JAMESTOWN — The personal canoe paddle of Jerry Jack, who died Wednesday in the only water fatality in nearly two decades of tribal canoe journeys, will be carried to Seattle at the request of his family.
Jack, 68, a hereditary chief of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation tribe in Gold River, British Columbia, was killed Wednesday after the Makah canoe in which he was paddling capsized west of Dungeness Spit.
“We don’t say died — we say went home,” said Colleen Pendleton, Jack’s eldest daughter who lives in Neah Bay.
“He went home doing exactly what he wanted,” Pendleton said.
Jack’s personal paddle will be carried aboard a Makah canoe as the 2006 Inter-Tribal Canoe Journey continues to Seattle, where as many as 70 canoes of tribes from the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia are due to gather on Monday.
Jack was pulling with a six-person crew on the Makah canoe Hummingbird on Wednesday afternoon when the canoe capsized in rough waters.
Five others in the canoe were rescued, and three of them were taken to a hospital for treatment of hypothermia.
Pendleton and her brother, Jerry Jack Jr. of Vancouver Island, said the Canoe Journey was everything in the world to their father.
“He lived and breathed tribal journeys,” Jack Jr. told the Times Colonist of Victoria on Thursday.
“The last conversation I had with my dad was hearing him say, ‘Son, when I’m on the water, I love it out there. I don’t care if I’m in a canoe or a support boat.”‘
Jack Jr. and Pendleton said their father was making this year’s Canoe Journey to Seattle his last run.
Raised on reservation
Jerry Jack Sr. was born in Esperenza on Vancouver Island’s west coast, and raised in Friendly Cove, the original site of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht reservation.
He held the position of second chief of his tribe, which was handed down to him at age 7 by his grand-father, Captain Jack, Pendleton said.
The historical duty of a second chief was to be the “keeper of the beach,” and to greet and feed visitors as they arrived, Pendleton said.
“My father was a great man,” she said.
Pendleton’s father shared a vision he had with her about his last day on Earth before Wednesday’s incident, she said.
Jack told Pendleton that he saw his ancestors dressed in full regalia and coming to take him home on a canoe.
“I think my dad knew it was his time,” she said.
In addition to Pendleton and her brother, Jack Sr. is survived by daughter Beverly Jack of Nanaimo, British Columbia,, several grandchildren, and a great grandchild.
He is also survived by brother Benny Black Jr., sister Claretta Newman, and his fiancé, Fran Prest, and her four children, all of British Columbia.
Prest and Jack were to be married this weekend at the Suquamish village in Poulsbo.
