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The Gifting Cycle
The bear and eagle people taught them early on to partake of the salmon's protein-rich meat. To the first human inhabitants of this land, it was the "First Salmon" that heralded the return of full larders, and she was to be honored. On this fateful morning, you smell burnt offering. On a rock next to the rushing water, two men sit cross-legged and intent, their faces impassive behind a layer of ceremonial red ocher, awaiting the first glimpse of fin and fury. They call out, "Welcome, friend! Spirit swimmer! Giver of long life!" and the fish is quickly speared and clubbed. It would be dishonorable to her to either stab or club twice. The reason the First Salmon never gets away is that she is sent. The elder shaman lays an otter skin tie across her belly. "Thank you, friend! You will tell your people how we respect them, and send them upriver to us. Everything good will grow upon the land because of you!" Eagle down hangs over the eyes of the younger shaman, as he makes a slit beneath the tail and inserts his fingers to lift. A special trail has been made leading down to the shore, lined with little bits of seashell. They walk slowly uphill to the beat of a frame drum, the elder shaman in the lead. In one hand is an eagle feather, and in the other a rattle. The people of the village quickly join the procession, shouting, "Welcome!" and calling out the names of every favorite food. The children join in songs while dogs run back and forth barking. Once at "Living House," all become silent. Even the dogs cease their whirlwind movement and listen. Upon entering, the First Salmon is handed to the elder Healing Woman, bent over a fire of slow-burning angelica root. She takes a ceremonial blue mussel shell and gently slits the fish open, setting the viscera in a carved bowl to the side. She cuts the body into four pieces, while chanting the salmon's honorable names: "Spirit Swimmer. Two Gills, Three Jumps. Lightning Follows One After The Other. Beautiful One." The old man and his apprentice each take a mouthful before departing to the sweathouse to cleanse and pray. Then the crimson meat is handed out in small portions to everyone present, being careful not to let any fall where the dogs could grab it. Sharing the flesh of the First Salmon, they are united in the promise of more to come. Of sustenance. Of Spirit. Slowly and reverently the Healing Woman gathers up what remains: the intestines, the tail still connected to the head by a long and graceful spine. She carries them back down the sanctified path to the edge of the river, and then drops them in. They quickly disappear from view, the backbone rolling over rocks and spinning in the current in the direction from which she came. Somewhere along the way, the ribcage will refill, the stomach distend, the fins again powered by pumping muscle. She will swim back to the sovereign Salmon Nation and tell them of the great honor she was accorded by the village. Hearing this, the other salmon head up for their gifting. The gifting of life. The Umatilla call the celebration for a youth's first catch a "giveaway." Others put on incredible feasts, where the hosts distribute their most prized possessions among the guests. This contributes to the communal bond by redistributing wealth, blunting envy, and fostering love, and it guarantees that the host will be gifted in return. It can be said that by taking our food in a sacred way we become "informed" by it. Whereas domestic, processed foods can sustain our bodies, they have no spirit and impart no wisdom. The salmon of the Pacific Rim have informed the people since time immemorial. The seal people. The porpoise and orca people. The bear and eagle people. And then the Ainu. Aleut. Chuckchi. Duwamish. Koryak. Klamath. Kwakiutl. Haida. Salish. Shoshone. Nez Perce. Chinook. Tshimshan. Yurok. Yakima. Umatilla. Walla Walla. Bella Coola... These latter furless, finless people devised fish traps and weirs, shell hooks, spears and dip-nets, but they never imagined any false superiority over the salmon that nourished them. Or the deer. Or the green-growing beings. They knew that physical and spiritual health was a matter of relationship between life forms. They recognized the intrinsic equality among species, and paid the animal tribes the utmost respect. Say all the right things to the bear you kill, or there could be trouble. Treat any salmon with disrespect, and they will tell the others not to come. Their name is related to the archaic Latin selman, meaning "to leap," and curiously similar to the Tunguso-Manchurian saman, or shaman. With a combination of salmon sorcery and innumerable incredible jumps, each gives its all to return the gift to a specific shoreline. Nothing can distract them. Nothing short of death will dissuade them from honoring their promise. Although the runs vary in size from one season to the next, their return is an event that can be depended on, the honorable fulfillment of a contract with the waiting Kitsumkalum and coastal bears, the river and the soils. A contract with place. Certainly no creature has demonstrated more of an attachment to its ancestral temperate forests than the heroic salmon. Three thousand or more beautiful pink eggs hatch in a gravel nest in a high mountain stream. The young are washed tail first toward the sea. On the way, they feed on various insects and crustaceans, while miraculously making the transition from