While working on what I hope will be a feature-length video on the mysteries of the Pacific Fur Trade, I came across a spooky story in the memoirs of John Rodgers Jewitt, an English blacksmith who was enslaved by Mowachat Nootka Indians from 1803-1805, on the northwestern shores of Vancouver Island.
The harrowing adventure which Jewitt chronicled in his two autobiographies, the second being an elaboration of the first, began in the spring of 1803, when the 20-year-old author left his father’s home in Hull, England, on an American merchant ship called the Boston, hoping to make his fortune in the New World. The Boston’s captain, John Salter, hoped to sail to the Pacific Ocean by way of Cape Horn, make his way up the west coast of the Americas to the west coast of Vancouver Island, and exchange goods like knives and hatchets for sea otter pelts procured by the local Nootka Indians, who had only been in contact with whites for a mere 29 years. After taking on wood and fresh water on the island, the Boston was to sail across the Pacific to China, where additional European goods would be traded for Ming porcelain, tea, and silk.
The Boston reached Vancouver Island without incident and moored in Friendly Cove at the mouth of Nootka Sound, five miles north of the Mowachat Nootka village of Yuquot. The following day, the ship was visited by Chief Maquinna, the powerful leader of the Mowachat, who arrived in a canoe along with several of his retainers. Maquinna was no stranger to white men, having hosted, traded, and made dealings with civilian merchants and royal envoys alike, including British explorer Captain George Vancouver and Viceroy of New Spain, Captain Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra. At the time of the Boston’s visit, he had a conversational knowledge of English, and could understand much of the sailors’ banter he heard around him. “Maquina… appeared much pleased on seeing us,” Jewitt wrote in his memoir, “and with great seeming cordiality, welcomed Captain Salter and his officers to his country.”
For eight days, the crew of the Boston made preparations for the upcoming voyage to China. Crewmembers under the direction of sailmaker John Thompson, a tough old Royal Navy veteran who had seen action in the French Revolutionary Wars, repaired the sails and refit the rigging. A small crew went ashore to find water and cut timber. Jewitt himself spent his time repairing muskets and making knives and tomahawks, often under the admiring gaze Chief Maquinna and his sub-chiefs, who took a great interest in his work.
“Meantime more or less of the natives came on board of us daily,” Jewitt wrote, “bringing with them fresh salmon with which they supplied us in great plenty, receiving in return some trifling articles. Captain Salter was always very particular before admitting these people on board to see that they had no arms about them, by obliging them indiscriminately to throw off their garments, so that he felt perfectly secure from any attack.”
On March 19th, while dining with Captain Salter, Chief Maquinna remarked that there were many wild ducks at Yuquot. Salter took the occasion to present the chief with a double-barreled flintlock shotgun. Two days later, Maquinna returned to the ship and gave the gun back to the captain, explaining that one of the locks was broken, and stating that the gun was bad. Taking this as a display of contempt, Salter angrily insulted Maquinna and asked Jewitt if he could repair the lock. Maquinna left the ship in a state of silent fury.
Three days later, on the morning of March 22nd, Maquinna and his sub-chiefs returned to the Boston and dined Captain Salter and his officers, regaling the sailors with a Nootka war dance. At the chief’s suggestion, the first mate and nine crew members went ashore after breakfast to fish for salmon.
“Shortly after the departure of the boats,” Jewitt wrote, “I went down to my vice bench in the steerage, where I was employed in cleaning muskets. I had not been there more than an hour, when I heard the men hoisting in the long boat, which in a few minutes after, was succeeded by a great bustle and confusion on deck. I immediately ran up the steerage stairs, but scarcely was my head above deck, when I was caught by the hair by one of the savages, and lifted from my feet; fortunately for me, my hair being short, and the ribbon with which it was tied slipping, I fell from his hold into the steerage. As I was falling, he struck at me with an axe, which cut a deep gash in my forehead, and penetrated the skull, but in consequence of his losing his hold, I luckily escaped the full force of the blow; which, otherwise, would have cleft my head in two. I fell, stunned and senseless, upon the floor – how long I continued in this situation I know not, but on recovering my senses, the first thing that I did, was to try to get up, but so weak was I, from the loss of blood, that I fainted and fell. I was, however, soon recalled to my recollection by three loud shouts or yells from the savages, which convinced me that they had got possession of the ship. It is impossible for me to describe my feelings at this terrific sound. Some faint idea may be formed of them by those who have known what it is to half waken from a hideous dream and still think it real. Never, no, never shall I lose from my mind the impression of that dreadful moment. I expected every instant to share the wretched fate of my unfortunate companions, and when I heard the song of triumph, by which these infernal yells was succeeded, my blood rain cold in my veins.”
