“The Valley of the Beasts” is our last Algernon Blackwood Canadian story. It appeared in The Wolves of God and Other Fey Stories (1921). As James Goho writes in “The Haunted Wood: The Canadian Stories of Algernon Blackwood”: The Canadian wilderness was a powerful force in the life of Algernon Blackwood.” (Journeys Into Darkness, 2014). “The Valley of the Beasts” gets this idea across as well as the more famous “The Wendigo”.
The story focuses on an English hunter named Grimwood. The dour man is hunting with another white man but the party splits so they can cover more ground. Grimwood goes with Tooshalli, his native guide. They have no luck until Grimwood comes upon the largest moose tracks he has ever seen. He gets a shot at the giant bull but only wounds it. The two men track the injured animal.
Things get strange when Tooshalli won’t follow the moose into a dense valley. The native man tells Grimwood this is the Valley of the Beasts, a sacred place that belongs to Ishtot. Grimwood chides the man for being a poor Christian. He uses brute force to try and get the guide to go. They bunk down for the night, but in the morning Tooshalli is gone. Before he left he gives Grimwood a carved stick, a totem of Ishtot.
Grimwood swears at Tooshalli, but keeps the stick. He will hunt alone then. He enters the valley in pursuit of his moose. What he finds are many animals, including the bull. They gather in a kind of weird dance, all close together but not attacking each other. Grimwood feels the pull of the gathering, allowing himself to join with the creatures. For a time he becomes another animal, walking on all fours. The spirit of Ishtot is present, making every creature a brother or sister.
But the spell is broken when Grimwood draws the totem from his belt. He can not become one with the animals and they begin to sense this. The wounded moose is there, accusing him of his violence. A gigantic bear is about to attack him when a gun shot saves him. Tooshalli takes him from the valley, back to his hunting partners. The experience changes the brutal and unlikable man. Grimwood gives up hunting, always remembering his kinship, at least for a short time, with all the living creatures of the woods.
Blackwood’s portrayal of Tooshalli, despite of his use of the word “Redskin” is one of respect and character. The guide is an honorable man, which makes his fate the tragedy of the piece. As Goho states of the ending: “Grimwood forswears hunting, but Tooshalli appears estranged from his heritage, for he has violated the taboo as well, and he becomes a kept pet of Grimwood.”
Thus our Blackwood collection ends. He did write other stories featuring Canadian characters but set elsewhere. The most interesting of these is “The Camp of the Dog”, a John Silence story. In that tale a French Canadian is afflicted with lycanthropy. In “Confessional”, a Canadian soldier experiences strong things in the London fog because of shell shock. Blackwood was an Englishman through-and-through but a small part of his heart belonged to Canada.
