and sailed off for a firsthand look. Capt. Al Whitney, with his wife, Irene, reminded us that "from here south there will be no roads, no residents. The inhabitants are bears and eagles." Moving deeper into the wilderness, we paused at Burnaby Narrows to marvel at a low-tide tapestry of brilliantly colored beds of anemones, clams, abalones, sea urchins, crabs, and starfish in shiny tangles of kelp. "Just boil it, and you've got bouillabaisse," Reid joked. The joking stopped at the first sight of the logged-off slopes on Talunkwan Island. And his voice broke with emotion as we reached Windy Bay and headed on in flatable skiffs toward the stand of trees that had become the symbol of the fight to save South Moresby. The forbidding forest wall we had seen from the beach opened into a world of half light and fantastic shapes. A velvet carpet of moss rolled over everything, muffling sound and taming the chaos of upthrust roots and deadfalls. Rising from the tangle were trees as majestic as any redwood I had ever seen. Stories above us a filigreed canopy of licorice fern, mistletoe, lichen, and moss kept the forest floor in permanent twilight. On the ground, beneath the towering cedars that were seedlings long before Columbus was born, new trees sprouted in neat rows on rot ting nurse logs. "I feel the life force in here," Reid said. "It's an extremely sensual-almost sexual experience. It makes me want to become a part of the forest." IN THE GHOST VILLAGE of Tanu, an hour's sail north of Windy Bay, Reid tapped the source of his own talent. Tanu had been a center of art for the southern Haida, and his mother's ancestral home. It was where Reid's great-aunts and great-uncles had died at the water's edge during the smallpox epidemic that followed the arrival of the white man. Indeed, contact with the Europeans swamped the Haida like a tidal wave. New trade patterns and values engulfed their culture; totem poles came tumbling down, condemned by missionaries as graven im ages; and during two terrible years in the 1860s the Haida were devastated by the pox, which killed some 70 percent of them. A Hudson's Bay Company census about 1841 listed 6,600 Haida in 13 Queen Charlotte villages; by 1900 there were only 900 (the off shoot Kaigani Haida of Alaska's Prince of Wales Island dwindled from 1,700 to 800 in the same period). Survivors abandoned the villages and fled to Masset and Skidegate lT e'd be too lonely without guests," Says Christinevon Zadora-Gerlof (facingpage), who, with her husband, Joachim, welcomes visitors to their home on the Tlell River, a world-ranksalmon stream. Loneliness is an occupational hazardfor senior lightkeeperKen Brunn, who keeps watch with son Noah and wife Lise on LangaraIsland. Queen Charlotte Islands 119
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