Environmental Change and Variation in the Yukon

Photo:
Willows yellow from drying or disease along Frances River
I just got back from the southern Yukon where I went to do research on observations of environmental change by Kaska Elders. The weather was alternating between being very hot (up to 30C) and rainy, though there had been little rain early in the season, and a light snow pack the winter before. During a trip up the Liard and Frances River by boat with one elder my collaborator Linda and a Japanese anthropologist and I helped the elder put out a small forest fire that was burning in the moss at a camping site along the river. Berries seemed to be a couple of weeks ahead of normal in terms of ripening, but crops seemed poor, perhaps because of poor weather when the flowers were pollinated. People speculated that perhaps the bears were bolder because the berries were poor. I found a correlation like that in nuisance bear reports down on the Skeena River in the Terrace area in the 1980's. Just as I was getting ready for a trip down the Alaska Highway to the Toad River area to speak with some Elders there, a young Kaska friend told me there were two fire balls down the Cassiar highway. The next days the smoke was quite perceptable far to the east of the area the fire had ignited. I began to hear that the highway was closed south out of Watson Lake....not encouraging, as I needed to go that was to go down to the Skeena River to do some follow-up on last year's research on tumplines. Rumours began to circulate that the community of Lower Post would be evacuated...I returned with some anxiety to Watson Lake through the smoke plume, and when I arrived, massive smoke clouds filled the sky to the south, rising like a thunderhead at the west end, right down where the Stewart-Cassiar runs. At the barricade I was told they would likely convoy traffic through first thing the following day....there was some rain in the night, and indeed I was able to get through. At that point about 10 km of the highway passed through the smoking fire. Its estimated size then was about 3000hectares. Last I heard it was up to 15,000. The fire sparked my thinking about disturbance frequency, and whether the fire frequency may be changing....given that the boreal forest renews itself through episodic conflagration, it was hard to tell if this fire was unusual, or within the normal range of fire occurrence. Last year there was a large fire north of the Yukon border along the Cantung or Nahanni Range road....and when I was there in 2004 there were large fires at Contact Creek and at Swan Lake on the Alaska highway...this was one of the questions we asked the Elders about. When I got down to the Skeena River, the weather was so dry there were virtually no mosquitos....unheard of...and river levels were at a near record low. Sockeye salmon escapement is at about 1/3 normal for the second year running, and this reduction is not attributable to salmon farm sea lice as no fish farming is permitted off the north coast of BC. So--likely collapse of food chains in the mid Pacific due to global warming is the cause. Allen Gottesfeld, who works for the Gitxsan Watershed Authority pointed out this disturbing fact to me....commercial salmon fishing is now virtually extinct in Prince Rupert, formerly a city of canneries, and food fish for Tsimshian and Gitxsan are running low, prompting shifts to less preferred species (coho and spring/king salmon instead of the diminishing sockeye).

Thinking about Birds, Thinking With Birds

Photos: the late William Teya with three black ducks on the Peel River
and male surf scoter or "black duck" deetree aa in Gwich'in

