Dzunukwa

A call drifts through the cedars at dusk, a single drawn-out syllable that sounds almost like a sob. Hu. Then again, fainter. Hu. The forest swallows it. By the time anyone notices the silence that follows, the basket has already turned inland.

She walks the deep places of the British Columbia coast, the slopes above the inlets where the rainforest thickens past trail and lantern. Her skin is black as wet bark. Her hair hangs in long bedraggled ropes. Her breasts swing low, her eyes sit deep in a face creased by sleep, and her mouth is pursed into the round red shape of that one call she keeps making. She is enormous. The basket on her back is wider than a doorway. Inside it, when it is full, there are children.

Dzunukwa belongs to the Kwakwaka’wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. She is the Wild Woman of the Woods, also remembered as Tsonoqua and as the Basket Ogress, names that say what she is without dressing it up. The mountains are her country. Her appetite is for the disobedient. When a child wanders too far from the longhouses and into the moss-soft dark of the spruce stands, the call from the trees is the warning, and it is also the cue that the warning has come too late.

Her method is plain. She seizes the child, smears a thick handful of warm pitch across the small face to seal the eyes shut, drops the bundle into her basket, and carries the harvest up into her home in the high forest, where she means to eat. The pitch is practical. A blind captive cannot map the trail back. It also means the child she has just taken cannot watch her work, which suits her, because Dzunukwa is vain and dislikes being looked at by people she intends to consume.

The story most often told along the coast involves a boy born with a cleft palate, a detail the elders keep because it changes how the boy can use his voice. Dzunukwa had been moving along an inlet, taking child after child, until she carried away twenty-one of them. The boy followed her. He worked out how she slept and where she set the basket down. He saw that her great laziness was a kind of opening. With patience he coaxed and tricked her onto a slab of rock that had been smeared with hot pitch, where she stuck fast, and from that grip she could not free herself in time to stop the children being lifted out and led home. The version told by Elder Edward Tatoosh keeps the boy and the count of children intact. It does not soften any of the rest of it.

She is not subtle. She is loud, slow, and easily fooled. In ceremonies she enters the dance floor already half-asleep, dragging her feet, knuckling her eyes. She circles the fire and then sits, and her chin drops to her chest. Children who hear her step in the woods are taught that her dullness is the gift; the trick is to keep your nerve long enough to use it.

The other half of her is less spoken of in nursery cautions but no less serious. Dzunukwa is also a giver. She walks down from the mountains carrying a basket full of coppers, the broad shield-shaped plaques that the coast nations count as the densest form of wealth, and she lays them at the feet of a chief who has earned the moment. At the closing of a great potlatch, when a chief has discharged the heaviest of his hereditary obligations, his face is hidden behind the geekumhl, the family’s Dzunukwa mask, and the wealth she brings flows out from him into the gathering. Her cry, the one that empties forest paths, becomes in that room the announcement that a debt has been honoured and a hoard is about to be shared.

Ancestry tightens this knot. Through her son Tsilwalagame she is counted among the founding line of the Namgis. The same figure who steals the village’s children is also, further back, the reason there is a village.

Her body is built for both errands. She is strong enough to haul her loaded basket up steep terrain without slowing, and the sources agree that wounds close on her almost as fast as they open. More than that, she returns from death. In some stories she revives her own children after they are killed, and in others she gets up again herself after she has been struck down. The forest’s first impulse is to keep her in it.

What undoes her is not violence. It is her own nature. She is slow to wake and slower to think. She prefers her route and her timing and resents being made to move. She does not look closely at what is in front of her, which is how she walks onto pitch and how she misreads a boy small enough to be still useful as bait. The myths land on this point with something like fondness. The ogress who carries away twenty-one children is the same ogress who cannot keep her feet under her on a single bright rock.

The smell that follows her is cedar smoke and pitch and damp fur. The sound is that long flat note out of a mouth round as a coin. The lesson the coast leaves with her is double. Stay close to the longhouse and you will not need to learn how clever you are in the dark. Stay clever in the dark and the wealth of the mountains will, in time, find its way to your hands.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Dzunukwa?

Dzunukwa is the Wild Woman of the Woods in the mythology of the Kwakwaka’wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. She is a giant ogress who lives in the deep forests above the coastal inlets of British Columbia. Both feared as a cannibal who steals children and venerated as a supernatural source of wealth, Dzunukwa is one of the most important figures in coastal First Nations ceremony.

What does Dzunukwa do to children?

Dzunukwa captures disobedient children, smears their eyes shut with pitch so they cannot find their way home, drops them into the enormous basket she carries on her back, and takes them up into her mountain home to be eaten. Her drifting call of “Hu!” echoes through the cedars as she hunts. Children are taught to stay close to the longhouse precisely because of this danger.

Why is Dzunukwa considered a bringer of wealth?

Dzunukwa is venerated as a supernatural giver because she descends from the mountains carrying a basket of coppers, the shield-shaped metal plaques that Pacific Northwest Coast peoples treat as the densest form of wealth. At the close of a great potlatch, a chief wears her mask, the geekumhl, and the wealth she symbolically delivers is then distributed to the guests as the ceremony’s culminating gift.

How is Dzunukwa defeated in the myths?

Dzunukwa is undone by her own dullness, vanity, and clumsiness rather than by force. In the most widely told version, a boy with a cleft palate tracks her along a coastal inlet after she has captured twenty-one children, and lures her onto a slab of rock smeared with pitch, where she sticks fast and the children are rescued. The version preserved by Elder Edward Tatoosh keeps these details intact.

What does Dzunukwa look like?

Dzunukwa is a towering, naked old woman with skin as black as wet bark, long bedraggled hair, deep-set sleepy eyes, and long pendulous breasts. Her mouth is pursed into a small round red shape because she is constantly giving her drifting call of “Hu!” Masks and totem images render her with that same puckered red mouth, which is one of the most recognizable features in Pacific Northwest Coast art.

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