The Project Gutenberg EBook of Legends of Vancouver, by E. Pauline Johnson
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Title: Legends of Vancouver
Author: E. Pauline Johnson
Release Date: June 24, 2004 [EBook #3478]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LEGENDS OF VANCOUVER ***
Produced by Judy Boss and Andrew Sly
LEGENDS OF VANCOUVER
By E. Pauline Johnson
(Tekahionwake)
PREFACE
I have been asked to write a preface to these Legends of Vancouver,
which, in conjunction with the members of the Publication
Sub-committee--Mrs. Lefevre, Mr. L. W. Makovski and Mr. R. W.
Douglas--I have helped to put through the press. But scarcely any
prefatory remarks are necessary. This book may well stand on its
own merits. Still, it may be permissible to record one's glad
satisfaction that a poet has arisen to cast over the shoulders of
our grey mountains, our trail-threaded forests, our tide-swept
waters, and the streets and sky-scrapers of our hurrying city, a
gracious mantle of romance. Pauline Johnson has linked the vivid
present with the immemorial past. Vancouver takes on a new aspect
as we view it through her eyes. In the imaginative power that she
has brought to these semi-historical sagas, and in the liquid flow
of her rhythmical prose, she has shown herself to be a literary
worker of whom we may well be proud: she has made a most estimable
contribution to purely Canadian literature.
BERNARD McEVOY
AUTHOR'S FOREWORD
These legends (with two or three exceptions) were told to me
personally by my honored friend, the late Chief Joe Capilano, of
Vancouver, whom I had the privilege of first meeting in London in
1906, when he visited England and was received at Buckingham Palace
by their Majesties King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra.
To the fact that I was able to greet Chief Capilano in the Chinook
tongue, while we were both many thousands of miles from home, I
owe the friendship and the confidence which he so freely gave me
when I came to reside on the Pacific coast. These legends he
told me from time to time, just as the mood possessed him, and he
frequently remarked that they had never been revealed to any other
English-speaking person save myself.
E. PAULINE JOHNSON (Tekahionwake)
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE
E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) is the youngest child of a family
of four born to the late G. H. M. Johnson (Onwanonsyshon), Head
Chief of the Six Nations Indians, and his wife Emily S. Howells.
The latter was of English parentage, her birthplace being Bristol,
but the land of her adoption Canada.
Chief Johnson was of the renowned Mohawk tribe, being a scion of
one of the fifty noble families which composed the historical
confederation founded by Hiawatha upwards of four hundred years ago,
and known at that period as the Brotherhood of the Five Nations,
but which was afterwards named the Iroquois by the early French
missionaries and explorers. For their loyalty to the British Crown
they were granted the magnificent lands bordering the Grand River,
in the County of Brant, Ontario, on which the tribes still live.
It was upon this Reserve, on her father's estate, "Chiefswood," that
Pauline Johnson was born. The loyalty of her ancestors breathes in
her prose, as well as in her poetic writings.
Her education was neither extensive nor elaborate. It embraced
neither high school nor college. A nursery governess for two years
at home, three years at an Indian day school half a mile from her
home, and two years in the Central School of the city of Brantford,
was the extent of her educational training. But, besides this, she
acquired a wide general knowledge, having been through childhood and
early girlhood a great reader, especially of poetry. Before she was
twelve years old she had read Scott, Longfellow, Byron, Shakespeare,
and such books as Addison's "Spectator," Foster's Essays and Owen
Meredith's writings.
The first periodicals to accept her poems and place them before the
public were "Gems of Poetry," a small magazine published in New
York, and "The Week," established by the late Prof. Goldwin Smith,
of Toronto, the New York "Independent" and Toronto "Saturday Night."
Since then she has contributed to most of the high-grade magazines,
both on this continent and England.
Her writings having brought her into notice, the next step in Miss
Johnson's career was her appearance on the public platform as a
reciter of her own poems. For this she had natural talent, and in
the exercise of it she soon developed a marked ability, joined with
a personal magnetism, that was destined to make her a favorite with
audiences from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Her friend, Mr. Frank
Yeigh, of Toronto, provided for a series of recitals having that
scope, with the object of enabling her to go to England to arrange
for the publication of her poems. Within two years this aim was
accomplished, her book of poems, "The White Wampum," being published
by John Lane, of the Bodley Head. She took with her numerous
letters of introduction, including one from the Governor-General,
the Earl of Aberdeen, and she soon gained both social and literary
standing. Her book was received with much favor, both by reviewers
and the public. After giving many recitals in fashionable
drawing-rooms, she returned to Canada, and made her first tour to
the Pacific Coast, giving recitals at all the cities and towns en
route. Since then she has crossed the Rocky Mountains no fewer
than nineteen times.
Miss Johnson's pen had not been idle, and in 1903 the George
Morang Co., of Toronto, published her second book of poems,
entitled "Canadian Born," which was also well received.
After a number of recitals, which included Newfoundland and the
Maritime Provinces, she went to England again in 1906 and made her
first appearance in Steinway Hall, under the distinguished patronage
of Lord and Lady Strathcona. In the following year she again
visited London, returning by way of the United States, where she
gave many recitals. After another tour of Canada she decided to
give up public work, to make Vancouver, B. C., her home, and to
devote herself to literary work.
Only a woman of remarkable powers of endurance could have borne up
under the hardships necessarily encountered in travelling through
North-western Canada in pioneer days as Miss Johnson did; and
shortly after settling down in Vancouver the exposure and hardship
she had endured began to tell on her, and her health completely
broke down. For almost a year she has been an invalid, and as she
is unable to attend to the business herself, a trust has been formed
by some of the leading citizens of her adopted city for the purpose
of collecting and publishing for her benefit her later works. Among
these are the beautiful Indian Legends contained in this volume,
which she has been at great pains to collect, and a series of boys'
stories, which have been exceedingly well received by magazine
readers.
During the sixteen years Miss Johnson was travelling, she had
many varied and interesting experiences. She travelled the old
Battleford trail before the railroad went through, and across the
Boundary country in British Columbia in the romantic days of the
early pioneers. Once she took an eight hundred and fifty mile
drive up the Cariboo trail to the gold fields. She has always been
an ardent canoeist, and has run many strange rivers, crossed many
a lonely lake, and camped in many an unfrequented place. These
venturesome trips she made more from her inherent love of Nature
and adventure than from any necessity of her profession.
CONTENTS
Preface
Author's Foreword
Biographical Notice
The Two Sisters
The Siwash Rock
The Recluse
The Lost Salmon-run
The Deep Waters
The Sea-Serpent
The Lost Island
Point Grey
The Tulameen Trail
The Grey Archway
Deadman's Island
A Squamish Legend of Napoleon
The Lure in Stanley Park
Deer Lake
A Royal Mohawk Chief
THE TWO SISTERS
-----
THE LIONS
You can see them as you look towards the north and the west, where
the dream-hills swim into the sky amid their ever-drifting clouds
of pearl and grey. They catch the earliest hint of sunrise, they
hold the last color of sunset. Twin mountains they are, lifting
their twin peaks above the fairest city in all Canada, and known
throughout the British Empire as "The Lions of Vancouver."
Sometimes the smoke of forest fires blurs them until they gleam like
opals in a purple atmosphere, too beautiful for words to paint.
Sometimes the slanting rains festoon scarfs of mist about their
crests, and the peaks fade into shadowy outlines, melting, melting,
forever melting into the distances. But for most days in the year
the sun circles the twin glories with a sweep of gold. The moon
washes them with a torrent of silver. Oftentimes, when the city is
shrouded in rain, the sun yellows their snows to a deep orange; but
through sun and shadow they stand immovable, smiling westward above
the waters of the restless Pacific, eastward above the superb beauty
of the Capilano Canyon. But the Indian tribes do not know these
peaks as "The Lions." Even the chief, whose feet have so recently
wandered to the Happy Hunting Grounds, never heard the name given
them until I mentioned it to him one dreamy August day, as together
we followed the trail leading to the canyon. He seemed so surprised
at the name that I mentioned the reason it had been applied to them,
asking him if he recalled the Landseer Lions in Trafalgar Square.
Yes, he remembered those splendid sculptures, and his quick eye saw
the resemblance instantly. It appeared to please him, and his fine
face expressed the haunting memories of the far-away roar of Old
London. But the "call of the blood" was stronger, and presently he
referred to the Indian legend of those peaks--a legend that I have
reason to believe is absolutely unknown to thousands of Palefaces
who look upon "The Lions" daily, without the love for them that is
in the Indian heart, without knowledge of the secret of "The Two
Sisters." The legend was intensely fascinating as it left his lips
in the quaint broken English that is never so dulcet as when it
slips from an Indian tongue. His inimitable gestures, strong,
graceful, comprehensive, were like a perfectly chosen frame
embracing a delicate painting, and his brooding eyes were as the
light in which the picture hung. "Many thousands of years ago,"
he began, "there were no twin peaks like sentinels guarding the
outposts of this sunset coast. They were placed there long after
the first creation, when the Sagalie Tyee moulded the mountains,
and patterned the mighty rivers where the salmon run, because
of His love for His Indian children, and His wisdom for their
necessities. In those times there were many and mighty Indian
tribes along the Pacific--in the mountain ranges, at the shores
and sources of the great Fraser River. Indian law ruled the land.
Indian customs prevailed. Indian beliefs were regarded. Those
were the legend-making ages when great things occurred to make the
traditions we repeat to our children to-day. Perhaps the greatest
of these traditions is the story of 'The Two Sisters,' for they
are known to us as 'The Chief's Daughters,' and to them we owe the
Great Peace in which we live, and have lived for many countless
moons. There is an ancient custom amongst the coast tribes that,
when our daughters step from childhood into the great world of
womanhood, the occasion must be made one of extreme rejoicing.
The being who possesses the possibility of some day mothering a
man-child, a warrior, a brave, receives much consideration in most
nations; but to us, the Sunset tribes, she is honored above all
people. The parents usually give a great potlatch, and a feast
that lasts many days. The entire tribe and the surrounding tribes
are bidden to this festival. More than that, sometimes when a
great Tyee celebrates for his daughter, the tribes from far up the
coast, from the distant north, from inland, from the island, from
the Cariboo country, are gathered as guests to the feast. During
these days of rejoicing the girl is placed in a high seat, an
exalted position, for is she not marriageable? And does not
marriage mean motherhood? And does not motherhood mean a vaster
nation of brave sons and of gentle daughters, who, in their turn,
will give us sons and daughters of their own?
"But it was many thousands of years ago that a great Tyee had two
daughters that grew to womanhood at the same springtime, when the
first great run of salmon thronged the rivers, and the ollallie
bushes were heavy with blossoms. These two daughters were young,
lovable, and oh! very beautiful. Their father, the great Tyee,
prepared to make a feast such as the Coast had never seen. There
were to be days and days of rejoicing, the people were to come for
many leagues, were to bring gifts to the girls and to receive gifts
of great value from the chief, and hospitality was to reign as long
as pleasuring feet could dance, and enjoying lips could laugh, and
mouths partake of the excellence of the chief's fish, game, and
ollallies.
"The only shadow on the joy of it all was war, for the tribe of the
great Tyee was at war with the Upper Coast Indians, those who lived
north, near what is named by the Paleface as the port of Prince
Rupert. Giant war-canoes slipped along the entire coast, war
parties paddled up and down, war-songs broke the silences of the
nights, hatred, vengeance, strife, horror festered everywhere like
sores on the surface of the earth. But the great Tyee, after
warring for weeks, turned and laughed at the battle and the
bloodshed, for he had been victor in every encounter, and he could
well afford to leave the strife for a brief week and feast in his
daughters' honor, nor permit any mere enemy to come between him and
the traditions of his race and household. So he turned insultingly
deaf ears to their war-cries; he ignored with arrogant indifference
their paddle-dips that encroached within his own coast waters, and
he prepared, as a great Tyee should, to royally entertain his
tribesmen in honor of his daughters.