Birds are salient actors in human environments around the world, and are carriers of meaning, their actions invested with a range of significance.The observations I share were made by spending time on the land with people and in conversation —that is in everyday circumstances and through commonly repeated traditional stories. Accordingly what I present is a series of examples of certain salient birds and their meanings across the range of localities where I’ve worked. As such they are common birds, frequently observed. Relationships with these birds include: commensalism and sharing; power; birds as food; symbolic and metaphoric associations; and ecological relationships. Birds often appear as art motifs, and have strong roles in traditional narratives. Birds also enrich human experience.
What follows was learned by spending time on the land with people, and just in conversation while doing ethnobotany, ethnomedicine and ethnoecology research, that is, in everyday circumstances for the most part, and through some commonly repeated narratives, not through specific ethnornithology research.
I’ll present perspectives learned in working with four communities in northwestern Canada: Gitksan of the Skeena River drainage in northwestern British Columbia; Witsuwit’en, Athapaskan speakers whose traditional teritories border those of the Gitksan in the Bulkley/Morice River drainage and those of the Dakelhne in the Nechako River drainage in northwest/north central British Columbia; the Kaska Dena of northern BC and the southern Yukon, and the Gwich’in in the Mackenzie Delta region of the northwest Territories. Natural environments range from the inner edge of the Coast Mountains and forests of coastal affiliations (Coastal Western Hemlock and Interior Cedar Hemlock biogeoclimatic zones) through Sub-boreal and Boreal forests dominated by white spruce with pine and extensive subalpine willow and dwarf birch, to the taiga tundra ecotone in the low Arctic of the Gwich’in homeland. Large rivers, lakes and wetlands of variable extent characterize all of these northern forested environments.
Fisheries focussing on salmon species, lake charr, grayling, and whitefish species help to support local communities, and the diverse fish populations also support numerous birds (loons, ospreys, bald eagles, diving ducks, gulls). The ubiquitous northern corvids- ravens, crows and jays, scavenge fish and scraps from carcasses of animals hunted by people or wolves, year round residents and long companions of the human residents of the North. Owl species—great horned, great grey, and barred, – swoop silently through the night forests. Hawk owl and snowy owl are active by day. The wetlands and river banks host various sandpipers and wading birds such as yellowlegs, cranes, and spotted sandpipers. And in the sub-boreal forests and coastal forests, the tiny chickadee is a year round gregarious resident.
The Gitksan and neighbouring Witsuwit’en share the symbolic crest system of the Norhwest coast, in which Raven and Eagle and Owl figure , among other bird figures that belong in the histories (adaawk) of specific Clans or Houses. Grouse is also a crest of certain Fireweed (Gisgaast) houses. The late Mary Johnson (Antkulilbisxw) explained to me that in a time of starvation in ancient Temlax’aamit, two sisters and a brother were seeking to escape an unnatural winter and in their journey the brother starved. When they were finally able to kill a grouse, the women wept because this food, had they gotten it in time, would have saved the brother.
Raven is also allied with a set of trickster creator tales shared beyond the Northwest Coast region, appearing as Txemsim on the Nass, Wii Gyet [‘the big man’] for the Gitksan, or Estes for the Witsuwit’en. Sometimes other birds are involved in these stories besides the raven figure and his adventures. For the Gitksan, the figure Wii Gyet is at once an insatiable bumbling giant [the name means “Big Man] and raven, and the tales refer to his ‘Gwiis Gaak’ or raven blanket. A story shared by Gitksan and Witsuwit’en involves greed and Wii Gyet/Estes’ miscalculation when trying to hunt swans with the aid of a borrowed swan decoy hat. Because he tries to take too many, he is carried up into the sky by the swans whose legs had tied...with highly unpleasant results for him when he plunges earthward from a great height.
For both Gitksan and Witsuwit’en, bird names can form part of plant names and place names, indicating metaphorical connections, and ecological associations [as indeed bird related plant names may in English as well]. So in Gitksanimx, the plant called in English black twinberry (Lonicera involucrata) is sgan ‘maaya gaak ‘raven’s berry plant’, alluding to the shiny black (and inedible) fruit. It is a medicinal plant, not a food plant, and the bird name probably signals its inedibility to humans. Similarly, among the Witsuwit’en, the related white snowberry (Symphoricarpus albus) is called citsit ‘mi cin or grouse’s berry stick, and has medicinal uses. The bird/place name connection in Gitksan also involves berries: a traditional high elevation black huckleberry patch is called Anxsi ‘maa’y litisxw ‘blue grouse’s berry on it’. Here I assume the information is ecological in terms of the habitat and food of the blue grouse, the the fruit itself is not named for blue grouse (being the “real berry” sim ‘maa’y everywhere it grows).
Birds, as their migration is seasonally predictable, can also carry what Trevor Lantz and Nancy Turner have called traditional phenological knowledge. A Gitksan language primer explains that the song of the robin, when it appears in spring, says Gii gyooks milit, milit “the steelhead are coming, the steelhead, are coming”, indicating that steelhead can be fished in the rivers and creeks once the robins have arriverd.
And the tiny chickadee whose piping and flitting presence around camps in the winter woods is named. I was told that when you hear a chickadee, someone is coming to visit. Besides being a crest ayuks owl apparently also indicated impending death, and hearing an owl hooting was cause for disquiet..
Eagle Down is a sacred substance used to enforce peace for both Gitksan and Witsuwit'en. The late High Chief Johnny David said "Eagle Down is our Law", which anthropologist Dr. Antonia Mills used as the title of her book on Witsuwit'en traditions, history and law.
The Kaska Dena live in what is now northern British Columbia and the adjoining Yukon Territory, in the Cassiar Mountains north of the Stiking River in the drainage of the Liard and Pelly Rivers, and in the adjoining Logan mountains on the border with the Northwest Territories. Kaska lack the complex Clan/House structure of the Gitksan and Witsuwit’en, butm they do have the moiety structure widespread throughout most of the Yukon, of Wolf Tsíyone and Crow. Elder Mida Donnessey explained the fundamental division of society this way: Crow and Wolf are brothers in law, she said, but they couldn’t travel together, because Crow (Nusga) travels in the daytime and the wolf travels at night.
Travelling with Auntie Mida in the spring 10 years ago, she commented about grouse, and how the pleating of its muscular stomach taught people how to gather the toes of their round toed moccasins Grouse aka ‘chicken’ di’ is also a reliable food source, one available to women and children, and a back-up in the absence of large game like moose. Hence, one of the two sentences I can manage in Kaska is “I saw one chicken”...Hligah dí’ ne gánesta– which can describe what was seen in a journey across the land, a subject of frequent discussion when people meet. The habitats of different birds are well known; grouse like young pine stands. Ptarmigan prefer willows in winter.
Birds as agents and actors on the land can also hold and bestow power. My collaborator Linda McDonald told me that swan was a power bird for her late mother Edna McDonald. Swans are also a source of food (prohibited now with migratory bird treaties).
Along with detailed knowledge of the habitats and habits of birds and animals, people are oberservant of timing of significant seasonal events, such as the migration time of ducks, and geese. These are now changing, and are taken by elders as an indicator of environmental change. This is a topic Linda McDonald, my Kaska colleague and I will take up in more detail through our research this summer.
Ravens and whisky jacks (grey jays) are intelligent and observant birds, and their sometime destructive behaviour is tolerated. People have lived a long time in the North with ravens and whiskey jacks, which are adaptable year round residents. Another English name for the whiskey jack is “camp robber”, aptly descriptive of their deft pilfering of unattended food in camp. However, people may in fact leave food out for the whiskey jacks, perhaps with the logic that if food is freely given, they will leave the rest alone. Raven figures in stories among the Kaska as well as Gitksan and Witsuwit’en. Both raven and whisky jack lend their names to plants. The valued medicinal plant Juniperus communis is called in Kaska Nusga dzidze “crow’s brush or crow’s berries . The berry like cones are not edible by people, though they add to the strength of medicinal decoctions made from the plant. Arctous rubra, called “red bearberry” in English, is ts’oska dzidze, ‘whisky hack’s berry” in Kaska.
As I travelled with and listened to my elder teachers, birds were woven into conversation and commentary. I am a somewhat “scattered” person who easily misplaces or looses things. Auntie Mida explained to me after one such incident that it was because I has looked at an osprey on the nest; if you look at osprey on the nest it causes you to loose things easily.
Wading birds and cranes have very long legs. In a narrative recorded in Dene Guideji, Kaska Narratives, Elder Clara Donnessey recounts how the sisters who married stars escape their pursuer by crossing the Liard River canyon on the legs of yellowlegs as a bridge, which then refused to allow the pursuing wolverine to cross over. When I was told the story, my source described the bird, in English, as “crane”.
I gained a different sense of ravens when I went North. Instead of the ravens sitting solitary on the top of spruce or cedar, and tolling their bell-like calls, or hungrily feeding one or two at a time on the carcasses of dead and dying salmon beside the river, ravens in Inuvik were raucous, forward, in-your-face, interacting and squabbling in groups in the morning hours, hanging around dumpsters. It was in the Mackenzie Delta region I first really understood the ancient commensal relationship of ravens to northern peoples. Ravens scour the land widely for sources of food, which in winter prominently feature the kills of wolves, and the kills and camps of people. In February of 2000, I went up the Peel with my teachers William and Mary Teya to their winter trapping camp at Road River. It took 4 days for raven to find us after we arrived. When William got a cow and calf moose during our stay, the skulls were placed on the roof of a shed for raven to finish cleaning the bits of meat we had not been able to cut off for our own use.
The story of raven and his wooden jaw known in Tsii geh tchic as well as way south on Skeena. The location this occurred, it is said, is right where they later built the Catholic Church in Tsii geh tchic. Stories are localized on the land. In summer fish camp on the Peel River, we returned to camp one day to find raven mess on the fish cutting table. As she cleaned the white splotches off the wood, Mary told the story of raven’s bride, and how she was similarly despoiled by her handsome new husband, the ever active raven. I was told that you can’t harm raven, even if he breaks into your smoke house and steals some of your drying fish. It would bring bad weather, a serious threat in the low Arctic country where the Gwich’in dwell.
Gulls have an important place in the Gwich’in world. Gulls are not year round residents in Gwich’in country, coming with break-up and leaving when the country starts to freeze up. I was told that for Gwich’in, gulls are more important than eagle. Gulls are associated with the milder weather and easier times of summer fishing. In fish camp, the fish offal is to be spilled on the sandbars or gravel bars near, but not in, the river, for the gulls to clean up. Visitors to the country such as myself and a company of French paddlers who stayed a day or two at Alestine Andre’s 2000 Tree River camp on the Mackenzie, are carefully instructed in this matter. The cleaning role of the gulls is much appreciated, and may help to avoid confrontations with bears at the fishing sites. Two different places are named “gull lake” Tidigeh van, one a large lake up a tributary creek emptying into the Delta near Inuvik, and the other on a flat beside the Peel, not far from the Road River camp. After the gulls leave, I was told, raven takes over clean-up duties, and takes care of the spilled fish offal. Gulls can be a nuisance in the summer season, feeding on and spoiling fish left to air dry before being put in the smokehouse. In one camp I was at, fish netting was draped over the air drying fish, and a light fire lit where the smoke would blow toward the fish as gull deterrents. But even if the gulls spoil fish, they can’t be harmed, or bad weather will come.
As with Kaska, the sometimes pestiferous whiskey jacks are not harmed by Gwich’in. I watched while Mary carefully freed a bird who had entangled herself in the netting intended to deter gulls, a rather delicate process. The same (or another) whisky jack later slipped into the smokehouse from time to time, snacking on the drying whitefish and coney. It was not molested.
A last bird that stood out to me in Gwich’in country were the “black ducks”, surf scoters and common scoters who frequent the Peel and Mackenzie in summer. Black ducks are good to eat, and greatly appreciated when you can get them.

