Eagle Song: An Indian Saga Based on True Events by James Houston

Abstract

Reviews 149 The anecdote concludes with an observation that “among the buildings [now] based on a solid foundation of rusty cans, the enthusiastic labor of money-hungry children, and the ingenuity of an early city council, are two churches so long established that their mortgages are all paid off.” Not Olympian, but not meant to be: the concluding words to Johnson’s affectionate, appealing book about her hometown are “Sing a song of laugh­ ter, a pocketful of wry.” ANTHONY ARTHUR California State University, Northridge Eagle Song: An Indian Saga Based on True Events. By James Houston. (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. 362 pages, $15.95.) In Eagle Song, as in The White Dawn, James Houston uses the story of white sailors cast among American natives as the plot for a novel written to interpret the native culture. In The White Dawn it was sailors marooned for a season among Eskimos. In Eagle Song it is the story of two sailors who survived the massacre of the crew of the trading ship Boston in 1803, were held captive, and were rescued in 1806 by the trading ship Lydia. One of the sailors, the blacksmith John Rogers Jewitt, published his journal and an account of his “adventures and suffering.” Thus a captivity narrative provides the plot of a novel that promotes an appreciation of Indian culture. The novel is a veritable catalog of Yuquot Indian social institutions, technology, art, ceremony, and belief. Houston is qualified to write such a book. He has worked closely with Indians and Eskimos both in government administration and in Indian and Eskimo art associations. His illustrations and descriptions of buildings, clothing and ceremonial costumes reflect the work of an artist and designer. The novel succeeds because Houston has created characters in whom we see more each time we think back upon them, and because he has shown how the patterns of culture and the Boston affair affected their lives. The story is told by Siam, brother-in-law and usher to the Tyee Maguina. Since he is with Maguina day and night and as usher must know the status of every person and the ceremony appropriate to rank and occasion, he is an appropriate narrator and interpreter. He is a reflective man and experience has taught him to be cautious. Family and community are very important to him. He is certain that his house, his village, and his people are the greatest in the world, yet more than anyone else he fears that Maguina and his people will lose the pot latch. There is tragedy in the fact that it is his son and his sister who are the final victims of the Boston massacre. Maguina is a lusty, headstrong, self-centered man. He is also a man of deep pride and an intuitive knowledge of the basis of power and the courage to go with both. He can give the greatest pot latch of all time not only because he can command the greatest wealth, but also because he has the most imagi- 150 Western American Literature nation and the courage to go all the way. The Boston massacre by the young men of the village was a challenge to his authority but with a patriotic pageant he turned it into a heroic event of the reign of Maguina, and he used the cargo of the ship to provide wealth for his pot latch. It was an insult to him that the young men were avenging with the massacre and at the end the villages are ready to give their lives and what is left of their fortunes to ransom him, even though he is no longer Tyee. Even in his failures and his selfdelusions there is a certain grandeur. He has style. Fog Woman, Maguina’s wife and Siam’s sister, is a woman of great wisdom, determination, courage, and guile. In the way she gets rid of the young girls who flock to Maguina’s bed when she is away, in her treatment of her mean and shabby relatives, in the way she takes charge when things have gone far enough, in her affair with the sailor John Jay (John Jewitt), and...