"But seven suns before the great feast these two maidens came before
him, hand clasped in hand.
"'Oh! our father,' they said, 'may we speak?'
"'Speak, my daughters, my girls with the eyes of April, the hearts
of June'" (early spring and early summer would be the more accurate
Indian phrasing).
"'Some day, oh! our father, we may mother a man-child, who may grow
to be just such a powerful Tyee as you are, and for this honor that
may some day be ours we have come to crave a favor of you--you, Oh!
our father.'
"'It is your privilege at this celebration to receive any favor your
hearts may wish,' he replied graciously, placing his fingers beneath
their girlish chins. 'The favor is yours before you ask it, my
daughters.'
"'Will you, for our sakes, invite the great northern hostile
tribe--the tribe you war upon--to this, our feast?' they asked
fearlessly.
"'To a peaceful feast, a feast in the honor of women?' he exclaimed
incredulously.
"'So we would desire it,' they answered.
"'And so shall it be,' he declared. 'I can deny you nothing this
day, and some time you may bear sons to bless this peace you have
asked, and to bless their mother's sire for granting it.' Then he
turned to all the young men of the tribe and commanded: 'Build fires
at sunset on all the coast headlands--fires of welcome. Man your
canoes and face the north, greet the enemy, and tell them that I,
the Tyee of the Capilanos, ask--no, command--that they join me for a
great feast in honor of my two daughters.' And when the northern
tribes got this invitation they flocked down the coast to this feast
of a Great Peace. They brought their women and their children;
they brought game and fish, gold and white stone beads, baskets and
carven ladles, and wonderful woven blankets to lay at the feet of
their now acknowledged ruler, the great Tyee. And he, in turn, gave
such a potlatch that nothing but tradition can vie with it. There
were long, glad days of joyousness, long, pleasurable nights of
dancing and camp-fires, and vast quantities of food. The war-canoes
were emptied of their deadly weapons and filled with the daily catch
of salmon. The hostile war-songs ceased, and in their place were
heard the soft shuffle of dancing feet, the singing voices of women,
the play-games of the children of two powerful tribes which had been
until now ancient enemies, for a great and lasting brotherhood was
sealed between them--their war-songs were ended forever.
"Then the Sagalie Tyee smiled on His Indian children: 'I will
make these young-eyed maidens immortal,' He said. In the cup of
His hands He lifted the chief's two daughters and set them forever
in a high place, for they had borne two offspring--Peace and
Brotherhood--each of which is now a great Tyee ruling this land.
"And on the mountain crest the chief's daughters can be seen wrapped
in the suns, the snows, the stars of all seasons, for they have
stood in this high place for thousands of years, and will stand for
thousands of years to come, guarding the peace of the Pacific Coast
and the quiet of the Capilano Canyon."
* * * * *
This is the Indian legend of "The Lions of Vancouver" as I had it
from one who will tell me no more the traditions of his people.
THE SIWASH ROCK
Unique, and so distinct from its surroundings as to suggest rather
the handicraft of man than a whim of Nature, it looms up at the
entrance to the Narrows, a symmetrical column of solid grey stone.
There are no similar formations within the range of vision, or
indeed within many a day's paddle up and down the coast. Amongst
all the wonders, the natural beauties that encircle Vancouver,
the marvels of mountains, shaped into crouching lions and brooding
beavers, the yawning canyons, the stupendous forest firs and cedars,
Siwash Rock stands as distinct, as individual, as if dropped from
another sphere.
I saw it first in the slanting light of a redly setting August sun;
the little tuft of green shrubbery that crests its summit was black
against the crimson of sea and sky, and its colossal base of grey
stone gleamed like flaming polished granite.
My old tillicum lifted his paddle-blade to point towards it. "You
know the story?" he asked. I shook my head (experience has taught
me his love of silent replies, his moods of legend-telling). For a
time we paddled slowly; the rock detached itself from its background
of forest and shore, and it stood forth like a sentinel--erect,
enduring, eternal.
"Do you think it stands straight--like a man?" he asked.
"Yes, like some noble-spirited, upright warrior," I replied.
"It is a man," he said, "and a warrior man, too; a man who fought
for everything that was noble and upright."
"What do you regard as everything that is noble and upright, Chief?"
I asked, curious as to his ideas. I shall not forget the reply; it
was but two words--astounding, amazing words. He said simply:
"Clean fatherhood."
Through my mind raced tumultuous recollections of numberless
articles in yet numberless magazines, all dealing with the recent
"fad" of motherhood, but I had to hear from the lip of a Squamish
Indian chief the only treatise on the nobility of "clean fatherhood"
that I have yet unearthed. And this treatise has been an Indian
legend for centuries; and, lest they forget how all-important those
two little words must ever be, Siwash Rock stands to remind them,
set there by the Deity as a monument to one who kept his own life
clean, that cleanliness might be the heritage of the generations
to come.
It was "thousands of years ago" (all Indian legends begin in
extremely remote times) that a handsome boy chief journeyed in his
canoe to the upper coast for the shy little northern girl whom he
brought home as his wife. Boy though he was, the young chief had
proved himself to be an excellent warrior, a fearless hunter, and an
upright, courageous man among men. His tribe loved him, his enemies
respected him, and the base and mean and cowardly feared him.
The customs and traditions of his ancestors were a positive religion
to him, the sayings and the advices of the old people were his
creed. He was conservative in every rite and ritual of his race.
He fought his tribal enemies like the savage that he was. He sang
his war-songs, danced his war-dances, slew his foes, but the little
girl-wife from the north he treated with the deference that he gave
his own mother, for was she not to be the mother of his warrior son?
The year rolled round, weeks merged into months, winter into spring,
and one glorious summer at daybreak he wakened to her voice calling
him. She stood beside him, smiling.
"It will be to-day," she said proudly.
He sprang from his couch of wolf-skins and looked out upon the
coming day: the promise of what it would bring him seemed breathing
through all his forest world. He took her very gently by the hand
and led her through the tangle of wilderness down to the water's
edge, where the beauty spot we moderns call Stanley Park bends
about Prospect Point. "I must swim," he told her.
"I must swim, too," she smiled, with the perfect understanding of
two beings who are mated. For, to them, the old Indian custom was
law--the custom that the parents of a coming child must swim until
their flesh is so clear and clean that a wild animal cannot scent
their proximity. If the wild creatures of the forests have no fear
of them, then, and only then, are they fit to become parents, and
to scent a human is in itself a fearsome thing to all wild creatures.
So those two plunged into the waters of the Narrows as the grey dawn
slipped up the eastern skies and all the forest awoke to the life of
a new, glad day. Presently he took her ashore, and smilingly she
crept away under the giant trees. "I must be alone," she said, "but
come to me at sunrise: you will not find me alone then." He smiled
also, and plunged back into the sea. He must swim, swim, swim
through this hour when his fatherhood was coming upon him. It was
the law that he must be clean, spotlessly clean, so that when his
child looked out upon the world it would have the chance to live its
own life clean. If he did not swim hour upon hour his child would
come to an unclean father. He must give his child a chance in life;
he must not hamper it by his own uncleanliness at its birth. It was
the tribal law--the law of vicarious purity.
As he swam joyously to and fro, a canoe bearing four men headed up
the Narrows. These men were giants in stature, and the stroke of
their paddles made huge eddies that boiled like the seething tides.
"Out from our course!" they cried as his lithe, copper-colored body
arose and fell with his splendid stroke. He laughed at them, giants
though they were, and answered that he could not cease his swimming
at their demand.
"But you shall cease!" they commanded. "We are the men [agents] of
the Sagalie Tyee [God], and we command you ashore out of our way!"
(I find in all these Coast Indian legends that the Deity is
represented by four men, usually paddling an immense canoe.)
He ceased swimming, and, lifting his head, defied them. "I shall
not stop, nor yet go ashore," he declared, striking out once more
to the middle of the channel.
"Do you dare disobey us," they cried--"we, the men of the Sagalie
Tyee? We can turn you into a fish, or a tree, or a stone for this;
do you dare disobey the Great Tyee?"
"I dare anything for the cleanliness and purity of my coming child.
I dare even the Sagalie Tyee Himself, but my child must be born to a
spotless life."
The four men were astounded. They consulted together, lighted their
pipes, and sat in council. Never had they, the men of the Sagalie
Tyee, been defied before. Now, for the sake of a little unborn
child, they were ignored, disobeyed, almost despised. The lithe
young copper-colored body still disported itself in the cool
waters; superstition held that should their canoe, or even their
paddle-blades, touch a human being, their marvellous power would be
lost. The handsome young chief swam directly in their course. They
dared not run him down; if so, they would become as other men.
While they yet counselled what to do, there floated from out the
forest a faint, strange, compelling sound. They listened, and
the young chief ceased his stroke as he listened also. The faint
sound drifted out across the waters once more. It was the cry of
a little, little child. Then one of the four men, he that steered
the canoe, the strongest and tallest of them all, arose, and,
standing erect, stretched out his arms towards the rising sun
and chanted, not a curse on the young chief's disobedience, but
a promise of everlasting days and freedom from death.
"Because you have defied all things that come in your path we
promise this to you," he chanted; "you have defied what interferes
with your child's chance for a clean life, you have lived as you
wish your son to live, you have defied us when we would have stopped
your swimming and hampered your child's future. You have placed
that child's future before all things, and for this the Sagalie Tyee
commands us to make you forever a pattern for your tribe. You shall
never die, but you shall stand through all the thousands of years to
come, where all eyes can see you. You shall live, live, live as an
indestructible monument to Clean Fatherhood."
The four men lifted their paddles and the handsome young chief
swam inshore; as his feet touched the line where sea and land met
he was transformed into stone.
Then the four men said, "His wife and child must ever be near him;
they shall not die, but live also." And they, too, were turned into
stone. If you penetrate the hollows in the woods near Siwash Rock
you will find a large rock and a smaller one beside it. They are
the shy little bride-wife from the north, with her hour-old baby
beside her. And from the uttermost parts of the world vessels come
daily throbbing and sailing up the Narrows. From far trans-Pacific
ports, from the frozen North, from the lands of the Southern Cross,
they pass and repass the living rock that was there before their
hulls were shaped, that will be there when their very names are
forgotten, when their crews and their captains have taken their
long last voyage, when their merchandise has rotted, and their
owners are known no more. But the tall, grey column of stone will
still be there--a monument to one man's fidelity to a generation yet
unborn--and will endure from everlasting to everlasting.
THE RECLUSE
Journeying toward the upper course of the Capilano River, about
a mile citywards from the dam, you will pass a disused logger's
shack. Leave the trail at this point and strike through the
undergrowth for a few hundred yards to the left and you will be
on the rocky borders of that purest, most restless river in all
Canada. The stream is haunted with tradition, teeming with a score
of romances that vie with its grandeur and loveliness, and of which
its waters are perpetually whispering. But I learned this legend
from one whose voice was as dulcet as the swirling rapids; but,
unlike them, that voice is hushed to-day, while the river, the
river still sings on--sings on.
It was singing in very melodious tones through the long August
afternoon two summers ago, while we, the chief, his happy-hearted
wife, and bright young daughter, all lounged amongst the boulders
and watched the lazy clouds drift from peak to peak far above us.