In closing, birds are salient actors in our worlds, readily available for symbolic interpretation, good for food, feathers and down used in material culture, associated with seasonal cycles of change and with specific habitats. The ever present raven has been a commensal of humans in northern regions of North America since people began to inhabit these lands. People carefully observe ravens, and ravens carefully observe people. Ravens many lead human hunters to game, and human hunters provide a reliable source of food for ravens throughout the cold dark winters. Raven’s intelligence and human like antics provide rich food for comedic analogy and moral thought. Raven is also powerful, seeing and knowing things humans do not, capable of transformation and of generosity.
Birds provide seasonal information, may be crests or personal sources of power, and are valued sources of food (especially grouse, ptarmigan, and various ducks, geese and swans, though many other birds were also eaten, such as cranes, and even loons in some places, though others consider them inappropriate to eat). As sources of food, certain birds can be proscribed for the young, or for pregnant women, such as loons who are “awkward” birds because they cannot walk on land. Or instead can be eaten with intent to invoke their qualities by those at these critical junctures in their growth and development, as the Witsuwit’en practice of feeding young boys ptarmigan to make them swift and agile on snowshoes.

Spring and Oolachans

Oolachan net at Fishery Bay, 1980

Equinox time again...the spring equinox always seems to look forward, while the Fall perhaps look back. As the snows melt and anticipation of spring rises, the air is fresh and wet and full of smells and birdsong, I think about oolachan time. Oolachan, also spelled eulachon (Thalicthys pacificus) are anadromous smelt, rich in oils. In coastal Alaska the same fish are prized, and often termed “Hooligans”. Their arrival in the estuaries of rivers along the coasts of British Columbia and Alaska was widely anticipated and welcomed, as they brought an abundant source of fresh and rich food at a time in the year when stored foods were diminished and declining in quality, and hunting was extremely difficult due to deep wet soft snow. Many years ago my then husband and young daughter canoed to Fishery Bay on the Nass Estuary. The Nass (the name apparently means “belly” and comes from Tlingit) drew people from all the surrounding nations at the time of oolachan harvest in mid March to early April. Cedar dugout canoes made the trip from Haida Gwaii. Tsimshian and Nisga’a converged on their fish camps. Inland Gitksan and Witsuwit’en walked long trails known as “grease trails” through deep melting snows to the head of canoe navigation to come to harvest and trade for grease, the rendered oil that was (and is) the most prized product of the little fish. I was told they carried so much that each leg of the trail had to be walked three times to carry the goods to the coast and then back again with grease and fish. When Allen and Rose and I visited the fish camp of Charlie and Eunice Swanson when Rose was about 3, Eunice told us a story....she said that spring salmon and the oolachan had an argument about who was the saviour of the people....she laughed and said she forgot who won.

At the fish camp in Fishery bay the clouds of gulls wheel and fly in every direction, startled into the air by the slightest sound. They are attracted to the fish run, and to the fish meal left over after the grease is rendered. There is plenty of food for the birds. When we visited there some 30 years ago, people harvested some of these fat oolachan fed gulls along with the fish....I had never heard of anyone eating gulls before (nor since), but apparently they are quite palatable when they have been feeding on oolachan. People also hunted seals that came to follow the spawning oolachans.

The three pole frames for air-drying oolachans (digit) are conspicuous features of the oolachan camps. The long hand knotted trawls (long cone shaped nets) hung to dry after use are another conspicuous feature of the camps. These nets were formerly made of nettle fibre twine, and apparently took a year to make....no small amount of labour, given the need to harvest many mature tall nettle stalks and process them into fibre, spin the twine, and then knot the long fine net. It is fortunate that the rich soils fertilized by fish meal around the camp are excellent places to grow good quality nettles...and the investment in time to make the net would be repaid with tons of nutritious fish good for one’s own family use as fresh, dried, and smoked fish, and as fish oil. The fish and oil are valued and valuable for trading and for feasting (potlatching), where consumption and sharing of the grease adds stature to the Chief’s name and House.

Today walking in the ravine in Edmonton, the weather was fresh, and the melting snow and moist air reminded me of northwest BC in March. I found a tall fireweed stalk from last year, which had retted enough over the winter, and which was moist enough to work, and twisted a length of string while I walked. I used to do this with nettle stalks from by our barn when I lived in northwest BC. At the Museum of Civilization last month, I wasn’t able to see the nettle cord net they have in their collection, but I did see two spreading dogbane bana or large dipnets, and a couple of hanks of prepared fibre from dogbane(Apocynum androsimaefolium, related to Indian hemp) , called lekx in Gitksan, ready to twist into twine for netmaking. The dogbane cord in the nets was so well made and uniform I never would have believed it to be locally made cordage if the tag and accompanying fieldnotes hadn’t explicitly identified the material of the cord.

Seasonal knowledge and knowledge of seasonal cycles is vital in traditional life; being able to predict the timing of the spring high tides that will bring the life-giving oolachans was important business that could make a life or death difference to people’s ability to survive the year. Knowing when to start out from inland areas more than 100 kilometres away by trail was an exacting business. One way of coordinating this seasonal round of harvest and trade was by traditional phenological knowledge, such as the song of the robin which to Gitksan means that the steelhead (milit) will be moving in the rivers and can be caught. Another way is by the use of “calendrical sites” where the shift in location of the rising sun is tracked over a period of weeks at a known site to determine when it is time to depart the winter camp to go down river to meet the salmon (the “footprints” on the Sam Goozley territory, a Witsuwit’en clan territory are one such site). Talking to a colleague of mine at Tofino on Vancouver Island a couple of weeks ago I inquired about whether oolachan were on the coast. She replied that there were no longer oolachan runs into rivers on the west coast of Vancouver Island, but that the herring were in. The roe of spawning herring was another important seasonal resource on the coast, and I recall the crunchy salty taste of the roe with fondness.

Equinox...moving into the bright half of the year.