Chief Maquinna, Jewitt later learned, had seen him fall into the steerage, and had ordered his warriors not to kill him, hoping to make use of his blacksmithing skills. Muskets and steel weapons, he knew, would give his warriors an advantage over their southerly rivals, the Clayoquot Nootka under Chief Wickaninnish. When Jewitt came to, Maquinna brought the wounded blacksmith up on the blood-slick deck and informed him that if he consented to be his slave, he would spare his life. Jewitt accepted his servitude, the first act of which was to identify the severed heads of his sailing companions, which the Nootka had arranged in a line on the quarterdeck for his inspection. Amid the ghastly display were the heads of the sailors who had gone ashore to fish, whom the Nootka had decapitated on shore.
John Jewitt spent nearly three years as a slave of Maquinna, adopting the clothing and lifestyle of the Nootka. He was joined in captivity by the sailmaker John Thompson, who had escaped the initial massacre, who was spared execution when Jewitt begged for his life, telling the chief that he was his father.
After about eleven months in Nootka Sound, Jewitt and Thompson bore witness to an unaccountable ailment which took hold of Tootoosch, Maquinna’s brother-in-law and foremost sub-chief, and a champion among the Mowachat warriors. Tootoosch had led the attack on the sailors who had gone ashore to fish, and had brought their severed heads to the Boston for identification, throwing their bodies into the sea. During this foray, the sub-chief personally slew two Americans named Hall and Wood.
In February 1804, Tootoosch began to suffer from what Jewitt interpreted as vivid hallucinations. “While in the enjoyment of highest health,” he wrote, “he was suddenly seized with a fit of delirium, in which he fancied that he saw the ghosts of [Hall and Wood] constantly standing by him, and threatening him, so that he would take no food, except that was forced into his mouth. A short time before this he had lost a daughter of about fifteen years of age, which afflicted him greatly, and whether his insanity, a disorder very uncommon among these savages, no instance of the kind having occurred within the memory of the oldest man amongst them, proceeded from this cause, or that… for hidden purposes, the Supreme Disposer of events sometimes permits the spirits of the dead to revisit the world, and haunt the murderer, I know not, but his mind from this period, until his death, which took place but a few weeks after that of his son, was incessantly occupied with the images of the men whom he had killed…
“When Maquina was first informed by his sister of the strange conduct of her husband,” Jewitt continued, “he immediately went to his house, taking us with him; suspecting that his disease had been caused by us, and that the ghosts of our countrymen had been called thither by us, to torment him. We found him raving about Hall and Wood, saying that they were peshak, that is, bad. Maquina then placed some provisions before him, to see if he would eat. On perceiving it, he put forth his hand to take some, but instantly withdrew it with signs of horror, saying that Hall and Wood were there, and would not let him eat.”
Baffled, Maquinna asked Jewitt if he had any idea as to the cause of his brother-in-law’s malady. Jewitt proposed that Tootoosch had injured his brain, and suggested that he might be cured by binding, flogging, and confinement, which treatments he believed were administered in the insane asylums of old England. Maquinna decided to try this approach, and tasked the muscular John Thompson – a man of fiery disposition who hated his captors with a vengeful passion – with the whipping.
“Thompson was the person selected to administer this remedy,” Jewitt wrote, “which he undertook very readily, and for that purpose provided himself with a good number of spruce branches, with which he whipped him most severely, laying it on with the best will imaginable, while Tootoosch displayed the greatest rage, kicking, spitting, and attempting to bite all who came near him. This was too much for Maqina, who at length, unable to endure it longer, ordered Thompson to desist, and Tootoosch to be carried back, saying that if there was no other way of curing him but by whipping, he must remain mad.”