It was one of his inspired days; legends crowded to his lips as a
whistle teases the mouth of a happy boy; his heart was brimming
with tales of the bygones, his eyes were dark with dreams and that
strange mournfulness that always haunted them when he spoke of
long-ago romances. There was not a tree, a boulder, a dash of rapid
upon which his glance fell which he could not link with some ancient
poetic superstition. Then abruptly, in the very midst of his verbal
reveries, he turned and asked me if I were superstitious. Of course
I replied that I was.
"Do you think some happenings will bring trouble later on--will
foretell evil?" he asked.
I made some evasive answer, which, however, seemed to satisfy him,
for he plunged into the strange tale of the recluse of the canyon
with more vigor than dreaminess; but first he asked me the question:
"What do your own tribes, those east of the great mountains, think
of twin children?"
I shook my head.
"That is enough," he said before I could reply. "I see, your
people do not like them."
"Twin children are almost unknown with us," I hastened. "They are
rare, very rare; but it is true we do not welcome them."
"Why?" he asked abruptly.
I was a little uncertain about telling him. If I said the wrong
thing, the coming tale might die on his lips before it was born
to speech, but we understood each other so well that I finally
ventured the truth:
"We Iroquois say that twin children are as rabbits," I explained.
"The nation always nicknames the parents. 'Tow-wan-da-na-ga.'
That is the Mohawk for rabbit."
"Is that all?" he asked curiously.
"That is all. Is it not enough to render twin children unwelcome?"
I questioned.
He thought a while, then, with evident desire to learn how all races
regarded this occurrence, he said, "You have been much among the
Palefaces, what do they say of twins?"
"Oh! the Palefaces like them. They are--they are--oh! well, they
say they are very proud of having twins," I stammered. Once again I
was hardly sure of my ground. He looked most incredulous, and I was
led to enquire what his own people of the Squamish thought of this
discussed problem.
"It is no pride to us," he said decidedly, "nor yet is it disgrace
of rabbits; but it is a fearsome thing--a sign of coming evil to the
father, and, worse than that, of coming disaster to the tribe."
Then I knew he held in his heart some strange incident that
gave substance to the superstition. "Won't you tell it to me?"
I begged.
He leaned a little backward against a giant boulder, clasping his
thin, brown hands about his knees; his eyes roved up the galloping
river, then swept down the singing waters to where they crowded past
the sudden bend, and during the entire recital of the strange legend
his eyes never left that spot where the stream disappeared in its
hurrying journey to the sea. Without preamble he began:
"It was a grey morning when they told him of this disaster that had
befallen him. He was a great chief, and he ruled many tribes on the
North Pacific Coast; but what was his greatness now? His young wife
had borne him twins, and was sobbing out her anguish in the little
fir-bark lodge near the tidewater.
"Beyond the doorway gathered many old men and women--old in years,
old in wisdom, old in the lore and learning of their nations. Some
of them wept, some chanted solemnly the dirge of their lost hopes
and happiness, which would never return because of this calamity;
others discussed in hushed voices this awesome thing, and for hours
their grave council was broken only by the infant cries of the two
boy-babies in the bark lodge, the hopeless sobs of the young mother,
the agonized moans of the stricken chief--their father.
"'Something dire will happen to the tribe,' said the old men in
council.
"'Something dire will happen to him, my husband,' wept the young
mother.
"'Something dire will happen to us all,' echoed the unhappy father.
"Then an ancient medicine-man arose, lifting his arms, outstretching
his palms to hush the lamenting throng. His voice shook with the
weight of many winters, but his eyes were yet keen and mirrored the
clear thought and brain behind them, as the still trout-pools in
the Capilano mirror the mountain tops. His words were masterful,
his gestures commanding, his shoulders erect and kindly. His was
a personality and an inspiration that no one dared dispute, and
his judgment was accepted as the words fell slowly, like a doom.
"'It is the olden law of the Squamish that, lest evil befall the
tribe, the sire of twin children must go afar and alone, into the
mountain fastnesses, there by his isolation and his loneliness to
prove himself stronger than the threatened evil, and thus to beat
back the shadow that would otherwise follow him and all his people.
I, therefore, name for him the length of days that he must spend
alone fighting his invisible enemy. He will know by some great sign
in Nature the hour that the evil is conquered, the hour that his
race is saved. He must leave before this sun sets, taking with him
only his strongest bow, his fleetest arrows, and, going up into the
mountain wilderness, remain there ten days--alone, alone.'
"The masterful voice ceased, the tribe wailed their assent, the
father arose speechless, his drawn face revealing great agony over
this seemingly brief banishment. He took leave of his sobbing wife,
of the two tiny souls that were his sons, grasped his favorite bow
and arrows, and faced the forest like a warrior. But at the end
of the ten days he did not return, nor yet ten weeks, nor yet ten
months.
"'He is dead,' wept the mother into the baby ears of her two boys.
'He could not battle against the evil that threatened; it was
stronger than he--he, so strong, so proud, so brave.'
"'He is dead,' echoed the tribesmen and the tribeswomen. 'Our
strong, brave chief, he is dead.' So they mourned the long year
through, but their chants and their tears but renewed their grief;
he did not return to them.
"Meanwhile, far up the Capilano the banished chief had built his
solitary home; for who can tell what fatal trick of sound, what
current of air, what faltering note in the voice of the medicine-man
had deceived his alert Indian ears? But some unhappy fate had led
him to understand that his solitude must be of ten years' duration,
not ten days, and he had accepted the mandate with the heroism of a
stoic. For if he had refused to do so his belief was that, although
the threatened disaster would be spared him, the evil would fall
upon his tribe. Thus was one more added to the long list of
self-forgetting souls whose creed has been, 'It is fitting that
one should suffer for the people.' It was the world-old heroism
of vicarious sacrifice.
"With his hunting-knife the banished Squamish chief stripped the
bark from the firs and cedars, building for himself a lodge beside
the Capilano River, where leaping trout and salmon could be speared
by arrow-heads fastened to deftly shaped, long handles. All through
the salmon-run he smoked and dried the fish with the care of a
housewife. The mountain sheep and goats, and even huge black and
cinnamon bears, fell before his unerring arrows; the fleet-footed
deer never returned to their haunts from their evening drinking at
the edge of the stream--their wild hearts, their agile bodies were
stilled when he took aim. Smoked hams and saddles hung in rows from
the cross-poles of his bark lodge, and the magnificent pelts of
animals carpeted his floors, padded his couch, and clothed his body.
He tanned the soft doe-hides, making leggings, moccasins and shirts,
stitching them together with deer sinew as he had seen his mother do
in the long-ago. He gathered the juicy salmon-berries, their acid
a sylvan, healthful change from meat and fish. Month by month
and year by year he sat beside his lonely camp-fire, waiting for
his long term of solitude to end. One comfort alone was his--he
was enduring the disaster, fighting the evil, that his tribe might
go unscathed, that his people be saved from calamity. Slowly,
laboriously the tenth year dawned; day by day it dragged its long
weeks across his waiting heart, for Nature had not yet given the
sign that his long probation was over.
"Then, one hot summer day, the Thunder-bird came crashing through the
mountains about him. Up from the arms of the Pacific rolled the
storm-cloud, and the Thunder-bird, with its eyes of flashing light,
beat its huge vibrating wings on crag and canyon.
"Up-stream, a tall shaft of granite rears its needle-like length. It
is named 'Thunder Rock,' and wise men of the Paleface people say it
is rich in ore--copper, silver, and gold. At the base of this shaft
the Squamish chief crouched when the storm-cloud broke and bellowed
through the ranges, and on its summit the Thunder-bird perched, its
gigantic wings threshing the air into booming sounds, into splitting
terrors, like the crash of a giant cedar hurtling down the mountain-side.
"But when the beating of those black pinions ceased and the echo of
their thunder-waves died down the depths of the canyon, the Squamish
chief arose as a new man. The shadow on his soul had lifted, the
fears of evil were cowed and conquered. In his brain, his blood,
his veins, his sinews, he felt that the poison of melancholy dwelt
no more. He had redeemed his fault of fathering twin children; he
had fulfilled the demands of the law of his tribe.
"As he heard the last beat of the Thunder-bird's wings dying slowly,
faintly, faintly, among the crags, he knew that the bird,
too, was dying, for its soul was leaving its monster black body, and
presently that soul appeared in the sky. He could see it arching
overhead, before it took its long journey to the Happy Hunting
Grounds, for the soul of the Thunder-bird was a radiant half-circle
of glorious color spanning from peak to peak. He lifted his head
then, for he knew it was the sign the ancient medicine-man had told
him to wait for--the sign that his long banishment was ended.
"And all these years, down in the tidewater country, the little
brown-faced twins were asking childwise, 'Where is our father?
Why have we no father, like other boys?' To be met only with the
oft-repeated reply, 'Your father is no more. Your father, the
great chief, is dead.'
"But some strange filial intuition told the boys that their sire
would some day return. Often they voiced this feeling to their
mother, but she would only weep and say that not even the witchcraft
of the great medicine-man could bring him to them. But when they
were ten years old the two children came to their mother, hand
within hand. They were armed with their little hunting-knives,
their salmon-spears, their tiny bows and arrows.
"'We go to find our father,' they said.
"'Oh! useless quest,' wailed the mother.
"'Oh! useless quest,' echoed the tribes-people.
"But the great medicine-man said, 'The heart of a child has
invisible eyes; perhaps the child-eyes see him. The heart of a
child has invisible ears; perhaps the child-ears hear him call.
Let them go.' So the little children went forth into the forest;
their young feet flew as though shod with wings, their young hearts
pointed to the north as does the white man's compass. Day after day
they journeyed up-stream, until, rounding a sudden bend, they beheld
a bark lodge with a thin blue curl of smoke drifting from its roof.
"'It is our father's lodge,' they told each other, for their
childish hearts were unerring in response to the call of kinship.
Hand in hand they approached, and entering the lodge, said the
one word, 'Come.'
"The great Squamish chief outstretched his arms towards them, then
towards the laughing river, then towards the mountains.
"'Welcome, my sons!' he said. 'And good-bye, my mountains, my
brothers, my crags, and my canyons!' And with a child clinging to
each hand he faced once more the country of the tidewater."
* * * * *
The legend was ended.
For a long time he sat in silence. He had removed his gaze from the
bend in the river, around which the two children had come and where
the eyes of the recluse had first rested on them after ten years of
solitude.
The chief spoke again: "It was here, on this spot we are sitting,
that he built his lodge: here he dwelt those ten years alone,
alone."
I nodded silently. The legend was too beautiful to mar with
comments, and, as the twilight fell, we threaded our way through
the underbrush, past the disused logger's camp, and into the trail
that leads citywards.
THE LOST SALMON-RUN
Great had been the "run," and the sockeye season was almost over.
For that reason I wondered many times why my old friend, the
klootchman, had failed to make one of the fishing fleet. She was an
indefatigable work-woman, rivalling her husband as an expert catcher,
and all the year through she talked of little else but the coming
run. But this especial season she had not appeared amongst her
fellow-kind. The fleet and the canneries knew nothing of her, and
when I enquired of her tribes-people they would reply without
explanation, "She not here this year."
But one russet September afternoon I found her. I had idled down
the trail from the swans' basin in Stanley Park to the rim that
skirts the Narrows, and I saw her graceful, high-bowed canoe heading
for the beach that is the favorite landing-place of the "tillicums"
from the Mission. Her canoe looked like a dream-craft, for the
water was very still, and everywhere a blue film hung like a fragrant
veil, for the peat on Lulu Island had been smoldering for days and
its pungent odors and blue-grey haze made a dream-world of sea and
shore and sky.