Of White Deer and Spirit Bears-

Left Image Deer Dances (watercolour by LM Johnson)
Right image Gitksan spindle with spun mountain goat wool purchased by Harlan Smith in Gitwingak in the mid 1920's artifact VII-C-1302, Canadian Museum of Civilization (photo by LM Johnson 2010)

A news clip my sister sent me started me thinking. She forwarded me a link to a video clip from Public Television in Wisconsin about white deer. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=inwi10s22a3q81f
March 26, 2009 #722 White Deer “ghosts of the forest”)
...for many years I have rendered images of a white doe as a personal spiritual symbol, and I have read in neo-pagan literature that the white stag is symbolic of spiritual transition or connection between worlds....but I had never heard of actual material white deer. Now I learn that there is a herd of white deer living in northern Wisconsin, and that they apparently figure in both Native American legend and the accounts of explorers, suggesting persistence of a relatiely large number of free living albino deer in a particular region over a substantial period of time. The author of the text of a recent book on these remarkable deer “White Deer” commented in the interview that though visible to natural predators over the 7 months of the summer season [and in the lower 48, these may not be as abundant as they once were], the deer are well camophlaged in the winter and are protected from human hunters by state law. The deer are described as looking like ghosts or spirits.

That started me thinking about a somewhat parallel case in Coastal British Columbia of the Kermode or “spirit” bear, a population of white bears [biogically, black bears, Ursus americanus] which exist in relatively large numbers on Princess Royal Island in Coast Tsimshian country, and extend on to the surrounding mainland. Ths Tsimshian name for them is simply moskgm'ol "white bear."
The late photographer Myron Kozak of Hazelton published a post card in the 1980’s of a kermode [also spelled Kermodei] bear in the woods near Hazelton. Western Canada Wilderness featured a campaign to save the home of the spirit bear about 10 years ago. The bears are legally protected in British Columbia. Like the Wisconsin deer, a single family may have naturally pigmented and white members, so as a biological population really includes normally pigmented members and a relatively high percentage of white animals.

Why such “spirit animal” populations should persist in specific areas over long periiods of time is intriguing. Kermode bears figure in Tsimshian narratives just as the white deer figure in the stories of the Native Americans who share their homeland....I began to think that the unusual appearance of these white animals impresses people and makes us think of spiritual connections.....perceiving the animals as extraordinary, then, perhaps causes them to have a special status for all, causing indigenous hunters to refrain from hunting them in the same way that contemporary state and provincial laws also prohibit hunting. And we are all enriched by the existence of these elusive spirit animals.

I started this blog a month ago now. Since then I’ve had occasion to think about whiteness and spiritual power in animals which are normally white as well. I was just at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec, looking at Northwest Coast weaving and spinning from 100 years ago. The animal that was used as a source of wool before the advent of European and American traders was the mountain goat, and I was priviledged to see beautiful and skillfully spun mountain goat wool yarn, still on the spindle as it was made in the mid 1920’s, and a lovely ball of two ply yarn ready to weave with. A number of burden straps were woven with mountain goat wool, combined in these straps with dyes sheep’s wool and commercial string obtained from the traders. Mountain goats were formerly an important source of food, and part of the annual cycles of Gitksan and other people dwelling on the coast. It was the mountain goat who taught the Haisla and Henaksiala to hunt according to Chief Kenneth Hall....and their wool was valued for weaving chief’s blankets, and the useful and versatile burden straps. The mountain goat also taught the Gitksan about respect for animals when they were abused in the days of Temlaham as Haxbagwootxw, Ken Harris narrated in translation of traditional narratives from his House. The survivor of the goats’ revenge was lent the skin and hooves of the goat kid he had saved, and the power chant “let it be scree” to help him return safely from the crag and bring the goats’ message to the remaining people of Temlaham. This summer I hope to replicate a traditional spindle and try my hand at creating beautiful fine yarn from their fur. With due reverence and respect to the goats.


Sources:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=inwi10s22a3q81f
March 26, 2009 #722 White Deer Boulder Junction Wisc. “ghosts of the forest”

In the Manituwish/ Waters area and Boulder junction- north central Wisconsin
people feed white deer and protect them, and there are also laws that protect them.

there are also white deer in New York
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_deer#White_Deer
which are protected on a former military reservation.

A 2 min 15 sec video of a Kermode bear posted - 12 Feb 2007 - entitled
The rare White Kermode Bear aka Spirit Bear.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vspuhFs5lZE
In the video they claim that the Tsimsian say the Kermode bear have been left by the Creator as a reminder of the times when the world was white and cold; the video interprets this as a a 10,000 year old memory [since deglaciation]

http://www.savespiritbear.org/project/spiritbear/about_bear/index.html
Valhalla Wilderness Society website

from Steve’s Menagerie
http://users.aristotle.net/~swarmack/kermode.html

Harris, Ken. 1974. Visitors Who Never Left, the Origin of the People of Damelahamid. Vancouver: UBC Press.

For more information about Gitksan artifacts in the Canadian Museum of Civilization, please see their on-line catalog in their website at http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/explore/collections/collections

For images from my recent research, please contact Curator Leslie Tepper at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, Gatineau, Quebec, Canada.

Midwinter Musings

As we approach Midwinter, the winter Solstice and Christmas tide, botanical symbolism is prominent in our holiday decorations and in traditional carols of the season. We place evergreens in our homes, bedecked with shining ornaments, we hang wreaths of evergreens, and perhaps holly on our doors. We hang kissing balls of mistletoe over doors where they are sure to catch the unwary....

Holly red and mistletoe white.... this is the carol sung by the little animals in an English children’s book about Little Grey Rabbit and her friends, and includes the two most iconic plants of an English Christmas.

One of my favourite carols when I was growing up is “The Holly and the Ivy” which first made me aware of the botanical symbolism in our traditional Christmas celebrations. I read in my songbook that the holly is the male, and the ivy female, and they both indicate fertility and continuation of life in the middle of winter through their evergreen foliage. The carol begins:

The holly and the ivy,
when they are both full grown
of all the trees that are in the wood,
the holly is the crown

In a fascinating analysis of the symbolism of the Unicorn Tapestry series entitled “The Holly King, the Oak King and the Unicorn” (1986, Harper & Row), John Williamson says that the holly was associated with Midwinter or Yuletide, and that Yule was symbolic of death and rebirth. He connects the symbolism to the worship of the sun in pre-Christian times, and comments that the Christians took the time of Saturnalia and the date of Sol Invictus [the death and rebirth of the sun at the winter solstice] as a time to symbolize the death and birth of Christ (1986:178). And the green boughs with bright berries also were part of the decoration for Saturnalia. Apparently the oak and the oak king symbolized the waxing of the year, and the holly the waning half. Holly itself was considered a magical and potent plant in Roman times, as recorded by Pliny (Williamson 1986:62). Once Christianity arose, holly also took on the symbolism of Christ, whose death leads to rebirth in a state of divinity, and which offers humankind victory over death through everlasting life. A later verse of the carol says-

The holly bears a berry,
as red as any blood
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
to do poor sinners good.

