First Sentence

"Before there was a whale hunt; before seven members of the Makah-a small tribe of Native Americans situated at the very northwestern tip of the United States-climbed into a canoe and paddled out into the ocean that first was calm and then swelled like a man drunk with power, oblivious to the paddlers who were singing and praying and carrying a harpoon and a rifle capable of killing an elephant, much less a whale; before the whale came; before that canoe and the men in the canoe paddled after it and a harpoon was launched and the whale dragged the canoe and a bullet was fired and the whale was killed and then nearly lost but then recovered; before the whale was towed into Neah Bay, the tiny and tired little fishing village that is for all intents and purposes the capital of the Makah reservation; before the people of the town rejoiced because it had been so many years-an entire generation, in fact-since a whale had been haunted and killed and because the hunting of the whale is what has for thousands"