I hurried up-shore, hailing her in the Chinook, and as she caught my
voice she lifted her paddle directly above her head in the Indian
signal of greeting.
As she beached, I greeted her with extended eager hands to assist
her ashore, for the klootchman is getting to be an old woman; albeit
she paddles against tidewater like a boy in his teens.
"No," she said, as I begged her to come ashore. "I will wait--me.
I just come to fetch Maarda; she been city; she soon come--now."
But she left her "working" attitude and curled like a school-girl in
the bow of the canoe, her elbows resting on her paddle which she
had flung across the gunwales.
"I have missed you, klootchman; you have not been to see me for
three moons, and you have not fished or been at the canneries,"
I remarked.
"No," she said. "I stay home this year." Then, leaning towards me
with grave import in her manner, her eyes, her voice, she added,
"I have a grandchild, born first week July, so--I stay."
So this explained her absence. I, of course, offered
congratulations and enquired all about the great event, for this
was her first grandchild, and the little person was of importance.
"And are you going to make a fisherman of him?" I asked.
"No, no, not boy-child, it is girl-child," she answered with some
indescribable trick of expression that led me to know she preferred
it so.
"You are pleased it is a girl?" I questioned in surprise.
"Very pleased," she replied emphatically. "Very good luck to have
girl for first grandchild. Our tribe not like yours; we want girl
children first; we not always wish boy-child born just for fight.
Your people, they care only for war-path; our tribe more peaceful.
Very good sign first grandchild to be girl. I tell you why:
girl-child may be some time mother herself; very grand thing to be
mother."
I felt I had caught the secret of her meaning. She was rejoicing
that this little one should some time become one of the mothers
of her race. We chatted over it a little longer and she gave me
several playful "digs" about my own tribe thinking so much less of
motherhood than hers, and so much more of battle and bloodshed.
Then we drifted into talk of the sockeye and of the hyiu chickimin
the Indians would get.
"Yes, hyiu chickimin," she repeated with a sigh of satisfaction.
"Always; and hyiu muck-a-muck when big salmon run. No more ever
come that bad year when not any fish."
"When was that?" I asked.
"Before you born, or I, or"--pointing across the park to the distant
city of Vancouver that breathed its wealth and beauty across the
September afternoon--"before that place born, before white man came
here--oh! long before."
Dear old klootchman! I knew by the dusk in her eyes that she was
back in her Land of Legends, and that soon I would be the richer in
my hoard of Indian lore. She sat, still leaning on her paddle; her
eyes, half-closed, rested on the distant outline of the blurred
heights across the Inlet. I shall not further attempt her broken
English, for this is but the shadow of her story, and without her
unique personality the legend is as a flower that lacks both color
and fragrance. She called it "The Lost Salmon-run."
"The wife of the Great Tyee was but a wisp of a girl, but all the world
was young in those days; even the Fraser River was young and small, not
the mighty water it is now; but the pink salmon crowded its throat just
as they do now, and the tillicums caught and salted and smoked the fish
just as they have done this year, just as they will always do. But it
was yet winter, and the rains were slanting and the fogs drifting,
when the wife of the Great Tyee stood before him and said:
"'Before the salmon-run I shall give to you a great gift. Will you
honor me most if it is the gift of a boy-child or a girl-child?'
The Great Tyee loved the woman. He was stern with his people, hard
with his tribe; he ruled his council-fires with a will of stone.
His medicine-men said he had no human heart in his body; his
warriors said he had no human blood in his veins. But he clasped
this woman's hands, and his eyes, his lips, his voice, were gentle
as her own, as he replied:
"'Give to me a girl-child--a little girl-child--that she may grow
to be like you, and, in her turn, give to her husband children.'
"But when the tribes-people heard of his choice they arose in great
anger. They surrounded him in a deep, indignant circle. 'You are
a slave to the woman,' they declared, 'and now you desire to make
yourself a slave to a woman-baby. We want an heir--a man-child to
be our Great Tyee in years to come. When you are old and weary of
tribal affairs, when you sit wrapped in your blanket in the hot
summer sunshine, because your blood is old and thin, what can a
girl-child do to help either you or us? Who, then, will be our
Great Tyee?'
"He stood in the centre of the menacing circle, his arms folded,
his chin raised, his eyes hard as flint. His voice, cold as stone,
replied:
"'Perhaps she will give you such a man-child, and, if so, the child
is yours; he will belong to you, not to me; he will become the
possession of the people. But if the child is a girl she will
belong to me--she will be mine. You cannot take her from me as you
took me from my mother's side and forced me to forget my aged father
in my service to the tribe; she will belong to me, will be the mother
of my grandchildren, and her husband will be my son.'
"'You do not care for the good of your tribe. You care only for
your own wishes and desires,' they rebelled. 'Suppose the salmon-run
is small, we will have no food; suppose there is no man-child,
we will have no Great Tyee to show us how to get food from other
tribes, and we shall starve.'
"'Your hearts are black and bloodless,' thundered the Great Tyee,
turning upon them fiercely, 'and your eyes are blinded. Do you wish
the tribe to forget how great is the importance of a child that
will some day be a mother herself, and give to your children and
grandchildren a Great Tyee? Are the people to live, to thrive,
to increase, to become more powerful with no mother-women to bear
future sons and daughters? Your minds are dead, your brains are
chilled. Still, even in your ignorance, you are my people: you
and your wishes must be considered. I call together the great
medicine-men, the men of witchcraft, the men of magic. They shall
decide the laws which will follow the bearing of either boy or
girl-child. What say you, oh! mighty men?'
"Messengers were then sent up and down the coast, sent far up the
Fraser River, and to the valley lands inland for many leagues,
gathering as they journeyed all the men of magic that could be
found. Never were so many medicine-men in council before. They
built fires and danced and chanted for many days. They spoke with
the gods of the mountains, with the gods of the sea; then 'the
power' of decision came to them. They were inspired with a choice
to lay before the tribes-people, and the most ancient medicine-man
in all the coast region arose and spoke their resolution:
"'The people of the tribe cannot be allowed to have all things.
They want a boy-child and they want a great salmon-run also. They
cannot have both. The Sagalie Tyee has revealed to us, the great
men of magic, that both these things will make the people arrogant
and selfish. They must choose between the two.'
"'Choose, oh! you ignorant tribes-people,' commanded the Great
Tyee. 'The wise men of our coast have said that the girl-child who
will some day bear children of her own will also bring abundance of
salmon at her birth; but the boy-child brings to you but himself.'
"'Let the salmon go,' shouted the people, 'but give us a future
Great Tyee. Give us the boy-child.'
"And when the child was born it was a boy.
"'Evil will fall upon you,' wailed the Great Tyee. 'You have
despised a mother-woman. You will suffer evil and starvation and
hunger and poverty, oh! foolish tribes-people. Did you not know
how great a girl-child is?'
"That spring, people from a score of tribes came up to the Fraser
for the salmon-run. They came great distances--from the mountains,
the lakes, the far-off dry lands, but not one fish entered the vast
rivers of the Pacific Coast. The people had made their choice.
They had forgotten the honor that a mother-child would have brought
them. They were bereft of their food. They were stricken with
poverty. Through the long winter that followed they endured
hunger and starvation. Since then our tribe has always welcomed
girl-children--we want no more lost runs."
The klootchman lifted her arms from her paddle as she concluded;
her eyes left the irregular outline of the violet mountains. She
had come back to this year of grace--her Legend Land had vanished.
"So," she added, "you see now, maybe, why I am glad my grandchild is
girl; it means big salmon-run next year."
"It is a beautiful story, klootchman," I said, "and I feel a
cruel delight that your men of magic punished the people for
their ill choice."
"That because you girl-child yourself," she laughed.
There was the slightest whisper of a step behind me. I turned to
find Maarda almost at my elbow. The rising tide was unbeaching the
canoe, and as Maarda stepped in and the klootchman slipped astern,
it drifted afloat.
"Kla-how-ya," nodded the klootchman as she dipped her paddle-blade
in exquisite silence.
"Kla-how-ya," smiled Maarda.
"Kla-how-ya, tillicums," I replied, and watched for many moments as
they slipped away into the blurred distance, until the canoe merged
into the violet and grey of the farther shore.
THE DEEP WATERS
Far over your left shoulder as your boat leaves the Narrows to
thread the beautiful waterways that lead to Vancouver Island,
you will see the summit of Mount Baker robed in its everlasting
whiteness and always reflecting some wonderful glory from the rising
sun, the golden noontide, or the violet and amber sunset. This is
the Mount Ararat of the Pacific Coast peoples; for those readers who
are familiar with the ways and beliefs and faiths of primitive races
will agree that it is difficult to discover anywhere in the world
a race that has not some story of the Deluge, which they have
chronicled and localized to fit the understanding and the conditions
of the nation that composes their own immediate world.
Amongst the red nations of America I doubt if any two tribes have
the same ideas regarding the Flood. Some of the traditions
concerning this vast whim of Nature are grotesque in the extreme;
some are impressive; some even profound; but of all the stories of
the Deluge that I have been able to collect I know of not a single
one that can even begin to equal in beauty of conception, let alone
rival in possible reality and truth, the Squamish legend of "The
Deep Waters."
I here quote the legend of "mine own people," the Iroquois tribes
of Ontario, regarding the Deluge. I do this to paint the color of
contrast in richer shades, for I am bound to admit that we who
pride ourselves on ancient intellectuality have but a childish tale
of the Flood when compared with the jealously preserved annals of
the Squamish, which savour more of history than tradition. With
"mine own people," animals always play a much more important part,
and are endowed with a finer intelligence, than humans. I do not
find amid my notes a single tradition of the Iroquois wherein
animals do not figure, and our story of the Deluge rests entirely
with the intelligence of sea-going and river-going creatures. With
us, animals in olden times were greater than man; but it is not so
with the Coast Indians, except in rare instances.
When a Coast Indian consents to tell you a legend he will, without
variation, begin it with, "It was before the white people came."
The natural thing for you, then, to ask is, "But who were here then?"
He will reply, "Indians, and just the trees, and animals, and
fishes, and a few birds."
So you are prepared to accept the animal world as intelligent
co-habitants of the Pacific slope; but he will not lead you to think
he regards them as equals, much less superiors. But to revert to
"mine own people": they hold the intelligence of wild animals far
above that of man, for perhaps the one reason that when an animal
is sick it effects its own cure; it knows what grasses and herbs to
eat, what to avoid, while the sick human calls the medicine-man,
whose wisdom is not only the result of years of study, but also
heredity; consequently any great natural event, such as the Deluge,
has much to do with the wisdom of the creatures of the forests and
the rivers.
Iroquois tradition tells us that once this earth was entirely
submerged in water, and during this period for many days a busy
little muskrat swam about vainly looking for a foothold of earth
wherein to build his house. In his search he encountered a turtle
also leisurely swimming; so they had speech together, and the
muskrat complained of weariness; he could find no foothold; he
was tired of incessant swimming, and longed for land such as his
ancestors enjoyed. The turtle suggested that the muskrat should
dive and endeavor to find earth at the bottom of the sea. Acting on
this advice, the muskrat plunged down, then arose with his two little
forepaws grasping some earth he had found beneath the waters.
"Place it on my shell and dive again for more," directed the
turtle. The muskrat did so; but when he returned with his paws
filled with earth he discovered the small quantity he had first
deposited on the turtle's shell had doubled in size. The return
from the third trip found the turtle's load again doubled. So the
building went on at double compound increase, and the world grew
its continents and its islands with great rapidity, and now rests
on the shell of a turtle.
If you ask an Iroquois, "And did no men survive this flood?" he
will reply, "Why should men survive? The animals are wiser than
men; let the wisest live."
