Mary Vent

I worked with Mary Vent during the mid-afternoon on July 22, 1992. She lived with her husband, Bobby, near the village store that was run by their, daughter Mabel. Mary was a very skilled bead worker. She also knitted beautifully, and when I was in Huslia she was busy making heavy socks for the upcoming potlatch. Working cooperatively with another woman, she was knitting the decorative tops for heavy winter socks and her friend was knitting the feet. Together they were turning out a pair of long socks every two days. I had just about completed the task of setting up the tape recorder next to the couch when someone came by with two good-sized King Salmon for Mary. She asked him to put the Kings in her shed. We recorded about half of the tape, then took a break while she cut the fish. I helped her hang the pieces to dry and clean up. Then we went back to the house and completed the taping. Mary's conversation ranged widely. She talked about how she grew up and what it was like to live out on the Huslia River as a child. Her account includes descriptions of various kinds of subsistence activities and an account of how they spent the Christmas holidays. She talked about her great grandmother whom I had never heard about before. She told several humorous stories about how people of her time had learned about white people's lifeways. In one of her funnier accounts she tells how the owner of a new wood stove built the fire in the oven instead of the firebox. Her tape concluded with an excellent description of how people used to play football, a game played on the ice with a skin ball stuffed with animal hair. Everyone played, adults, young people, children, elders, even women with babies on their backs. It was a favorite pastime. Her discussion of this topic may have been stimulated by some of the xeroxed copies of photos from the Episcopal Archives in Austin, Texas that we looked at before we began to tape.