Dave A., a Native American who grew up in Canada, came to Alcoholics Anonymous after a "Trail of Tears" that would make Andrew Jackson weep.

Dave, a leader in the effort to help other Indians to find sobriety, started life beside the road near Boston Bar about 150 miles north of Vancouver. His mother, a member of the Nkit-sm band and the Nthlakapmx (pronounced enklapem) tribe, didn´t want to go to a hospital. She was out for a horseback ride, by herself, when Dave began to arrive. She got off the horse, and there by the side of the road, Dave came into the world. Dave says admiringly that she had no assistance with his birth.

Alcohol was rampant in his village. "From my earliest memories, people were always drunk. That was our pastime. We were known among other bands as ´that good drinking tribe.´"

When he was seven years old, he was sent to boarding school in Lytton, B.C. ("That was old. Others came when they were five.") "You were nothing but a number there. My number was 443. The teachers were all white, English women, do-gooders who had dedicated their lives to the Church of England. The priest was an upper class Englishman and a real disciplinarian."

Question: were there beatings?

Dave: "Oh, God, and if you associated with someone who did something wrong, you were punished the same as if it was you who did it."

Dave eventually spent eight years at the school, but when he first arrived, he was sent to the Toqualeetza tuberculosis sanitarium for Indians. (Racial policies were still in fashion north of the border.) He spent a year there. When he came back to the school, he had forgotten how to speak his native tongue. The school prohibited the children from speaking their language, but they did anyway, and his inability to do so caused his classmates to reject him. "When you lost your language, it was like you weren´t an Indian anymore."

Nevertheless, he struggled through eight years of boarding school and was looking forward to high school when he had to return to the sanitarium. It was there that he "learned" to drink. On leave from the hospital one day in 1954, a friend invited him into a Chilliwack bar. He tried his first beer-the school had successfully prohibited drinking-and "boy, did that ever go down good." So good he spent the afternoon slugging it down to the point where he had his first blackout.

Later in life, when he was training as a alcoholism counselor, he was taught that there are three stages to alcoholism: drinking followed by drunkeness and finally arriving at alcoholism. "Trouble was, it happened to me in one day," Dave said.

He couldn´t make it to his bed when he got back to the hospital and the staff was at a loss over what to do. His fellow patients knew, though. "Leave him alone. He´s just drunk," was their advice. That episode caused him a two-week loss of privileges, at the end of which he promptly went out and got drunk again.

"A person never learns from his mistakes, or anybody else´s," Dave said. In a booze-related tragedy, his stepfather had fallen asleep on a railroad tracks. "A train chopped off his arms and legs. They tried to save him, but he died. And you know, it never occurred to me the same thing could happen to me. Two months later, I had my first drink."

There was bootleg whisky available at the hospital, and when there wasn´t, there was shaving lotion and Vicks Nyquil. Smoking was prohibited. This was, after all, a TB sanitarium. But that´s where he learned to smoke. Matter of fact, "That´s where I learned all my vices-even messing around with the nurses. That was my training ground."

After three long years, he was discharged in the spring of 1954. He went back to Lytton and bummed around for awhile while his drinking got worse and worse. He was driving a tractor at a hop farm near Abbotsford and drinking in Chilliwack when beer led him to Washington. The bars closed at midnight in Chilliwack, but they were open ´til 2 a.m. in Sumas, across the border.

He drove down there in his Austin one night to bar hop, blacking out as he went. When the bars closed, he got into an Austin to drive back to Canada. There was a minor fender bender, but he got back across the border before he fell asleep. The next thing he knew, a Mountie was shaking him awake to tell him the car he was in was stolen. He´d gotten into the wrong Austin. That resulted in a night in jail and a fine, but no learning. Three weeks later, same old, same old. This time, he lost his license and his license plates, so he had to use back roads to continue driving. He also lost his tractor driver´s job.

"I was in a ´poor me´ state of mind by now," Dave said. His aunt, with whom he had been living, kicked him out in disgust and told him to go pick apples in the Okanagan. So he was back in the U.S. with 26 cents in his pocket and no prospects when a good Samaritan stopped and asked, "Hey, Chief, you hungry?" The man bought him a meal, a bottle of wine and a bag of Bull Durham. (Editor: roll-your-own tobacco.)

Dave got a job in the orchards, but was drunk and broke again when he came to a farmhouse where nobody was home. He went in and was helping himself to a meal when the family came home. A "Three Bears" dialogue ensued: Question: "What are you doing here?" Answer: "I´m eating." Question: "We can see that. Why?" Answer: "It´s a dog eat dog world. People stole from me, so I´m gonna steal from you."

The family, Native Americans like Dave, loaded him into their car and took him to the Omak jail, where he was allowed to sleep it off. When he got out, he migrated to Wenatchee and worked in the orchards again with other Indians. When the season ended, the orchardist loaded the Indians onto a bus and drove them to Pioneer Square in Seattle. And that´s how Dave became a Seattleite.

Life didn´t improve, though. The drinking continued, but Dave survived by learning where every free meal and an occasional bed were available downtown. A woman he met rescued him and took him home to Kent.

"To show my gratitude, I married her, and gave her eight years of hell. She finally threw me out. I got a job as a gardener in Seattle. The doctor I was working for found me an apartment and a dog, and that dog saved my life. I had to take care of him."

But it was another two years, in 1969, before he found sobriety. "The doctor told me to go to AA, but I didn´t want nothing do with those people. So I went on a five-day drunk instead. Somehow, I found myself in this tavern talking to A.A. I don´t know who made the call for me. This guy on the phone told me to go home and wait for an A.A. caller. I did, but I fortified myself with a beer first and hoped he wouldn´t come.

"He did, though, and took me to my first meeting. I was in and out of a blackout, so I don´t remember anything about it. Never found out who brought me. The next morning, I had a drink to calm myself, and that was the last one, on June 26, 1969.

"I met my sponsor that night at my first sober A.A. meeting, in White Center. He was heavy into institution work-Walla Walla and so on. I still do it today. Three years into sobriety, I was asked to apply for a job as an alcohol counselor for the city. They said I´d been sober longer than any other Indian around here. So I worked to help my people who were involved with the police, but the funding ran out in two years.

"From there, I went to work at the Thunderbird Treatment Center for 10 years, and after that for Northwest Treatment for three or four years, when I decided to try real estate. I almost starved ´til I connected with the Skills Inc. workshop and became a truck driver and janitor."

There are three meetings in Seattle aimed particularly at Native Americans. The Totem Pole group, started in 1969, meets Saturdays at 8 p.m. at the Pilgrim Church on Broadway between Mercer and Republican. The Native American Group meets Mondays and Fridays at 7 p.m. at Trinity Episcopal, Eighth and Cherry, on First Hill. They are of course welcome at all other meetings too.

Dave was asked if he believes Dr. James Milam´s theory that native people suffer more from alcoholism than do Europeans because they have not been exposed to alcohol long enough for natural selection to winnow out those who are most vulnerable.

"I kinda agree. Native people are more disposed to alcoholism. Milam gave a presentation once at Ernie´s invitation, and ??? never forgave Ernie."

What´s the solution? "Get the community leaders sober so they can be good role models and talk up sobriety. That way, you can catch the problem early. Make sure everybody gets the word and you´ve got a good chance."

Interviewed by Angus L. and Dick S. Written by Dick S.