How, then, was the earth repeopled?
The Iroquois will tell you that the otter was a medicine-man; that,
in swimming and diving about, he found corpses of men and women;
he sang his medicine-songs and they came to life, and the otter
brought them fish for food until they were strong enough to provide
for themselves. Then the Iroquois will conclude his tale with,
"You know well that the otter has greater wisdom than a man."
So much for "mine own people" and our profound respect for the
superior intelligence of our little brothers of the animal world.
But the Squamish tribe hold other ideas. It was on a February
day that I first listened to this beautiful, humane story of the
Deluge. My royal old tillicum had come to see me through the rains
and mists of late winter days. The gateways of my wigwam always
stood open--very widely open--for his feet to enter, and this
especial day he came with the worst downpour of the season.
Woman-like, I protested with a thousand contradictions in my voice,
that he should venture out to see me on such a day. It was "Oh!
Chief, I am so glad to see you!" and it was "Oh! Chief, why didn't
you stay at home on such a wet day--your poor throat will suffer."
But I soon had quantities of hot tea for him, and the huge cup my
own father always used was his--as long as the Sagalie Tyee allowed
his dear feet to wander my way. The immense cup stands idle and
empty now for the second time.
Helping him off with his great-coat, I chatted on about the deluge
of rain, and he remarked it was not so very bad, as one could yet
walk.
"Fortunately, yes, for I cannot swim," I told him.
He laughed, replying, "Well, it is not so bad as when the Great Deep
Waters covered the world."
Immediately I foresaw the coming legend, so crept into the shell of
monosyllables.
"No?" I questioned.
"No," he replied. "For, one time, there was no land here at all;
everywhere there was just water."
"I can quite believe it," I remarked caustically.
He laughed--that irresistible, though silent, David Warfield laugh
of his that always brought a responsive smile from his listeners.
Then he plunged directly into the tradition, with no preface save a
comprehensive sweep of his wonderful hands towards my wide window,
against which the rains were beating.
"It was after a long, long time of this--this rain. The mountain
streams were swollen, the rivers choked, the sea began to rise--and
yet it rained; for weeks and weeks it rained." He ceased speaking,
while the shadows of centuries gone crept into his eyes. Tales of
the misty past always inspired him.
"Yes," he continued. "It rained for weeks and weeks, while the
mountain torrents roared thunderingly down, and the sea crept
silently up. The level lands were first to float in sea-water, then
to disappear. The slopes were next to slip into the sea. The world
was slowly being flooded. Hurriedly the Indian tribes gathered in
one spot, a place of safety far above the reach of the on-creeping
sea. The spot was the circling shore of Lake Beautiful, up the
North Arm. They held a Great Council and decided at once upon a
plan of action. A giant canoe should be built, and some means
contrived to anchor it in case the waters mounted to the heights.
The men undertook the canoe, the women the anchorage.
"A giant tree was felled, and day and night the men toiled over
its construction into the most stupendous canoe the world has ever
known. Not an hour, not a moment, but many worked, while the
toil-wearied ones slept, only to awake to renewed toil. Meanwhile,
the women also worked at a cable--the largest, the longest, the
strongest that Indian hands and teeth had ever made. Scores of
them gathered and prepared the cedar-fibre; scores of them plaited,
rolled, and seasoned it; scores of them chewed upon it inch by inch
to make it pliable; scores of them oiled and worked, oiled and
worked, oiled and worked it into a sea-resisting fabric. And still
the sea crept up, and up, and up. It was the last day; hope of life
for the tribes, of land for the world, was doomed. Strong hands,
self-sacrificing hands, fastened the cable the women had made--one
end to the giant canoe, the other about an enormous boulder, a vast
immovable rock as firm as the foundations of the world--for might
not the canoe, with its priceless freight drift out, far out, to sea,
and when the water subsided might not this ship of safety be leagues
and leagues beyond the sight of land on the storm-driven Pacific?
"Then, with the bravest hearts that ever beat, noble hands lifted
every child of the tribe into this vast canoe; not one single baby
was overlooked. The canoe was stocked with food and fresh water,
and lastly, the ancient men and women of the race selected as
guardians to these children the bravest, most stalwart, handsomest
young man of the tribes, and the mother of the youngest baby in the
camp--she was but a girl of sixteen, her child but two weeks old;
but she, too, was brave and very beautiful. These two were placed,
she at the bow of the canoe to watch, he at the stern to guide,
and all the little children crowded between.
"And still the sea crept up, and up, and up. At the crest of the
bluffs about Lake Beautiful the doomed tribes crowded. Not a single
person attempted to enter the canoe. There was no wailing, no
crying out for safety. 'Let the little children, the young mother,
and the bravest and best of our young men live,' was all the
farewell those in the canoe heard as the waters reached the summit,
and--the canoe floated. Last of all to be seen was the top of the
tallest tree, then--all was a world of water.
"For days and days there was no land--just the rush of swirling,
snarling sea; but the canoe rode safely at anchor, the cable those
scores of dead, faithful women had made held true as the hearts
that beat behind the toil and labor of it all.
"But one morning at sunrise, far to the south, a speck floated on the
breast of the waters; at midday it was larger; at evening it was yet
larger. The moon arose, and in its magic light the man at the stern
saw it was a patch of land. All night he watched it grow, and at
daybreak looked with glad eyes upon the summit of Mount Baker. He
cut the cable, grasped his paddle in his strong, young hands, and
steered for the south. When they landed, the waters were sunken
half down the mountain-side. The children were lifted out; the
beautiful young mother, the stalwart young brave, turned to each
other, clasped hands, looked into each other's eyes--and smiled.
"And down in the vast country that lies between Mount Baker and
the Fraser River they made a new camp, built new lodges, where the
little children grew and thrived, and lived and loved, and the
earth was repeopled by them.
"The Squamish say that in a gigantic crevice half-way to the crest
of Mount Baker may yet be seen the outlines of an enormous canoe,
but I have never seen it myself."
He ceased speaking with that far-off cadence in his voice with which
he always ended a legend, and for a long time we both sat in silence
listening to the rains that were still beating against the window.
THE SEA-SERPENT
There is one vice that is absolutely unknown to the red man; he
was born without it, and amongst all the deplorable things he
has learned from the white races, this, at least, he has never
acquired. That is the vice of avarice. That the Indian looks
upon greed of gain, miserliness, avariciousness, and wealth
accumulated above the head of his poorer neighbor as one of the
lowest degradations he can fall to is perhaps more aptly illustrated
than anything I could quote to demonstrate his horror of what
he calls "the white man's unkindness." In a very wide and
varied experience with many tribes, I have yet to find even one
instance of avarice, and I have encountered but one single case of a
"stingy Indian," and this man was so marked amongst his fellows that
at mention of his name his tribes-people jeered and would remark
contemptuously that he was like a white man--hated to share his
money and his possessions. All red races are born Socialists,
and most tribes carry out their communistic ideas to the letter.
Amongst the Iroquois it is considered disgraceful to have food if
your neighbor has none. To be a creditable member of the nation
you must divide your possessions with your less fortunate fellows.
I find it much the same amongst the Coast Indians, though they are
less bitter in their hatred of the extremes of wealth and poverty
than are the Eastern tribes. Still, the very fact that they have
preserved this legend, in which they liken avarice to a slimy
sea-serpent, shows the trend of their ideas; shows, too, that an
Indian is an Indian, no matter what his tribe; shows that he cannot,
or will not, hoard money; shows that his native morals demand that
the spirit of greed must be strangled at all cost.
The chief and I had sat long over our luncheon. He had been talking
of his trip to England and of the many curious things he had seen.
At last, in an outburst of enthusiasm, he said: "I saw everything
in the world--everything but a sea-serpent!"
"But there is no such thing as a sea-serpent," I laughed, "so you
must have really seen everything in the world."
His face clouded; for a moment he sat in silence; then, looking
directly at me, said, "Maybe none now, but long ago there was one
here--in the Inlet."
"How long ago?" I asked.
"When first the white gold-hunters came," he replied. "Came with
greedy, clutching fingers, greedy eyes, greedy hearts. The white
men fought, murdered, starved, went mad with love of that gold far
up the Fraser River. Tillicums were tillicums no more, brothers
were foes, fathers and sons were enemies. Their love of the gold
was a curse."
"Was it then the sea-serpent was seen?" I asked, perplexed with the
problem of trying to connect the gold-seekers with such a monster.
"Yes, it was then, but----" he hesitated, then plunged into the
assertion, "but you will not believe the story if you think there
is no such thing as a sea-serpent."
"I shall believe whatever you tell me, Chief," I answered. "I am
only too ready to believe. You know I come of a superstitious race,
and all my association with the Palefaces has never yet robbed me
of my birthright to believe strange traditions."
"You always understand," he said after a pause.
"It's my heart that understands," I remarked quietly.
He glanced up quickly, and with one of his all too few radiant
smiles, he laughed.
"Yes, skookum tum-tum." Then without further hesitation he told
the tradition, which, although not of ancient happening, is held in
great reverence by his tribe. During its recital he sat with folded
arms, leaning on the table, his head and shoulders bending eagerly
towards me as I sat at the opposite side. It was the only time he
ever talked to me when he did not use emphasising gesticulations,
but his hands never once lifted: his wonderful eyes alone gave
expression to what he called "The Legend of the 'Salt-chuck Oluk'"
(sea-serpent).
"Yes, it was during the first gold craze, and many of our young men
went as guides to the whites far up the Fraser. When they returned
they brought these tales of greed and murder back with them, and
our old people and our women shook their heads and said evil would
come of it. But all our young men, except one, returned as they
went--kind to the poor, kind to those who were foodless, sharing
whatever they had with their tillicums. But one, by name Shak-shak
(The Hawk), came back with hoards of gold nuggets, chickimin
(money), everything; he was rich like the white men, and, like them,
he kept it. He would count his chickimin, count his nuggets, gloat
over them, toss them in his palms. He rested his head on them as
he slept, he packed them about with him through the day. He loved
them better than food, better than his tillicums, better than his
life. The entire tribe arose. They said Shak-shak had the disease
of greed; that to cure it he must give a great potlatch, divide his
riches with the poorer ones, share them with the old, the sick, the
foodless. But he jeered and laughed and told them No, and went on
loving and gloating over his gold.
"Then the Sagalie Tyee spoke out of the sky and said, 'Shak-shak,
you have made of yourself a loathsome thing; you will not listen to
the cry of the hungry, to the call of the old and sick; you will not
share your possessions; you have made of yourself an outcast from
your tribe and disobeyed the ancient laws of your people. Now I
will make of you a thing loathed and hated by all men, both white
and red. You will have two heads, for your greed has two mouths to
bite. One bites the poor, and one bites your own evil heart; and
the fangs in these mouths are poison--poison that kills the hungry,
and poison that kills your own manhood. Your evil heart will
beat in the very centre of your foul body, and he that pierces it
will kill the disease of greed forever from amongst his people.'
And when the sun arose above the North Arm the next morning the
tribes-people saw a gigantic sea-serpent stretched across the
surface of the waters. One hideous head rested on the bluffs at
Brockton Point, the other rested on a group of rocks just below
Mission, at the western edge of North Vancouver. If you care to go
there some day I will show you the hollow in one great stone where
that head lay. The tribes-people were stunned with horror. They
loathed the creature, they hated it, they feared it. Day after day
it lay there, its monstrous heads lifted out of the waters, its
mile-long body blocking all entrance from the Narrows, all outlet
from the North Arm. The chiefs made council, the medicine-men
danced and chanted, but the salt-chuck oluk never moved. It could
not move, for it was the hated totem of what now rules the white
man's world--greed and love of chickimin. No one can ever move the
love of chickimin from the white man's heart, no one can ever make
him divide all with the poor. But after the chiefs and medicine-men
had done all in their power, and still the salt-chuck oluk lay
across the waters, a handsome boy of sixteen approached them and
reminded them of the words of the Sagalie Tyee, 'that he that
pierced the monster's heart would kill the disease of greed forever
amongst his people.'
