History Lecture Ideas

[Koakai]

I love that I had never read his wiki before. He seriously went off the deep end later in life.


In 1914, famed photographer Edward S. Curtis produced the first feature film starring native americans. This film was called 'In the land of the Headhunters', and commercially it was a flop. A story of love and magic, it filmed actual dances and ceremonies that were legally banned under Canada's anti-potlatch law.

No complete surviving copies of the film exist, though a badly damaged copy was rescued from a dumpster in 1947 and donated to a university, and various clippings have surfaced. (the cermony of Yalus - on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ithkKCpBYlA ). A group of students in 2008 reunited the original score and restored bits of the film in 2008, but for the life of me, do they make it available online, no! Grr.

In 1999 the film was entered into the us national film registry.

Now then, say we take this film in it's 1914 viewing. Or even a few years later. A squalid second run theatre gets a copy of the film. Something catches the eyes of the investigators. Perhaps they are drawn to the coast of British Columbia.

In 1921 the only actual prosecution of Canada's potlatch law happened. The law as originally written stated:
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Every Indian or other person who engages in or assists in celebrating the Indian festival known as the "Potlatch" or the Indian dance known as the "Tamanawas" is guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall be liable to imprisonment for a term not more than six nor less than two months in a jail or other place of confinement.

Any Indian or other person who encourages, either directly or indirectly an Indian or Indians to get up such a festival or dance, or to celebrate the same, or who shall assist in the celebration of same is guilty of a like offence, and shall be liable to the same punishment.

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In 1921, Dan Cranmer hosted a big potlatch at Village Island (ʼMimkwa̱mlis). According to Dan Cranmer's recollection, the reasons for having the potlatch at Village Island were to avoid the Indian agent and that was where his wife's relatives were. Indian agent Halliday and Sgt. Angerman now had their chance to arrest and prosecute the Indians. Forty-five people were arrested and charged with various crimes, such as giving speeches, dancing, carrying and receiving gifts at the potlatch. Of those convicted of offences, twenty-two were given suspended sentences.
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The collection of potlatch artifacts were seized and distributed to museums in Canada, with some being illegally sold and sent to America. Stepping into a world were the Cthulhu mythos exists, perhaps these artifacts have some power. The putting on and taking off of masks had transformitive powers in native stories. Many masks are rigged so that they can open and close to show these transformations. Robes are also linked to transformations, from bear to whale, or to human. Perhaps they are not summoning something, but preventing something from happening.

On Cape Mudge, Quadra island, off BC's coast and firmly in this territory there are a series of boulders on the tidal flats. They are decorated with stone carvings of various styles. http://www.flickr.com/photos/benrose/4864773643/ Nearby there is also a rather infamous shipwreck spot called simply 'The Narrows', where the tidal force of water of the coast is trapped between Quadra island on one side, and on the other Vancouver Island. At least 34 ship wrecks can be credited to this spot, and two little rocks under the surface in the centre of the narrows known as "Ripple Rock". This spot in 1958 was the site of the then largest non-nuke explosion on the planet. Of course the government claims it was to destroy these rocks and render the shipping passage safe for larger ships, but what if something else lurked in the depths. Something that might have escaped from Innsmouth and moved to a different coast perhaps? One no longer being warded by native magics against its presence?
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_Rock)

Now even stranger, I used to play off these shores in my youth. The waters are deep there. Not the five miles deep of the trench, but very deep. My dad once had an encounter with a tentacled thing off these waters(hooked an octopus whilst fishing, and the tentacle coming over the side scared the crap out of him), and seals abound. Or are they seals? I do know that when I was really young, something tried to claim an entire cruise ship. The ship somehow gashed its hull in deep waters, and only the presence of the pulp mill and its dock prevented a tragedy along the lines of the Costa Concordia. It was only on its third sailing. The Sundancer. 1984. http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u314 ... ll1984.jpg

[Koakai]

I was listening to some WW2 scenario actual plays the other day and thinking of what I could do to spin a tail here in BC. There is a group that ties nicely into the rag-tag Cthulhu stomping adventurers feel, but I now only a little about them all in all. This group was known as the Pacific Coast Militia Rangers, or PCMR. They were formed shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour as a coastal home guard and recruited foresters, trappers, prospectors and other individuals with local knowledge of the land. Older men who could not otherwise serve the war effort and young boys were also accepted.

I simply love this line from the one writeup online. "Those who were close to populated centers were trained and employed in intelligence duties..." We had a force that was comprised of older experienced men who could poke around semi-offically. Sounds like a group of investigators to me.