The redness of the berries evoking the blood of sacrifice is one obvious connection. The thorniness of their leaves also evokes the crown of thorns, and the pure white of the blossoms the purity and chastity of Mary, mother of Jesus, as we see in the following verse:

The holly bears a blossom
As white as lily flower
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
For to be our sweet Saviour.

What of the evergreen tree and its green aromatic boughs? The association of evergreens like fir and spruce trees with midwinter, Yuletide or Christmas is a Germanic connection. [There are no fir or spruce trees in England; the only evergreen conifers there are yew trees, Scotch pine, and spindly junipers]. The nineteenth century German carol lauds the evergreen:

O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
wie treu sind deine Blätter!
Du grünst nicht nur
zur Sommerzeit,
Nein auch im Winter, wenn es schneit.
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
wie treu sind deine Blätter!

a literal translation reads:
O Christmas [fir] tree, o Christmas [fir] tree
How loyal are your leaves/needles!
You're green not only
in the summertime,
No, also in winter when it snows.
O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree
How loyal are your leaves/needles!
[words and translation from http://german.about.com/library/blotannenb.htm]

This modern song is derived from an older traditional German song ”Oh Fir Tree”, versions of which can be dated to the 16th century :

O Dannebom, o Dannebom,
du drägst 'ne grönen Twig,
den Winter, den Sommer,
dat doert de leve Tid.

(http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/Notes_On_Carols/o_christmas_tree-notes.htm)
It has several more verses, but as I don’t read German I won’t include them here.

The evergreen tree didn’t join English Midwinter festivities until German Prince Albert brought a tree for his bride Queen Victoria in 1841.

And what of mistletoe? Mistletoe is evergreen, yellowish green, and forms masses in the (deciduous) oak trees which remain leafy when the oak’s own leaves fall. It’s parasitic, sending strands into the wood of its host. The berries are small and whitish. Apparently these masses of yellowish green are the “golden boughs” which gave Frazer’s famous 19th century tome on world religions its name (Williamson 1986: 59). Mistletoe was associated with the sacred oaks of the druids....and a great deal of 18th century fantasy about Druids shows white robed silver bearded holy men with golden sickles cutting mistletoe for mysterious rites. Apparently Pliny is the source of the white robed druids with golden sickles cutting mistletoe, recently amusingly cartooned by Hergé in Asterix and Obelix.

“Mistletoe and Druids From Pliny - Natural History:

XVI/95: The druids -- that is what the Gauls call their magicians -- hold nothing more sacred than mistletoe and the tree on which it is growing, provided that it is an oak. Groves of oaks are chosen even for their own sake, and the magicians perform no rites without using the foliage of these trees... Anything growing on oak trees they think to have been sent down from heaven, and to be a signal that that particular tree has been chosen by a god. Mistletoe is, however, rather seldom found on an oak, and when it is discovered it is gathered with great ceremony, particularly on the ninth day of the moon... because it is then rising in strength and not yet half its full size. Hailing the moon in a native word that means "healing all things", they prepare a ritual sacrifice and banquet beneath a tree and bring up two white bulls, whose horns are bound for the first time on this occasion. A priest arrayed in white vestments climbs the tree and with a golden sickle cuts down the mistletoe, which is caught in a white cloak. Then finally they kill the victims, praying to the god to render his gift propitious to those on whom he has bestowed it.
[URL = Natural History]”

(retrieved from http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/norsegodspictures/p/mistletoe.htm)

Mistletoe also figures in the Norse legend about the death of the god Baldur, second son of Odin....After a disturbing foreboding dream of Baldur’s death, Odin’s wife Frigga had sought to protect the bright twin from all harm by gaining the oath of all things not to harm him....and celebrated his immunity by inviting all to try to hurt him. Weapons fell aside powerless...but Loki, the cunning evil one, took mistletoe....which had escaped Frigga’s notice because of its weakness and insignificance.....and turned it into a dart, which he placed in the hand of Baldur’s blind twin Hodur ....who threw the dart at Loki’s urging, and slew Baldur believing nothing could harm him. Thus Baldur died. (from the Prose Edda, Icelandic Saga in the Wikipedia article on Baldr and the retelling in Thomas Bullfinch’s Mythology http://www.usefultrivia.com/mythology/death_of_baldur.html).

And how did it come to be the plant in the Kissing Bundle? This I don’t actually know. A website on mistletoe lore http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/norsegodspictures/p/mistletoe.htm suggests that the mistletoe berries were Frigga’s tears, and that after Baldur’s restoration to life, the plant then became symbolic of love... but the pathway to English folk use is not obvious. The same website contains other snippets about mistletoe:

“Mistletoe in Dickens Pickwick Papers:

"From the centre of the ceiling of this kitchen, old Wardle had just suspended with his own hands a huge branch of mistletoe, and this same branch of mistletoe instantaneously gave rise to a scene of general and most delightful struggling and confusion; in the midst of which, Mr. Pickwick, with a gallantry that would have done honour to a descendant of Lady Tollimglower herself, took the old lady by the hand, led her beneath the mystic branch, and saluted her in all courtesy and decorum."

Mistletoe in Washington Irving Christmas Eve:

"Here were kept up the old games of hoodman blind, shoe the wild mare, hot cockles, steal the white loaf, bob apple, and snap dragon; the Yule-clog and Christmas candle were regularly burnt, and the mistletoe with its white berries hung up, to the imminent peril of all the pretty housemaids."’

So- I wish you all the merriest of Midwinter Holidays. Merry Christmas, Good Yuletide, Best Wishes for New Years, and happy Chanukkah, festival of lights [tonight is day 6 of the miracle]. A light in the darkness of midwinter as we approach the Solstice, and green evergreen boughs as a token of rebirth and new growth in the springtime.

Reflections on seeing a coyote cross the path

Coyote looks back

Tsoska Dzidze Whisky Jack's Berries

Yesterday afternoon as I walked in the ravine, a sleek grey and white coyote ran across the meadow in front of me and disappeared into the trees. Coyotes are beautiful animals, but are caricatured in Western cartoons (Wile E. Coyote versus the Roadrunner), made ridiculous, stupid and ugly. In Indigenous narratives, coyote is a trickster, who is smart but often outsmarts him [or even her-] self. I think of the wonderful coyote stories of Native American author Thomas King, and the allusions to coyote found in Hunn’s Nichi Wana, the Big River. Coyote’s opportunism is seen as both intelligent and competent, and self serving at the same time. Coyotes are nothing if not adaptable. living easily on the peripheries of human settlement, elusive and quick witted. Coyotes are predators, feeding on rabbits and other smaller animals, and also take advantage of berries. I saw a lot of saskatoon berry filled scat in the ravine this summer.