"'Let me try to find this evil heart, oh! great men of my tribe,' he
cried. 'Let me war upon this creature; let me try to rid my people
of this pestilence.'
"The boy was brave and very beautiful. His tribes-people called him
the Tenas Tyee (Little Chief) and they loved him. Of all his wealth
of fish and furs, of game and hykwa (large shell-money) he gave to
the boys who had none; he hunted food for the old people; he tanned
skins and furs for those whose feet were feeble, whose eyes were
fading, whose blood ran thin with age.
"'Let him go!' cried the tribes-people. 'This unclean monster can
only be overcome by cleanliness, this creature of greed can only
be overthrown by generosity. Let him go!' The chiefs and the
medicine-men listened, then consented. 'Go,' they commanded, 'and
fight this thing with your strongest weapons--cleanliness and
generosity.'
"The Tenas Tyee turned to his mother. 'I shall be gone four days,'
he told her, 'and I shall swim all that time. I have tried all my
life to be generous, but the people say I must be clean also to
fight this unclean thing. While I am gone put fresh furs on my bed
every day, even if I am not here to lie on them; if I know my bed,
my body and my heart are all clean I can overcome this serpent.'
"'Your bed shall have fresh furs every morning,' his mother
said simply.
"The Tenas Tyee then stripped himself, and, with no clothing save a
buckskin belt into which he thrust his hunting-knife, he flung his
lithe young body into the sea. But at the end of four days he did
not return. Sometimes his people could see him swimming far out in
mid-channel, endeavoring to find the exact centre of the serpent,
where lay its evil, selfish heart; but on the fifth morning they saw
him rise out of the sea, climb to the summit of Brockton Point, and
greet the rising sun with outstretched arms. Weeks and months went
by, still the Tenas Tyee would swim daily searching for that heart
of greed; and each morning the sunrise glinted on his slender young
copper-colored body as he stood with outstretched arms at the tip
of Brockton Point, greeting the coming day and then plunging from
the summit into the sea.
"And at his home on the north shore his mother dressed his bed with
fresh furs each morning. The seasons drifted by; winter followed
summer, summer followed winter. But it was four years before the
Tenas Tyee found the centre of the great salt-chuck oluk and plunged
his hunting-knife into its evil heart. In its death-agony it
writhed through the Narrows, leaving a trail of blackness on the
waters. Its huge body began to shrink, to shrivel; it became
dwarfed and withered, until nothing but the bones of its back
remained, and they, sea-bleached and lifeless, soon sank to the bed
of the ocean leagues off from the rim of land. But as the Tenas
Tyee swam homeward and his clean, young body crossed through the
black stain left by the serpent, the waters became clear and blue
and sparkling. He had overcome even the trail of the salt-chuck
oluk.
"When at last he stood in the doorway of his home he said, 'My
mother, I could not have killed the monster of greed amongst my
people had you not helped me by keeping one place for me at home
fresh and clean for my return.'
"She looked at him as only mothers look. 'Each day, these four
years, fresh furs have I laid for your bed. Sleep now, and rest,
oh! my Tenas Tyee,' she said."
* * * * *
The chief unfolded his arms, and his voice took another tone as he
said, "What do you call that story--a legend?"
"The white people would call it an allegory," I answered. He shook
his head.
"No savvy," he smiled.
I explained as simply as possible, and with his customary alertness
he immediately understood. "That's right," he said. "That's what
we say it means, we Squamish, that greed is evil and not clean,
like the salt-chuck oluk. That it must be stamped out amongst our
people, killed by cleanliness and generosity. The boy that overcame
the serpent was both these things."
"What became of this splendid boy?" I asked.
"The Tenas Tyee? Oh! some of our old, old people say they
sometimes see him now, standing on Brockton Point, his bare young
arms outstretched to the rising sun," he replied.
"Have you ever seen him, Chief?" I questioned.
"No," he answered simply. But I have never heard such poignant
regret as his wonderful voice crowded into that single word.
THE LOST ISLAND
"Yes," said my old tillicum, "we Indians have lost many things.
We have lost our lands, our forests, our game, our fish; we have
lost our ancient religion, our ancient dress; some of the younger
people have even lost their fathers' language and the legends and
traditions of their ancestors. We cannot call those old things back
to us; they will never come again. We may travel many days up the
mountain-trails, and look in the silent places for them. They are
not there. We may paddle many moons on the sea, but our canoes will
never enter the channel that leads to the yesterdays of the Indian
people. These things are lost, just like 'The Island of the North
Arm.' They may be somewhere nearby, but no one can ever find them."
"But there are many islands up the North Arm," I asserted.
"Not the island we Indian people have sought for many tens of
summers," he replied sorrowfully.
"Was it ever there?" I questioned.
"Yes, it was there," he said. "My grandsires and my
great-grandsires saw it; but that was long ago. My father never
saw it, though he spent many days in many years searching, always
searching for it. I am an old man myself, and I have never seen
it, though from my youth, I, too, have searched. Sometimes in the
stillness of the nights I have paddled up in my canoe." Then,
lowering his voice: "Twice I have seen its shadow: high rocky
shores, reaching as high as the tree-tops on the mainland, then tall
pines and firs on its summit like a king's crown. As I paddled up
the Arm one summer night, long ago, the shadow of these rocks and
firs fell across my canoe, across my face, and across the waters
beyond. I turned rapidly to look. There was no island there,
nothing but a wide stretch of waters on both sides of me, and the
moon almost directly overhead. Don't say it was the shore that
shadowed me," he hastened, catching my thought. "The moon was above
me; my canoe scarce made a shadow on the still waters. No, it was
not the shore."
"Why do you search for it?" I lamented, thinking of the old dreams
in my own life whose realization I have never attained.
"There is something on that island that I want. I shall look for
it until I die, for it is there," he affirmed.
There was a long silence between us after that. I had learned to
love silences when with my old tillicum, for they always led to a
legend. After a time he began voluntarily:
"It was more than one hundred years ago. This great city of
Vancouver was but the dream of the Sagalie Tyee [God] at that time.
The dream had not yet come to the white man; only one great Indian
medicine-man knew that some day a great camp for Palefaces would lie
between False Creek and the Inlet. This dream haunted him; it came
to him night and day--when he was amid his people laughing and
feasting, or when he was alone in the forest chanting his strange
songs, beating his hollow drum, or shaking his wooden witch-rattle
to gain more power to cure the sick and the dying of his tribe. For
years this dream followed him. He grew to be an old, old man, yet
always he could hear voices, strong and loud, as when they first
spoke to him in his youth, and they would say: 'Between the two
narrow strips of salt water the white men will camp, many hundreds
of them, many thousands of them. The Indians will learn their ways,
will live as they do, will become as they are. There will be no
more great war-dances, no more fights with other powerful tribes;
it will be as if the Indians had lost all bravery, all courage, all
confidence.' He hated the voices, he hated the dream; but all his
power, all his big medicine, could not drive them away. He was the
strongest man on all the North Pacific Coast. He was mighty and
very tall, and his muscles were as those of Leloo, the timber-wolf,
when he is strongest to kill his prey. He could go for many days
without food; he could fight the largest mountain-lion; he could
overthrow the fiercest grizzly bear; he could paddle against the
wildest winds and ride the highest waves. He could meet his enemies
and kill whole tribes single-handed. His strength, his courage, his
power, his bravery, were those of a giant. He knew no fear; nothing
in the sea, or in the forest, nothing in the earth or the sky, could
conquer him. He was fearless, fearless. Only this haunting dream
of the coming white man's camp he could not drive away; it was the
only thing in life he had tried to kill and failed. It drove him
from the feasting, drove him from the pleasant lodges, the fires,
the dancing, the story-telling of his people in their camp by the
water's edge, where the salmon thronged and the deer came down to
drink of the mountain-streams. He left the Indian village, chanting
his wild songs as he went. Up through the mighty forests he
climbed, through the trailless deep mosses and matted vines, up to
the summit of what the white men call Grouse Mountain. For many
days he camped there. He ate no food, he drank no water, but sat
and sang his medicine-songs through the dark hours and through the
day. Before him--far beneath his feet--lay the narrow strip of land
between the two salt waters. Then the Sagalie Tyee gave him the
power to see far into the future. He looked across a hundred years,
just as he looked across what you call the Inlet, and he saw mighty
lodges built close together, hundreds and thousands of them--lodges
of stone and wood, and long straight trails to divide them. He saw
these trails thronging with Palefaces; he heard the sound of the
white man's paddle-dip on the waters, for it is not silent like the
Indian's; he saw the white man's trading posts, saw the fishing-nets,
heard his speech. Then the vision faded as gradually as it
came. The narrow strip of land was his own forest once more.
"'I am old,' he called, in his sorrow and his trouble for his
people. 'I am old, O Sagalie Tyee! Soon I shall die and go to
the Happy Hunting Grounds of my fathers. Let not my strength die
with me. Keep living for all time my courage, my bravery, my
fearlessness. Keep them for my people that they may be strong
enough to endure the white man's rule. Keep my strength living
for them; hide it so that the Paleface may never find or see it.'
"Then he came down from the summit of Grouse Mountain. Still
chanting his medicine-songs, he entered his canoe and paddled
through the colors of the setting sun far up the North Arm. When
night fell he came to an island with misty shores of great grey
rock; on its summit tall pines and firs encircled like a king's
crown. As he neared it he felt all his strength, his courage, his
fearlessness, leaving him; he could see these things drift from
him on to the island. They were as the clouds that rest on the
mountains, grey-white and half transparent. Weak as a woman, he
paddled back to the Indian village; he told them to go and search
for 'The Island,' where they would find all his courage, his
fearlessness and his strength, living, living forever. He slept
then, but--in the morning he did not awake. Since then our young
men and our old have searched for 'The Island.' It is there
somewhere, up some lost channel, but we cannot find it. When we
do, we will get back all the courage and bravery we had before the
white man came, for the great medicine-man said those things never
die--they live for one's children and grandchildren."
His voice ceased. My whole heart went out to him in his longing
for the lost island. I thought of all the splendid courage I knew
him to possess, so made answer: "But you say that the shadow of
this island has fallen upon you; is it not so, tillicum?"
"Yes," he said half mournfully. "But only the shadow."
POINT GREY
"Have you ever sailed around Point Grey?" asked a young Squamish
tillicum of mine who often comes to see me, to share a cup of
tea and a taste of muck-a-muck that otherwise I should eat in
solitude.
"No," I admitted, I had not had that pleasure, for I did not know
the uncertain waters of English Bay sufficiently well to venture
about its headlands in my frail canoe.
"Some day, perhaps next summer, I'll take you there in a sail-boat,
and show you the big rock at the south-west of the Point. It is a
strange rock; we Indian people call it Homolsom."
"What an odd name!" I commented. "Is it a Squamish word?--it does
not sound to me like one."
"It is not altogether Squamish, but half Fraser River language. The
Point was the dividing-line between the grounds and waters of the
two tribes; so they agreed to make the name 'Homolsom' from the two
languages."
