The troop in the second boat did not have a chance to land and was hit by a volley from a different direction. Caught by the surf sideways, the boat overturned, spilling its wounded and dead onto the beach. The lieutenant in the third boat ordered the rowers to retreat out of distance of the Haida muskets and then signaled back to the Thetis.
As the wounded Brits lay dying in the surf, the Thetis and then the Constance opened up and began shelling the woods that sheltered the Haida. Trees exploded above their heads, ripping them with wood and metal shards.
Anah’s warriors retreated in confusion. In the bombardment by the combined twenty-two cannons from the two ships, forty men and women from the clan were wounded or killed outright.
Within a half hour, British marines disembarked the remaining 180 marines and took the beach.
Anah, watching them land three field cannons, decided to move his warriors beyond reach. He left the wounded to the mercy of the Brits.
They gave none.
The Brits, guided by Antoine Bill, passed through a huge, fresh burial site of smallpox victims. They saw several unburied rotting corpses in the surrounding brambles, and finally found an undefended village with over 260 ill men, women, and children infirmed in several of the smoke-filled long houses.
The Royal Marine captain of the company, Jeremy Brighton, Esq., set out a perimeter guard and ordered the marines to scuttle Anah’s huge cedar long boats and spike his cannons.
Then they set fire to the village. Fearing the spread of disease and rationalizing their actions as retribution for their losses, the Brits stationed themselves at the single exit to every burning long house and shot down anyone attempting to escape, including women and children.
None survived.
The village and all its contents, including food supplies, were burned to the ground.
The official report filed by Brighton spoke of a “significant encounter,” detailing the twelve dead and twenty wounded marines who had been ambushed on the beach. He spoke of thirty Indians killed in the bombardment and numerous victims of an obvious plague “that has most certainly decimated this Haida clan’s ability to wage war in the future.”
His report said nothing about the torching of the long houses or the murder of those attempting to escape or of the victims trapped inside.
From a hiding place on the beach, Anah watched and heard the wailing in the aftermath of the terrible massacre of his infirmed tribe. He made his way north to find the escaped healthy survivors and the warriors in the three canoes he knew would have outrun the Eurydice.
When he reached the rendezvous position, he learned that his last wife and his two oldest sons had been slaughtered in the bombardment.
Anah’s howling rage frightened his followers, all of whom were grieving over their own losses.
In the following days, he mulled over the events and dreamed darkly, carried away by a spirit that circled the ashes of his winter village.
Anah’s raiding clan had been reduced fourfold. Expecting further incursions of settlers and British soldiers, he knew he would need to move far out of reach, rebuild quickly, and set out to build re-build alliances with the Tlingit and Skidegates.
Because rumors had spread that the Brits had something to do with the pestilence that killed so many, within six months he was able to construct a formidable enough alliance of angry clans that he was start up his profitable slaving enterprise again. Empowered with the proceeds from that, he began planning the revenge he wanted for the killing of his sons and the rest of his people.
It was one of Anah’s long boats that Isaac and Sam observed from the spit.
Chapter Seven
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Isaac
God does not explain His ways to those of us left behind.
—Isaac Evers’ Diary, October 8th, 1857
At first, he thought that the merciful Jesus had sent the dense fog to cover them from the Northerners, but as it established itself and crept under his summer wool, he realized it would also hide movements of a flanking attack if they had been seen earlier.
So, Isaac began to think it more likely to be Beelzebub’s trick. The fog would also prevent them from escaping because breakers near the shore would capsize their canoe and drown them if they didn’t manage to head into them straight, and they couldn’t see, as thick as it was.
Sam and Isaac agreed to wait it out, risking discovery and a brutal fight with the killers.
Isaac fretted that decision. His powder was getting wet, and the thin knives he kept were for skinning and filleting, not for fighting.
Sam, a slight but sturdy survivor of rival clan wars and pestilence, would be of no help if it came to a fight. Isaac knew Sam would run before he would make a stand, throwing his weapons and belongings behind him, squealing in Chinook all the way.
Isaac wouldn’t run. He had seen what the worst of these aborigines did to captives. In the Palouse, he had witnessed vengeful acts and random callous cruelty by the natives—gutted men impaled, butt to tongue on long spikes; girls and women bound, raped, and sodomized repeatedly for days until they had begged to be killed; their babies dashed against the rocks.
And he had seen random acts of retribution by military leaders assigned to the region, covered up in the official reports—sporadic escalating viciousness, so that at any one moment the helpless and innocent were more likely to be the victims than those who started the violence in the first place.
By comparison, all told, Isaac believed the aborigines were much more apt to let their anger rampage than were the bluecoats or the militia, usually because so many of the native young men were engaged in the confrontations. But, in trekking with his company across the Snake River, he had come upon the corpses of hapless travelers, emasculated and skinned men and barely living survivors who told them