Tell me, do these fellows not look like they might have wandered out of a game of COC? http://www.navalandmilitarymuseum.org/i ... 05_046.jpg

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I shall not go into my thoughts on a scenario simply because I alas lack any experience in both running and playing COC. Yes, I am simply a fellow who likes to listen to the stories and actually does not have a game group. The shame and horror.

[Keeper Dan]

Yeah, that looks like it was made for RPG writers to draw from. Very nice find!

[Dr. Gerard]

I was listening to some WW2 scenario actual plays the other day and thinking of what I could do to spin a tail here in BC. There is a group that ties nicely into the rag-tag Cthulhu stomping adventurers feel, but I now only a little about them all in all. This group was known as the Pacific Coast Militia Rangers, or PCMR. They were formed shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour as a coastal home guard and recruited foresters, trappers, prospectors and other individuals with local knowledge of the land. Older men who could not otherwise serve the war effort and young boys were also accepted.

I simply love this line from the one writeup online. "Those who were close to populated centers were trained and employed in intelligence duties..." We had a force that was comprised of older experienced men who could poke around semi-offically. Sounds like a group of investigators to me.

Tell me, do these fellows not look like they might have wandered out of a game of COC? http://www.navalandmilitarymuseum.org/i ... 05_046.jpg

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I shall not go into my thoughts on a scenario simply because I alas lack any experience in both running and playing COC. Yes, I am simply a fellow who likes to listen to the stories and actually does not have a game group. The shame and horror.

Wow, that is an amazing backdrop for a campaign. We gotta work the PCMR into a story.

So wait -- say that again? You have never played Call of Cthulhu? That's completely fascinating. No, not a cause for shame or horror, but...how did you end up listening to APs and our humble show? Do you come to gaming from a different RPG system? Or are you just a fan of horror lit and history, and those interests met in this weird game? Teach us, outlander. Teach us about your world beyond the mountains. Is it dangerous where you come from?

Seriously -- this does blow my mind. It's also very, very cool that you can enjoy all this strange stuff as a spectator.

[Koakai]

I played very little of the several thousand dollars of books I must have picked up in my youth. D&D was played some, as was some shadowrun, but I never got deeply involved in the gaming scene around here. Half of this was because I am in the northern version of the bible belt, so the local gamer scene involved quite a few very rebellious youth. (Turns out that one guy I was friends with in high school ran a dial a dope operation for a while. I had no clue what-so-ever). Also I tend to be just a wee bit of a wallflower, so I never did feel the need to get involved there.

I must have missed COC when I was buying books back in the mid-90s during my game acquisition phase. I had never heard of it until I was working late nights and needed something to shove into my earholes to keep myself from getting overly bored. I am not sure which actual play was the first, though I think I had heard someone mention mouseguard, so I went hunting for podcasts on it, and then went down the rabbit hole from there. I think the first COC thing I listened to was via RPPR, and from there I drifted into Yog-Sothoth. And from there to here.

I have always bought those little books on local legends, and ghost stories when I could. Comes from the archaeologist and historian in me. The more practical side of me wishes I had put that effort into my interests in geology a more lucrative field, but beggers can not be choosers.

One of these years I will actually get to play the game rather then just listen in. Thankfully PDFs are much cheaper and more portable then my old long lost collection of books.
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There are all sorts of odd history in BC, so I guess it perks my interest even more. There are things like the prospector-Indian war, which had scratch built 'militias' trying to force their way into the interior of the province to get at all the gold. Then there are the balloon bombs that the Japanese launched in the late months of WW2, trying to start forest fires to make the military divert its attention to the home front. The only deaths from these items actually occurred because the army was so concerned about not letting the japanese known they landed here that they did not warn the public and some picnickers stumbled on one.


I am used to going for hikes in the woods and coming across steel cables, or skid roads, or even machinery just left in the woods as the use for it expired and it was not worth hauling it back out. This tends to put emphasis the creepy part of the wilderness up here.

I have not had a chance to get up to the universities library as yet, but I hope to get my hands on a copy of a book written about the Yuquot whalers shrine. A place of power restricted to the whalers, it had something like 88 carved human figures, 4 carved whales and 16 skulls in it. All of which were collected in the early 1900s and sent to New York. It was only recently repatriated, but the few images I have seen of the figures they are somewhat creepy.