I suggested more tea, and, as he sipped it, he told me the legend
that few of the younger Indians know. That he believes the story
himself is beyond question, for many times he admitted having tested
the virtues of this rock, and it had never once failed him. All
people that have to do with water-craft are superstitious about
some things, and I freely acknowledge that times innumerable I
have "whistled up" a wind when dead calm threatened, or stuck
a jack-knife in the mast, and afterwards watched with great
contentment the idle sail fill, and the canoe pull out to a light
breeze. So, perhaps, I am prejudiced in favor of this legend of
Homolsom Rock, for it strikes a very responsive chord in that
portion of my heart that has always throbbed for the sea.
"You know," began my young tillicum, "that only waters unspoiled
by human hands can be of any benefit. One gains no strength by
swimming in any waters heated or boiled by fires that men build.
To grow strong and wise one must swim in the natural rivers, the
mountain torrents, the sea, just as the Sagalie Tyee made them.
Their virtues die when human beings try to improve them by heating
or distilling, or placing even tea in them, and so--what makes
Homolsom Rock so full of 'good medicine' is that the waters that
wash up about it are straight from the sea, made by the hand of
the Great Tyee, and unspoiled by the hand of man.
"It was not always there, that great rock, drawing its strength and
its wonderful power from the seas, for it, too, was once a Great
Tyee, who ruled a mighty tract of waters. He was god of all the
waters that wash the coast, of the Gulf of Georgia, of Puget Sound,
of the Straits of Juan de Fuca, of the waters that beat against even
the west coast of Vancouver Island, and of all the channels that cut
between the Charlotte Islands. He was Tyee of the West Wind, and
his storms and tempests were so mighty that the Sagalie Tyee Himself
could not control the havoc that he created. He warred upon all
fishing craft, he demolished canoes, and sent men to graves in the
sea. He uprooted forests and drove the surf on shore heavy with
wreckage of despoiled trees and with beaten and bruised fish. He
did all this to reveal his powers, for he was cruel and hard of
heart, and he would laugh and defy the Sagalie Tyee, and, looking up
to the sky, he would call, 'See how powerful I am, how mighty, how
strong; I am as great as you.'
"It was at this time that the Sagalie Tyee in the persons of the
Four Men came in the great canoe up over the rim of the Pacific,
in that age thousands of years ago when they turned the evil into
stone, and the kindly into trees.
"'Now,' said the god of the West Wind, 'I can show how great I am.
I shall blow a tempest that these men may not land on my coast.
They shall not ride my seas and sounds and channels in safety. I
shall wreck them and send their bodies into the great deeps, and I
shall be Sagalie Tyee in their place and ruler of all the world.'
So the god of the West Wind blew forth his tempests. The waves
arose mountain high, the seas lashed and thundered along the shores.
The roar of his mighty breath could be heard wrenching giant limbs
from the forest trees, whistling down the canyons and dealing death
and destruction for leagues and leagues along the coast. But the
canoe containing the Four Men rode upright through all the heights
and hollows of the seething ocean. No curling crest or sullen depth
could wreck that magic craft, for the hearts it bore were filled
with kindness for the human race, and kindness cannot die.
"It was all rock and dense forest, and unpeopled; only wild animals
and sea-birds sought the shelter it provided from the terrors of the
West Wind; but he drove them out in sullen anger, and made on this
strip of land his last stand against the Four Men. The Paleface
calls the place Point Grey, but the Indians yet speak of it as
'The Battle Ground of the West Wind.' All his mighty forces he
now brought to bear against the oncoming canoe; he swept great
hurricanes about the stony ledges; he caused the sea to beat and
swirl in tempestuous fury along its narrow fastnesses; but the canoe
came nearer and nearer, invincible as those shores, and stronger
than death itself. As the bow touched the land the Four Men arose
and commanded the West Wind to cease his war-cry, and, mighty though
he had been, his voice trembled and sobbed itself into a gentle
breeze, then fell to a whispering note, then faded into exquisite
silence.
"'Oh, you evil one with the unkind heart,' cried the Four Men, 'you
have been too great a god for even the Sagalie Tyee to obliterate
you forever, but you shall live on, live now to serve, not to hinder
mankind. You shall turn into stone where you now stand, and you
shall rise only as men wish you to. Your life from this day shall
be for the good of man, for when the fisherman's sails are idle and
his lodge is leagues away you shall fill those sails and blow his
craft free, in whatever direction he desires. You shall stand where
you are through all the thousands upon thousands of years to come,
and he who touches you with his paddle-blade shall have his desire
of a breeze to carry him home.'"
My young tillicum had finished his tradition, and his great, solemn
eyes regarded me half-wistfully.
"I wish you could see Homolsom Rock," he said. "For that is he who
was once the Tyee of the West Wind."
"Were you ever becalmed around Point Grey?" I asked irrelevantly.
"Often," he replied. "But I paddle up to the rock and touch it with
the tip of my paddle-blade, and, no matter which way I want to go, the
wind will blow free for me, if I wait a little while."
"I suppose your people all do this?" I replied.
"Yes, all of them," he answered. "They have done it for hundreds of
years. You see the power in it is just as great now as at first,
for the rock feeds every day on the unspoiled sea that the Sagalie
Tyee made."
THE TULAMEEN TRAIL
Did you ever "holiday" through the valley lands of the Dry Belt?
Ever spend days and days in a swinging, swaying coach, behind a
four-in-hand, when "Curly" or "Nicola Ned" held the ribbons, and
tooled his knowing little leaders and wheelers down those horrifying
mountain-trails that wind like russet skeins of cobweb through the
heights and depths of the Okanagan, the Nicola, and the Similkameen
countries? If so, you have listened to the call of the Skookum
Chuck, as the Chinook speakers call the rollicking, tumbling streams
that sing their way through the canyons with a music so dulcet,
so insistent, that for many moons the echo of it lingers in your
listening ears, and you will, through all the years to come, hear
the voices of those mountain-rivers calling you to return.
But the most haunting of all the melodies is the warbling laughter
of the Tulameen; its delicate note is far more powerful, more
far-reaching than the throaty thunders of Niagara. That is why the
Indians of the Nicola country still cling to their old-time story
that the Tulameen carries the spirit of a young girl enmeshed in the
wonders of its winding course; a spirit that can never free itself
from the canyons, to rise above the heights and follow its fellows
to the Happy Hunting Grounds, but which is contented to entwine its
laughter, its sobs, its lonely whispers, its still lonelier call for
companionship, with the wild music of the waters that sing forever
beneath the western stars.
As your horses plod up and up the almost perpendicular trail that
leads out of the Nicola Valley to the summit, a paradise of beauty
outspreads at your feet; the color is indescribable in words, the
atmosphere thrills you. Youth and the pulse of rioting blood are
yours again, until, as you near the heights, you become strangely
calmed by the voiceless silence of it all--a silence so holy that
it seems the whole world about you is swinging its censer before
an altar in some dim remote cathedral! The choir-voices of the
Tulameen are yet very far away across the summit, but the heights of
the Nicola are the silent prayer that holds the human soul before
the first great chords swell down from the organ-loft. In this
first long climb up miles and miles of trail, even the staccato of
the drivers' long black-snake whip is hushed. He lets his animals
pick their own sure-footed way, but once across the summit he
gathers the reins in his steely fingers, gives a low, quick whistle,
the whiplash curls about the ears of the leaders and the plunge down
the dip of the mountain begins. Every foot of the way is done at
a gallop. The coach rocks and swings as it dashes through a trail
rough-hewn from the heart of the forest; at times the angles are so
abrupt that you cannot see the heads of the leaders as they swing
around the grey crags that almost scrape the tires on the left,
while within a foot of the rim of the trail the right wheels whirl
along the edge of a yawning canyon. The rhythm of the hoof-beats,
the recurrent low whistle and crack of the whiplash, the occasional
rattle of pebbles showering down to the depths, loosened by rioting
wheels, have broken the sacred silence. Yet, above all those nearby
sounds, there seems to be an indistinct murmur, which grows sweeter,
more musical, as you gain the base of the mountains, where it rises
above all harsher notes. It is the voice of the restless Tulameen
as it dances and laughs through the rocky throat of the canyon,
three hundred feet below. Then, following the song, comes a glimpse
of the river itself--white-garmented in the film of its countless
rapids, its showers of waterfalls. It is as beautiful to look at as
to listen to, and it is here, where the trail winds about and above
it for leagues, that the Indians say it caught the spirit of the
maiden that is still interlaced in its loveliness.
It was in one of the terrible battles that raged between the valley
tribes before the white man's footprints were seen along these
trails. None can now tell the cause of this warfare, but the
supposition is that it was merely for tribal supremacy--that
primeval instinct that assails the savage in both man and beast,
that drives the hill-men to bloodshed and the leaders of buffalo
herds to conflict. It is the greed to rule; the one barbarous
instinct that civilization has never yet been able to eradicate from
armed nations. This war of the tribes of the valley lands was of
years in duration; men fought, and women mourned, and children wept,
as all have done since time began. It seemed an unequal battle,
for the old, experienced, war-tried chief and his two astute sons
were pitted against a single young Tulameen brave. Both factors
had their loyal followers, both were indomitable as to courage and
bravery, both were determined and ambitious, both were skilled
fighters.
But on the older man's side were experience and two other wary,
strategic brains to help him, while on the younger was but the
advantage of splendid youth and unconquerable persistence. But at
every pitched battle, at every skirmish, at every single-handed
conflict the younger man gained little by little, the older man lost
step by step. The experience of age was gradually but inevitably
giving way to the strength and enthusiasm of youth. Then, one day,
they met face to face and alone--the old, war-scarred chief, the
young battle-inspired brave. It was an unequal combat, and at the
close of a brief but violent struggle the younger had brought the
older to his knees. Standing over him with up-poised knife the
Tulameen brave laughed sneeringly, and said:
"Would you, my enemy, have this victory as your own? If so, I give
it to you; but in return for my submission I demand of you--your
daughter."
For an instant the old chief looked in wonderment at his conqueror;
he thought of his daughter only as a child who played about the
forest-trails or sat obediently beside her mother in the lodge,
stitching her little moccasins or weaving her little baskets.
"My daughter!" he answered sternly. "My daughter--who is barely
out of her own cradle-basket--give her to you, whose hands are
blood-dyed with the killing of a score of my tribe? You ask for
this thing?"
"I do not ask it," replied the young brave. "I demand it; I have
seen the girl and I shall have her."
The old chief sprang to his feet and spat out his refusal. "Keep
your victory, and I keep my girl-child," though he knew he was not
only defying his enemy, but defying death as well.
The Tulameen laughed lightly, easily. "I shall not kill the sire
of my wife," he taunted. "One more battle must we have, but your
girl-child will come to me."
Then he took his victorious way up the trail, while the old chief
walked with slow and springless step down into the canyon.
The next morning the chief's daughter was loitering along the
heights, listening to the singing river, and sometimes leaning over
the precipice to watch its curling eddies and dancing waterfalls.
Suddenly she heard a slight rustle, as though some passing bird's
wing had clipt the air. Then at her feet there fell a slender,
delicately shaped arrow. It fell with spent force, and her Indian
woodcraft told her it had been shot to her, not at her. She started
like a wild animal. Then her quick eye caught the outline of a
handsome, erect figure that stood on the heights across the river.
She did not know him as her father's enemy. She only saw him to be
young, stalwart, and of extraordinary manly beauty. The spirit of
youth and of a certain savage coquetry awoke within her. Quickly
she fitted one of her own dainty arrows to the bow-string and sent
it winging across the narrow canyon; it fell, spent, at his feet,
and he knew she had shot it to him, not at him.