In Western thought the concepts of “predator” and “vermin” [aka “varmint”] carry negative connotations....the big bad wolf and the sweet innocent defenseless deer. Carnivores (other than us) are bad, and herbivores [unless rodents] are good. The rodent thing is an interesting one; we are generally fine with squirrels and chipmunks in Western culture [which typically live in the woods and not in our homes or outbuildings, and don’t spoil our food stores or crops]. Beavers are fine too (unless they are blocking culverts or damming fishing streams or cutting down fruit trees along the creek). Rats and mice, however are not fine. Rats carry the plague, and are depicted as evil “underworld” creatures in cartoons. Rats are the target of extermination programs in poor urban neighbourhoods in places like New York. [In the mid 1990’s in Aotearoa/New Zealand Maori biologist Mere Roberts roused a remarkable amount of negative attention trying to defend the kiori, a small rat which was a traditional Maori food. The label “rat” carried the day, and programs to eliminate this endangered cultural animal from protected areas continued.] And in less urban settings, gophers are definitely not fine. Reading the draft of a book on environmental history by my Athabasca University colleague Donald Wetherall a few weeks ago, I was startled to find that in Alberta there had been a bounty on gophers as a “predator” in the early 20th century. In my biology classes I learned that a predator preys on other animals, usually herbivores. Apparently in Alberta a predator can prey on roots, if people take exception to its foraging habits.

I was also distressed to find that there was a bounty on magpies, intelligent and beautiful cousins of jays and of crows, birds with lovely black and white markings, and iridescent blues and greens, with long graceful tails. They too were “predators” because they include the eggs and young of other species of birds in their diet, and are scavengers of carrion and well as eating a wide range of other foods. The bounty was paid per pair of magpie legs, and thousands of pairs were collected. Enough to sicken me....but it helped me understand why the people of Alberta today continue to denigrate magpies, often calling them “aerial rats”. (The contrast with the beautiful song celebrating magpies written by Donovan Leach in the mid ’60’s is noteworthy; it goes---
The magpie is a most illustrious bird
black and blue and white-
I would that I had feathers three
black and blue and white

The magpie is a most royal bird
dwells in a diamond tree
one brought sorrow and one brought joy
sorrow and joy for me

I saw the gentle magpie birds
in a dusky yestereve
one brought sorrow and one brought joy
and sooner than soon did leave

I have known this song, and sung it, since I was a teenager. I was thrilled to come to Alberta where these beautiful and intelligent birds are common place). Crows too were bountied and persecuted. Their depredations on grain were balanced by their consumption of rodents that also preyed on grain, as some farmers tried to point out, but the anti-crow and magpie faction prevailed.

The history of discomfort with crows and ravens is an ancient one in Europe. The birds are black, like night, intelligent, unfathomable, quintessentially adaptable, and associated with carrion, thus with death and with the despoilation of corpses. The Norse God Odin had two ravens, wisdom and thought...and they were also associated with death in battle. Edgar Allen Poe’s uncanny poem the raven evokes a creepy aura of death and fate. The fantasy author JRR Tolkien similarly casts crows and wolves with an aura of evil in the Lord of the Rings.

Yet in the Northwest Coast, Raven is a powerful being, laughable but also recognized as a creative force, the trickster creator who liberated daylight along with many other adventures. Raven is one of the two moieties of the Haida and the Tlingit, and one of four Clans of the Nisga’a on the Nass River. Txeemsim, the raven, lived along the Nass River which is also Txeemsim, and many of his stories are localized there. Raven is frequently depicted on Crest items and blankets and on totem poles in that region.

The ways that people relate to and conceive of animals, are shaped by culture and means of livelihood. Hunters, herders, and farmers all see things differently. Those who separate humans, and culture, from animals, and nature, are less tolerant of fellow travellers. In European folk-lore and contemporary popular culture such as cartoons, predators and raptors get bad press for the most part. Reynard the Fox is a sly and cunning animal who grabs the grey goose, and the wolf is a leering evil creature who poses a risk to benighted travellers, or to Sonya the duck in “Peter and the Wolf”. “Chicken hawks” were formerly reviled, and shot on sight. (Our attitude toward “chicken hawks” has shifted somewhat now that many of us in North America are no longer farmers; we made substantial efforts as a society to help the peregrine falcon recover from the brink of extinction due to pesticide use).

While staying with my Gwich’in teachers on the Peel and Mackenzie Rivers, I witnessed very different attitudes and senses of the same species. Although the town ravens in Inuvik ravage unprotected garbage bags and wake one with their croaking and scuffling, on the land people leave food for the ravens, and recognize their role in cleaning the land. The intelligence and inherently comical character of the raven are both recognized in traditional narratives throughout the North. Raven is another trickster, like coyote, shaping the world almost by mistake, and often being brought up short by his own scheming.

In the Northwest Coast region as I noted above, raven is widely credited with bringing daylight to human kind. Versions of this story are found in Raven Steals the Sun by Bill Reid and Robert Bringhurst (Haida) and Wii Gyet Wanders On (Bookbuilders of Ksan; Gitksan). Other stories of raven highlight his foolish greed, as in the Witsuwit’en story of Estes (their name for this trickster figure) and the swans; he tries to trap too many at once by tying their legs together, and they lift him into the air....ultimately he falls, embedding himself in a rock near Francois Lake, and he has to rely on lynx’s rough tongue to wear away the rock to free him. Lynx’s lovely ear tufts are hair pulled out by Estes in payment. (Stories of the Carrier Indians 1977). At times Raven (‘Wii Gyet with his tattered old Gwiis Gaak or raven blanket) is outsmarted by his hubris, as when he taunts a stump while his bear meat is roasting, and wakes to find the anticipated feast under the spreading rootwad of the stump, which has slipped down to cover Wii Gyet’s bounty.

The wolf is seen as a good hunter in northern Dene cultures, human-like in its skill and as provider for its family. Their emnity to dogs is not appreciated, but my teacher Mary’s Auntie Mary was scolded for shooting a wolf for no reason when she was a young woman. That inappropriate behaviour is likely to have consequences.

Gwich’in and Kaska leave food out for ravens and whisky-jacks (also known as Canada or Grey Jays; whisky-jack is derived from the Cree name for the bird). They have a proscription on harming these birds or gulls; I was told if you harmed a raven or a gull, it would make bad weather come. I watched while Mary Teya painstakingly freed a whisky-jack from fish netting she had placed over her drying fish to keep the gulls from spoiling it. I also watched her leave out the skull of a moose on top of a shed, after the meat had been cut off it, so the whisky-jacks and ravens could clean off the last of the meat. Auntie Alice, one of my Kaska teachers speaks fondly of “uskacha”, the whisky jack, and the fruits of Arctous rubra, the red bear berry, are whisky jack’s berries.

Gulls, I was told, help to clean the land....they are emblematic of summer for Gwich’in, and I was told were more significant locally than eagles. I was told to spill the fish offal on the sandbar for the gulls to eat, not put it in the water. The gulls cleanse the land, and also remove the guts and wastes that might tempt a bear to frequent the camp. Various lakes are named for the gull Tidigeh Van. (Once the gulls return southward, raven takes over clean-up duty for fall fisheries.)