freshwater to saltwater fish. After a long trip (up to 1,800 miles on the Yukon) they're expelled into the ocean, where they compete with a myriad of other creatures for food. Depending on the species, it takes two to five years before they cover the thousands of miles in a loop back to the very estuary they left. These three- and four-foot-long adults then beat their way upriver, reverting to a freshwater metabolism and zeroing in on the specific stream where they were born. Deny any species of salmon access to its ancestral nesting grounds, and its kind will die out. Their unwillingness to adapt to even nearby watersheds represents a Herculean loyalty to home. They may well cover a third or more of the ocean, following the stars, acknowledging minute variations in salinity and infinitesimal changes in water pressure as measured through sensitive pores along their lateral lines. It is known that there are slight gradations in the electrical charge of saltwater according to currents and other factors, and that the entire earth may be virtually grid-mapped with variations in the electromagnetic field. It is also accepted that every living body puts out a small electrical charge, and that certain fish have developed the ability to locate their prey in this way. It seems likely that the salmon may be able to pick up on these subtle geomagnetic emanations and navigate along their intersecting lines. Free of the school, each salmon makes an individual decision as to which bay to enter, and then waits at its station until the optimum runoff — the inflexible perfect moment. From there on, aroma surely plays the leading role. Smell: the lover's sense. Every salmon remembers the precise blend of flavors that marks its home stream, even when that water is diluted to one part in several million. They seek out that exact mix of iron, pine resin, clover, and decay. Through the water, through their noses, they're presented with a picture of the land to either side of the river. They can read its geology, recognize which creatures use it and with what frequency, and visualize what percentage of the banks are given over to which species of tree and plant. The way a mother walrus follows a scent imprint to unerringly find her offspring among scores of identical others, every salmon will locate the home it loves. If it can just get over all the obstacles in its way... I loved my first tour of the Northwest as a child, except for the time my mother pulled over at the spillway of a ladder-less dam. Nothing could have made a stronger impression on my young psyche than the sight of a solitary salmon, making what turned out to be futile leaps. The fish was beautiful, bruised but as yet unbeaten. I watched as it burst from the volatile swelling at the foot of the behemoth, then wriggle against the violent spill plummeting from so far above. At times it would seem to freeze in mid-jump as if stubbornly clinging to accomplishment, savoring the apex, struggling to maintain the yardage so sorely gained. It would seem to still be swimming while suspended, flailing at the air. Sometimes it made it six feet or more in the air before being hammered back down. Other times the cascade would hook it and dump it under before it completely cleared the water. Again and again it seemed to lash out, in successive sorties against an insurmountable emplacement. Sooner or later the warrior would tire, punished beyond belief, its body rolled and tumbled at last into the black depths of the Columbia. It would no doubt wash up on some downstream sandbar, its eyes pecked out by gulls, the expelled eggs claimed by flies. But in my memory I'll always see a lone salmon, a being with a strong sense of direction, refusing to take no for an answer! Like these great fish, we each face what must seem like ever-increasing challenges. As communities, and as individuals, nothing less than purity of heart and a salmon's irrepressible will can carry us over the obstacles ahead. Like them, we, too have a shamanic journey to undergo — an assignment and destiny to rejoin the motive hoop, the sacred circle, the cyclic bliss of unencumbered nature. As it is for the revered Salmon-People, our path of heart must be a return path, and our vital odyssey a journey of gifting, service, and thanks. Jesse Wolf Hardin is an acclaimed teacher of Earth-centered spirituality. This article was adapted from a chapter in Wolf's new book, Kindred Spirits: Sacred Earth Wisdom (Swan-Raven, [800] 366-0264). Wolf offers men's quests and intuitive counsel, and Loba hosts women for quests, wildfoods gathering and preparation, and special resident internships. The Earthen Spirituality Project, Box 516, Reserve, NM 87830; <http://www.concentric.net/~Earthway/>. |
On the Olympic Peninsula,
the camper awakens to shrouded bays and river bottoms inundated
with weighty fog. Clouds cling to the earth, with the blackness
slowly lifting in favor of a glistening gray that seems to contain
every color. At first, the river below appears frozen in place,
blurred waves laid over rounded boulder — and then you see
her, a flash of silver arching before the wave, dancing out an
annual genetic imperative repeated generation after generation.
Her ancestors sought out spawning grounds near steaming hot springs
in the path of the glacier's retreat. She is the first salmon
of the season, ceremoniously honored by the primal cultures of
Scandinavia, Japan, and Great Britain, as well as the coasts
of North America.