Following the flogging, Tootoosch descended further into derangement, often lashing out at his slaves in fits of fury. Terrified of these outbursts, the warrior’s wife eventually took up residence in Maquinna’s house, bringing their surviving son with her out of harm’s way.
After four months of mental anguish, Tootoosch died, and was buried with all the honours befitting his status.
Tootoosch’s strange affliction, apparently unprecedented in Nootka Sound, is rendered especially bizarre by the fact that, according to Jewitt, the Mowachat Nootka of the early 19th Century had no concept of ghosts. “They have no belief… in a state of future existence,” Jewitt wrote, “as I discovered, in conversation with Maquina, at Tootoosch’s death, on my attempting to convince him that he still existed, and that he would again see him after his death; but he could comprehend nothing of it, and pointing to the ground, said, that there was the end of him, and that he was like that. Nor do they believe in ghosts, notwithstanding the case of Tootoosch would appear to contradict this assertion, but that was a remarkable instance, and such a one as had never been known to occur before…”
Discounting the possibilities that Nootka supernatural beliefs varied from band to band, that the Nootka learned the concept of ghosts from whites, or that Tootoosch’s misadventure was the first incident in a long train of similar experiences, Jewitt’s statement is challenged by a passage in the 1868 book Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, written by Vancouver Island politician and entrepreneur Gilbert Malcolm Sproat. This passage implies that ghost sightings, far from being extraordinary anomalies, were relatively common occurrences on the west coast of Vancouver Island in the mid-1800s which played a prominent role in Nootka life.
“Owing to the quantity of indigestible food eaten by the natives,” Sproat wrote, referring to the Nootka of Port Alberni, “they often dream that they are visited by ghosts. After a supper of blubber, followed by one of the long talks about departed friends, which take place round the fire, some nervous and timid person may fancy, in the night time, that he sees a ghost.”
Sproat proceeded to describe an elaborate ritual to which Nootka ghost seers were sometimes subjected. “A child will dream that his deceased parent is standing at one end of the house,” he wrote. “Waking with a scream, the dreamer starts from his couch, and rends his blanket. Friends hurry round, rake up the fire, and the old women begin to sing. The dreamer snatches feathers from his pillow, and eats them, and covers his head with them. His nearest relative approaches with a knife and scores the ghost-seer’s arms and legs till the blood comes, which is received into a dish and sprinkled on his face, and on the part of the house where the spirit seemed to be… After the operation, the wounds are dressed with blackberry leaves. If the vision continues, the friends throw articles belonging to the dreamer on the fire, and cry, ‘more! more!’ till all his property (including clothes, mats, and even his boxes) is heaped upon the fire. The greatest excitement prevails, and young girls are often sick and exhausted for many days after such an unfortunate dream.”
Maybe Tootoosch’s madness can simply be attributed to indigestion, perhaps being a case of ichthyoallyeinotoxism, or hallucinogenic fish poisoning. Maybe, as John Jewitt suggested, the warrior’s delirium was the result of a traumatic brain injury. Or perhaps the sub-chief, like Shakespeare’s Macbeth, was truly visited by the vengeful ghosts of the men he slew in cold blood, returned to earth to torment him for his crime.
If you like Canadian ghost stories, then you might want to check out my new video on the historic hauntings of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada’s most haunted town. Although this piece seems to have fallen through the YouTube cracks, I am very pleased with how it turned out, and consider it one of my best videos. It contains first-hand ghost stories that never been published before, a good historical background on the War of 1812, and little-known security camera footage of what appears to be the ghost of a famous British soldier, not to mention new animations, on-site footage, and custom music throughout. If you’d like to watch this video, please click the endscreen card or the link in the description.
Sources
A Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings of John R. Jewitt, Only Survivor of the Crew of the Ship Boston, During a Captivity of Nearly Three Years Among the Savages of Nootka Sound: With an Account of the Manners, Mode of Living, and Religious Opinions of the Natives (1815), by John R. Jewitt
Journal Kept at Nootka Sound (1807), by John R. Jewitt
Scenes and Studies of Savage Life (1868), by Gilbert Malcolm Sproat
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