When I was growing up, gulls were associated with garbage dumps, and though beautiful, were not especially valued. To the Mormons, however, gulls saved them from a plague of Mormon crickets which locust like threatened their first grain crops, and there is a statue to the seagull in Salt Lake City.

Our own culture has some ambivalence about wolves and raptors in the present, as magnificent emblems of wildness, beauty and freedom. This plays out in the complexities of endangered species restoration of wolves in Wyoming and Montana, and the immediate re-institution of a hunting season on wolves once their population has recovered....and the immediate response of the Natural Resource Defense Committee to rally wilderness and nature lovers to the defense of the wolves through political means. Whether we can respect other beings on their own terms and leave them space to live is yet an unanswered question.

Hallowe’en, Samhain and the Day of the Dead

Besides Thanksgiving, the other holiday in modern North America in which pumpkins figure is Halloween. Pumpkins have become iconic of Halloween. Carved, hollowed out pumpkins with faces and candles inside gleam on many porches and window sills on the night of October 31. These days you can buy tiny orange decorative gourds that look like miniature pumpkins for table decorations, and strings of orange pumpkin lights to trim your hedge or house front. The orange colour of the pumpkins is paired with the black of night time to make the emblematic black-and-orange of Halloween of 20th and early 21st century America. Black cats and bats are other ethnobiological elements of Halloween.
The night is configured as scary, a time of evil forces- witches, ghosts and a host of more recent evils like vampires- but contained by play-acting. We pretend to be scary/scared, and enjoy the pretense. It becomes a time for children, a way perhaps of taming fears of death and darkness by turning them into fantasy and games. Halloween is an excuse to have fun. It is a time of inversion, where people dress in costumes even at places of work, indulging in fantasy and collectively evading the norms of humdrum respectable daily roles. Children go house to house and are given candy...something that happens on no other day of the year.

Why are pumpkins, cats and bats associated with Halloween? For years I had heard vaguely that jack-o-lanterns were originally hollowed out turnip lanterns, but in North America, people switched to using pumpkins, which were readily available and already hollow if you cleaned out the seeds. Finally my partner and I were able to track a reliable source that actually documents turnip lanterns: The Hallowed Eve: Dimensions of Culture in a Calendar Festival in Northern Ireland by Jack Santino, 1998, University Press of Kentucky, which discusses turnip lanterns on pp. 49-50:
“Rough lanterns hollowed out of turnips, having a lighted candle inside, and holes cut in the turnip for eyes, nose and mouth, and carried by a string handle was deemed sufficient to scare people out of their wits.” (Santino 1998: 49, quotation from a fieldwork notebook, of a collector for the Irish Folklore Commission.)
A black and white photograph of such a turnip lantern labelled “turnip lantern, Bangor, 1991,” is found on page 50 of the book, and can be viewed by following the link below to the Amazon.com preview and scrolling to page 50
http://books.google.ca/books?id=6RvKav1WFmgC&lpg=PP11&ots=8qJ4UwvQqw&dq=turnip%20jack-o'lantern&lr=&pg=PA50#v=onepage&q=&f=false

In Halloween, Fun and Spooky Images from the Past (Pictorial America) (Lantos 2009) the author asserts “The tradition of carving pumpkins originated from the legend of ‘Stingy Jack’. Jack was doomed to wander endlessly in the dark nights with only a burning coal ember in a turnip [that had been hollowed out] for light.” [No. 7, page 9]
This source also asserts that people carved scary faces into turnips and potatoes in Ireland to keep “jack-o-the-lantern” away. [No. 8. page 10]

This source is : Lantos, James 2009. Halloween, Fun and Spooky Images from the Past, Applewood’s Pictorial America, Vintage Images of America’s Living Past. Bedford, Mass: Applewood books

http://books.google.ca/books?id=JfFGdhilmKUC&lpg=PA4&ots=faDZnl4mko&dq=turnip%20jack-o'lantern&lr=&pg=PA4#v=onepage&q=&f=false