[Koakai]

Okay. This Yuquot whalers shrine goes beyond seriously creepy. I only flipped through the book and took a few quick snapshots with my phone of the images and some of the relevant text, but I know for certain that I would not want to stumble across this in the forest.

imagine walking through the dark forest and coming across this. http://www.flickr.com/photos/13107129@N00/8411574759/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/13107129@N00/8411571757/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/13107129@N00/8411569301/

And a few closeups of the more interestingly shaped figures. http://www.flickr.com/photos/13107129@N00/8412664824/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/13107129@N00/8412665482/

Now the text contained within the book collects some stories about this local. There is apparently an old tale of 10 infants being kidnapped so their cries will draw the whales closer to shore. This was a success so the person who biult the first shrine raided graves to get more skulls and built two raised beds of fourty skulls apiece, plus eight mummified corpses being put in the centre of the shrine. Then a further 120 babies where kidnapped to line the walls. The builder slept on one raised bed and his wife on another. This was a huge success, so he became chief. However kidnapping and grave robbing became hard so the figures were carved in order to take the place of the real thing.

Creepy.

[Dr. Gerard]

Wow! That is truly an amazing story. It really paints a picture of obsession and its costs. Do you have any sense of whether this kind of collection was far outside the cultural context of the time and place? I mean, when the massive wave of disease struck, there would have been a lot of corpses around. Do these artifacts go that far back?

I just looked into this a little, and found this site at the top of the search. There's some really interesting stuff in there.

I love this graf:

Sailing for Britain, [Captain Cook] arrived at Nootka Sound in 1778. He stayed for nearly a month, which gave him plenty of time to buy goods, and observe the natives as traders. He noted that nothing seemed sacred, and that even their “gods” were for sale. But other officers noticed a difference. Some masks were sold furtively, which suggested “an impious crime”. Other actions were more mysterious. When the Nootka boarded Cook’s ship, for example, they brought unusual carved heads. They simply gave these to the British, on condition they be displayed prominently. No one knows why.

Really? No one? Nyarl-you sure?

Actually, the post goes on to explain, describing an amazing phenomenon at the confluence of the widespread death disease, trading for metal tools and missionaries spurning local beliefs, which spurred a glut of disposable artwork. Totally fascinating.

Oh man, the shrine story keeps getting better:

One ritual, for example, involved strapping the mummy of his father to his back, then clutching a carved whale, and plunging into a nearby lake. Another was beating his skin raw with branches, then plunging again into the lake. The whaler would spend several days in the shrine. The skulls and the human-like figures undoubtedly added to its power.

Wow, man. Thanks for posting about this. What a creepy find.

[Koakai]

The one story about the 120 infants I am more then willing to take with a huge grain of salt. It was collected in the 1930s by Boas, who was a good ethnographer, but his primary source is a touch difficult to pin down in credibility. However the rituals of the mummy being tied to the back and the like are mirrored in it as well as another account if my memory serves me correctly.

I do believe that there very likely could have been that many bodies around. A lot of the groups practiced either exposure of bodies or inhumination in caves or in mortuary poles (which are essentially a hollow box on a carved pole). There are also a few islands known to be places of the dead, and forbidden to most people of the tribe on a regular basis. (Deadmans island in Vancouver now houses the yacht club but was such a site).

I will chime in more when I get off work.

[Dr. Gerard]

Deadmans island in Vancouver now houses the yacht club but was such a site.

Shazam, yet another plot hook for your forthcoming "Secrets of BC" source book for Call of Cthulhu.

"Yacht Club of the Dead" was a big hit at Gen Con 2013. Pretty much a TPK every time.

[Koakai]

I almost should just tie a bunch of this stuff together for a free PDF or something.

I should poke around and see if I can find some good images of seated human figure bowls. Another strange style of artifact here in BC, the usually depict figures with prominent ribs and snakes usually play a role. If I can not tie the snakes into Yig in some manner, I am not trying hard enough.

I suppose I really need to read more mythos tomes. My poor San stat is going to start being blasted. God, my little brain is spinning. I am sure people have seen the 'alien' skulls that result from cranial deformation. We have that as well up here. Various native groups on the coast practiced this, and one of the more common paintings showing this practice is of a Chinook lady and her infant. (Chinooks living in on the Columbia river in the US, but traditionally are related to BC groups.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kane_Caw_Wacham.jpg

On the aspect of those Yuquot figures, I found the line in my photos that I remember reading. According to the analysis most were apparently made over a century, with a wave of 48 being made at some point in the 19th century.