ENVOI

ENVOI

The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you’ve gotten the fish, you can forget the trap … . Words exist because of meaning; once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words.
—Chuang Tzu.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a certain Father J. Jetté, Jesuit missionary to the Athabascan Indians, lived among the Ten’a in the lower Yukon. In those days the Ten’a told the old stories in the dead of winter, from early December to the middle of January. The group with whom Father Jetté lived would go to bed in the early evening, a dozen or more rolling themselves in blankets on the floor around the cabin, their heads to the wall. The last one blew out the light, throwing the room into complete darkness (every chink and crack was caulked against the cold, and gunnysacks hung outside the windows to keep the window panes from frosting over). Before long, someone would start a story—“In old times, it is said …”—the listeners responding anni! anni! to keep the voice going. “A strange thing had occurred: the sun had disappeared, and all was in the dark. What was to be done? the old women asked. Who will get back the sun for us?” Peals of laughter as Raven is lured from seclusion by the promise of dog meat.
Father Jetté wanted very much to make a collection of tales, but there were difficulties. The Ten’a were reluctant to let the Raven stories be put in writing, for one thing (though another group of tales “the inane stories,” Jetté calls them—could be had for the asking). Jetté tried to transcribe tales as they were being told, but the utter darkness frustrated him. Nobody would repeat the stories in daylight, and at night whenever he struck a match to light a candle, the storyteller fell instantly silent.