My economic botany book (Economic Botany, Plants in Our World by Beryl Brintnall Simpson and Molly Conner-Ogorzaly, McGraw Hill Publishing 1986) informs me that turnips are the roots of Brassica campestris. Swede turnips or rutabagas are the roots of a related species Brassica napus. Simpson and Connor-Ogorzaly (1986:226-227) suggest that this species is a hybrid between cabbages (Brassica oleracea) and B. campestris, the white turnip. Neaps is a medieval word for this vegetable. I was surprised to find that Simpson and Connor-Ogorzaly also include a figure of two turnip lanterns, accompanied by the following caption (figure 8-17, p. 227):
“The first Jack O’Lantern was carved out of a turnip, The Irish, who started our Halloween tradition explain it this way. One night Satan came to a local pub to claim the soul of Jack, a drunken miserly fellow. Jack suggested that they “have one for the road,” but when the Devil turned himself into a sixpence to pay the barkeeper, Jack grabbed the coin and put it in his wallet. After some bickering, Jack agreed to set the Devil free with the promise that he be left alone for another year. Each year thereafter, Jack managed to outwit the Devil. Finally, Jack grew old and died of natural causes. Heaven refused to admit him, and the Devil was not about to offer his adversary a resting place so Jack’s soul was stuck between Heaven and Hell. Satan gave Jack a burning coal to light his way, and jack fashioned a lantern from a turnip he was eating to hold it.”
In Northern Irish Halloween customs, there was also apparently an association with cabbages, which doesn’t seem to have found its way to this side of the Atlantic :
“A piece of testimony from 1943 describes Halloween pranks as a means of social redistribution as well as a way of publicly calling attention to greedy and miserly individuals : “An old custom that still prevails was the stealing and throwing of cabbages at doors. The cabbages were generally taken from those who were most greedy for the goods of this world. It is suggested that these cabbages were thrown at the doors of those who had none and could not afford to get them.” (UCD)” (Santino p. 49)
It is generally held that the origin of the carved pumpkin jack-o-lantern in North America was an adaptation by Irish immigrants to newly available plant materials in the 19th century. The iconography of Halloween in America also includes stooks of dried corn stalks, again showing the association of Halloween, as Thanksgiving, to the harvest of the major crops of the Americas adopted by European settlers to New England. Apples are also a part of the Halloween tradition; I remember bobbing for apples as a girl.
Reading various references on Samhain and Halloween garnered through Google Scholar, I see one describing bobbing for apples as a remnant of a once serious water ordeal.... That quintessential European fruit, borrowed as the symbolic fruit consumed by Eve and Adam from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis, which figures in various Greek myths [the Golden Apples of the Sun] and which is symbolic of all good “Mom and apple pie”. The author writes:
"There are two main apple rites that survive; one involves ordeal by water and the other ordeal by fire. The act of going through water to obtain apples could be the remnants of the Druidic rite symbolizing the passing through water to Emain Abhlach or Apple-Isle. Apple-Isle is where Manannan Mac Lir prepared the Otherworld feast for the eternal enjoyment of those who have passed on. The Ordeal by Water survives in Scotland in such Samhain traditions as “Dookin’ for Aipples.” A large wooden tub is filled with water and set in the middle of the floor into which apples are placed. The master of ceremonies has a porridge stick or some other equivalent of the Druidic wand, and with this he keeps the apples in motion. Each participant get three tries, and if unsuccessful, must wait until the others have had their turn. If a participant captures an apple, it is either eaten or kept for use in another of the divination rites.
The modern form of the Ordeal by Fire is known as “The Aipple and the Can’le.” A small rod of wood is taken and suspended horizontally from the ceiling by a cord. After it is fairly balanced, a lit candle is set on one end and an apple at the other. The rod is then set whirling around. Each of the company takes turns leaping up trying to bite the apple without singing his or her hair. Touching either the rod or apple with the hands is not permitted.” (Weinberger, Stacey. A Druid Missal-Any Samhain Y.R. XL, Vol. 18 Number 7 Oct. 29th, 2002 c.e.) S Weinberger - orgs.carleton.edu
When I was a girl, we simply filled a wash tub with water, and tried to bite an apple, generally resulting in lots of splashing and laughter (and few successfully bitten apples). I can’t really remember exactly where this occurred...possibly a Halloween party for girl scouts.
We learned in school that Halloween is a contraction of All Hallows Eve, and is the night before All Saints Day, November 1. November 2 is All Souls Day, or, in Mexico and Hispanic areas of North America, the Day of the Dead [el Día de los Muertos]. In Mexico when I was there as a university student in the late 1960’s, you could buy sugar skulls with names on them at the Sanborn’s restaurant, and there were festive gatherings of families in cemeteries, sharing food with their dead relatives...a communion of the living and dead.
I remembered marigold flowers as associated with the Day of the Dead. Floral offerings are very important in Mesoamerican cultures, deriving from indigenous religions traditions. Looking up confirming evidence for my memory, I found the following in a blog linked to a Mexican tourist site:
"While English North Americans celebrate Halloween with costumes and candy, ancient tradition in Mexico calls for family reunions with the dead. For three days, from October 31st to November 2nd, specific rites are observed faithfully. They occur in the home and in the cemetery amid bouquets of flowers, banquets of bread, and ghostly candies ornamented with skulls.
These candies are called Muertos, and are given out much the same as parents dispense candy bars and chewing gum to costumed children demanding trick or treat. But among Mexicans, the dead are considered supernatural guardians. Not only do the dead visit during this time, but they also enjoy their favorite food and drink, called "ofrendas," lavishly laid out on home altars and shrines.
In the mountains of Oaxaca, there is a much deeper meaning to the festivity, which begins weeks, perhaps months, before the ordained days, with the collecting of the special dishes and treats which the departed spirits loved most when alive: the best chocolate for mole: fresh eggs and flour for the bread, Pan de Muerto; fruits and vegetables; even cigarettes and mescal. Lux Perpetua votive candles flame day and night, illuminating the decorative wild marigold flowers, Flor de Muertos, which adorn the altars and the graves.
And everywhere, La Calaca, the skeleton carved from wood and dressed for a party, watches with amusement." ( from A journey with La Calaca- A Day of the Dead Experience by Bill Begalke)
Published on January 1, 2000 by Bill Begalke © 2000 To access the article and images, see
http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/382-a-journey-with-la-calaca-a-day-of-the-dead-experience

In his Zapotec Natural History, ethnobiologist Eugene Hunn also describes the floral offerings of wild marigold “Flor de Muerte” in San Juan Gbëë, a village in Oaxaca near the place Begalke had his 1999 Day of the Dead experience (Hunn 2008:201).
In neo-Pagan circles, Samhain [an ancient Celtic holy day usually pronounced Sowan, to rhyme with rowan], is the eve of the New Year, and a time of especial potency as the veils between the worlds of the living and dead, or of the mundane and faerie, are thin. In the Reclaiming Wiccan tradition, rituals are held to commemorate the dead and this is one focus of the Samhain rites.
It is clear that, whatever relationship contemporary neo-Pagan Samhain rituals may have with ancient cultural practices, the eve of All Saints Day has been conceived as a time of risk and potency in the Celtic world and I think this is how our contemporary Halloween came to be associated with ghosts [spirits of the dead] and malevolent witches...and their familiars, owls and black cats. The traditional Child Ballad “Tam Lin” narrates the story of a youth captured by the Faerie Queen and his rescue by a mortal lover...one verse goes...”For tonight is Halowe’en, and the faerie folk ride, those that would let true love win, at Miles Cross they must bide.” William Blake’s late18th century print of Hecate [ a witch or evil spirit] shows her with a large owl perched beside her (William Blake, Tate Gallery London, 1966, no. 9). [For modern Wiccans, Hecate is instead one of the manifestations of the Goddess or female divinity rather than a figure of evil].
Whether because of their nocturnal habits, their ghostly silent flight, their large staring eyes or their unnerving unseen calls, owls and their hooting are associated with death in many places. In northwest British Columbia, hearing an owl at night is a portent of death. The title of I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven (1973, Dell), is an reference to this belief and tells the story of a missionary to Kingcome Village on the British Columbia Coast and his death. In Halloween, Fun and Spooky Images from the Past (p. 12, image no 10), Lantos states that “nocturnal bats and owls, as well as black cats, are omens of bad luck. With the next image (No. 11) the text continues, “It was believed on Halloween night that owls would swoop down and eat the souls of the dying. (Lantos 2009, p. 12, see web link above) underscoring European Christian anxiety about owls and association with death as well. Bats are famously anomalous, with erratic seeming dusk or night time flight, and black or brown leathery wings and apparently grimacing fanged faces, unlike the colourful beauty of beaked (and toothless) diurnal birds, and more like the grotesque gargoyles of European cathedrals. They are neither bird, nor normal [quadrupedal, non-flying, fur covered potentially cuddly] mammals. (see Mary Douglas’ 1966 classic work Purity and Danger for a discussion of anomaly and un-cleanness, or Aldona Jonaitis 1986 Art of the Northern Tlingit for a discussion of anomaly in the symbolic associations of animals in Tlingit iconography). Bat wings are often associated with depictions of the diabolical in European iconography, as in Satan Smites Job with Sore Boils, another print by British poet and artist William Blake (William Blake, Tate Gallery, London, 1966 no. 23). So the animals symbolically associated with All Hallows’ Eve also reinforce its perception as a kind of inverted time, where the forces of darkness, the anomalous and the unnatural appear to have a transitory victory, followed, in the Christian calendar, immediately by the day of all hallows, All Saints Day, a day of holiness, in which right order is restored and risk has been averted. And now turned into a cultural fun day where adults and children masquerade, pranks are played, and candy is distributed and eaten while leering or smiling pumpkin lanterns grace front yards and porches.