Next morning, woman-like, she crept noiselessly to the brink of the
heights. Would she see him again--that handsome brave? Would he
speed another arrow to her? She had not yet emerged from the tangle
of forest before it fell, its faint-winged flight heralding its
coming. Near the feathered end was tied a tassel of beautiful
ermine-tails. She took from her wrist a string of shell beads,
fastened it to one of her little arrows, and winged it across the
canyon, as yesterday.
The following morning, before leaving the lodge, she fastened the
tassel of ermine-tails in her straight black hair. Would he see
them? But no arrow fell at her feet that day, but a dearer message
was there on the brink of the precipice. He himself awaited her
coming--he who had never left her thoughts since that first arrow
came to her from his bow-string. His eyes burned with warm fires,
as she approached, but his lips said simply: "I have crossed the
Tulameen River." Together they stood, side by side, and looked down
at the depths before them, watching in silence the little torrent
rollicking and roystering over its boulders and crags.
"That is my country," he said, looking across the river. "This
is the country of your father, and of your brothers; they are my
enemies. I return to my own shore to-night. Will you come with me?"
She looked up into his handsome young face. So this was her
father's foe--the dreaded Tulameen!
"Will you come?" he repeated.
"I will come," she whispered.
It was in the dark of the moon and through the kindly night he led
her far up the rocky shores to the narrow belt of quiet waters,
where they crossed in silence into his own country. A week, a
month, a long golden summer, slipped by, but the insulted old
chief and his enraged sons failed to find her.
Then, one morning, as the lovers walked together on the heights above
the far upper reaches of the river, even the ever-watchful eyes
of the Tulameen failed to detect the lurking enemy. Across the
narrow canyon crouched and crept the two outwitted brothers of the
girl-wife at his side; their arrows were on their bow-strings, their
hearts on fire with hatred and vengeance. Like two evil-winged
birds of prey those arrows sped across the laughing river, but
before they found their mark in the breast of the victorious
Tulameen the girl had unconsciously stepped before him. With a
little sigh, she slipped into his arms, her brothers' arrows
buried into her soft, brown flesh.
It was many a moon before his avenging hand succeeded in slaying
the old chief and those two hated sons of his. But when this was
finally done the handsome young Tulameen left his people, his tribe,
his country, and went into the far north. "For," he said, as he
sang his farewell war-song, "my heart lies dead in the Tulameen
River."
* * * * *
But the spirit of his girl-wife still sings through the canyon, its
song blending with the music of that sweetest-voiced river in all
the great valleys of the Dry Belt. That is why this laughter, the
sobbing murmur of the beautiful Tulameen, will haunt for evermore
the ear that has once listened to its song.
THE GREY ARCHWAY
The steamer, like a huge shuttle, wove in and out among the
countless small islands; its long trailing scarf of grey smoke
hung heavily along the uncertain shores, casting a shadow over the
pearly waters of the Pacific, which swung lazily from rock to rock
in indescribable beauty.
After dinner I wandered astern with the traveller's ever-present
hope of seeing the beauties of a typical Northern sunset, and by
some happy chance I placed my deck-stool near an old tillicum, who
was leaning on the rail, his pipe between his thin, curved lips, his
brown hands clasped idly, his sombre eyes looking far out to sea,
as though they searched the future--or was it that they were seeing
the past?
"Kla-how-ya, tillicum!" I greeted.
He glanced round, and half smiled.
"Kla-how-ya, tillicum!" he replied, with the warmth of friendliness
I have always met with among the Pacific tribes.
I drew my deck-stool nearer to him, and he acknowledged the action
with another half smile, but did not stir from his entrenchment,
remaining as if hedged about with an inviolable fortress of
exclusiveness. Yet I knew that my Chinook salutation would be a
drawbridge by which I might hope to cross the moat into his castle
of silence.
Indian-like, he took his time before continuing the acquaintance.
Then he began in most excellent English:
"You do not know these northern waters?"
I shook my head.
After many moments he leaned forward, looking along the curve of
the deck, up the channels and narrows we were threading, to a
broad strip of waters off the port bow. Then he pointed with
that peculiar, thoroughly Indian gesture of the palm uppermost.
"Do you see it--over there? The small island? It rests on the
edge of the water, like a grey gull."
It took my unaccustomed eyes some moments to discern it; then all at
once I caught its outline, veiled in the mists of distance--grey,
cobwebby, dreamy.
"Yes," I replied, "I see it now. You will tell me of it--tillicum?"
He gave a swift glance at my dark skin, then nodded. "You are
one of us," he said, with evidently no thought of a possible
contradiction. "And you will understand, or I should not tell
you. You will not smile at the story, for you are one of us."
"I am one of you, and I shall understand," I answered.
It was a full half-hour before we neared the island, yet neither of
us spoke during that time; then, as the "grey gull" shaped itself
into rock and tree and crag, I noticed in the very centre a
stupendous pile of stone lifting itself skyward, without fissure or
cleft; but a peculiar haziness about the base made me peer narrowly
to catch the perfect outline.
"It is the 'Grey Archway,'" he explained, simply.
Only then did I grasp the singular formation before us: the rock
was a perfect archway, through which we could see the placid
Pacific shimmering in the growing colors of the coming sunset at
the opposite rim of the island.
"What a remarkable whim of Nature!" I exclaimed, but his brown hand
was laid in a contradictory grasp on my arm, and he snatched up my
comment almost with impatience.
"No, it was not Nature," he said. "That is the reason I say you
will understand--you are one of us--you will know what I tell you is
true. The Great Tyee did not make that archway, it was--" here his
voice lowered--"it was magic, red man's medicine and magic--you
savvy?"
"Yes," I said. "Tell me, for I--savvy."
"Long time ago," he began, stumbling into a half-broken English
language, because, I think, of the atmosphere and environment, "long
before you were born, or your father, or grandfather, or even his
father, this strange thing happened. It is a story for women to
hear, to remember. Women are the future mothers of the tribe,
and we of the Pacific Coast hold such in high regard, in great
reverence. The women who are mothers--o-ho!--they are the important
ones, we say. Warriors, fighters, brave men, fearless daughters, owe
their qualities to these mothers--eh, is it not always so?"
I nodded silently. The island was swinging nearer to us, the
"Grey Archway" loomed almost above us, the mysticism crowded close,
it enveloped me, caressed me, appealed to me.
"And?" I hinted.
"And," he proceeded, "this 'Grey Archway' is a story of mothers,
of magic, of witchcraft, of warriors, of--love."
An Indian rarely uses the word "love," and when he does it expresses
every quality, every attribute, every intensity, emotion, and passion
embraced in those four little letters. Surely this was an
exceptional story I was to hear.
I did not answer, only looked across the pulsing waters toward
the "Grey Archway," which the sinking sun was touching with soft
pastels, tints one could give no name to, beauties impossible to
describe.
"You have not heard of Yaada?" he questioned. Then, fortunately,
he continued without waiting for a reply. He well knew that I
had never heard of Yaada, so why not begin without preliminary to
tell me of her?--so--
"Yaada was the loveliest daughter of the Haida tribe. Young braves
from all the islands, from the mainland, from the upper Skeena
country, came, hoping to carry her to their far-off lodges, but they
always returned alone. She was the most desired of all the island
maidens, beautiful, brave, modest, the daughter of her own mother.
"But there was a great man, a very great man--a medicine-man,
skilful, powerful, influential, old, deplorably old, and very, very
rich; he said, 'Yaada shall be my wife.' And there was a young
fisherman, handsome, loyal, boyish, poor, oh! very poor, and
gloriously young, and he, too, said, 'Yaada shall be my wife.'
"But Yaada's mother sat apart and thought and dreamed, as mothers
will. She said to herself, 'The great medicine-man has power, has
vast riches, and wonderful magic, why not give her to him? But
Ulka has the boy's heart, the boy's beauty; he is very brave, very
strong; why not give her to him?'
"But the laws of the great Haida tribe prevailed. Its wise men
said, 'Give the girl to the greatest man, give her to the most
powerful, the richest. The man of magic must have his choice.'
"But at this the mother's heart grew as wax in the summer
sunshine--it is a strange quality that mothers' hearts are made of!
'Give her to the best man--the man her heart holds highest,' said
this Haida mother.
"Then Yaada spoke: 'I am the daughter of my tribe; I would judge of
men by their excellence. He who proves most worthy I shall marry;
it is not riches that make a good husband; it is not beauty that
makes a good father for one's children. Let me and my tribe see
some proof of the excellence of these two men--then, only, shall I
choose who is to be the father of my children. Let us have a trial
of their skill; let them show me how evil or how beautiful is the
inside of their hearts. Let each of them throw a stone with some
intent, some purpose in their hearts. He who makes the noblest mark
may call me wife.'
"'Alas! Alas!' wailed the Haida mother. 'This casting of stones
does not show worth. It but shows prowess.'
"'But I have implored the Sagalie Tyee of my father, and of his
fathers before him, to help me to judge between them by this means,'
said the girl. 'So they must cast the stones. In this way only
shall I see their innermost hearts.'
"The medicine-man never looked so old as at that moment; so
hopelessly old, so wrinkled, so palsied: he was no mate for Yaada.
Ulka never looked so god-like in his young beauty, so gloriously
young, so courageous. The girl, looking at him, loved him--almost
was she placing her hand in his, but the spirit of her forefathers
halted her. She had spoken the word--she must abide by it.
'Throw!' she commanded.
"Into his shrivelled fingers the great medicine-man took a small,
round stone, chanting strange words of magic all the while; his
greedy eyes were on the girl, his greedy thoughts about her.
"Into his strong young fingers Ulka took a smooth, flat stone; his
handsome eyes were lowered in boyish modesty, his thoughts were
worshipping her. The great medicine-man cast his missile first; it
swept through the air like a shaft of lightning, striking the great
rock with a force that shattered it. At the touch of that stone
the 'Grey Archway' opened and has remained open to this day.
"'Oh, wonderful power and magic!' clamored the entire tribe.
'The very rocks do his bidding.'
"But Yaada stood with eyes that burned in agony. Ulka could never
command such magic--she knew it. But at her side Ulka was standing
erect, tall, slender, and beautiful, but just as he cast his missile
the evil voice of the old medicine-man began a still more evil
incantation. He fixed his poisonous eyes on the younger man, eyes
with hideous magic in their depths--ill-omened and enchanted with
'bad medicine.' The stone left Ulka's fingers; for a second it flew
forth in a straight line, then, as the evil voice of the old man grew
louder in its incantations, the stone curved. Magic had waylaid the
strong arm of the young brave. The stone poised an instant above
the forehead of Yaada's mother, then dropped with the weight of many
mountains, and the last long sleep fell upon her.
"'Slayer of my mother!' stormed the girl, her suffering eyes fixed
upon the medicine-man. 'Oh, I now see your black heart through your
black magic. Through good magic you cut the "Grey Archway," but
your evil magic you used upon young Ulka. I saw your wicked eyes
upon him; I heard your wicked incantations; I know your wicked
heart. You used your heartless magic in hope of winning me--in
hope of making him an outcast of the tribe. You cared not for my
sorrowing heart, my motherless life to come.' Then, turning to the
tribe, she demanded: 'Who of you saw his evil eyes fixed on Ulka?
Who of you heard his evil song?'
"'I,' and 'I,' and 'I,' came voice after voice.
"'The very air is poisoned that we breathe about him,' they
shouted. 'The young man is blameless, his heart is as the sun;
but the man who has used his evil magic has a heart black and cold
as the hours before the dawn.'
"Then Yaada's voice arose in a strange, sweet, sorrowful chant:
My feet shall walk no more upon this island,
With its great, Grey Archway.
My mother sleeps forever on this island,
With its great, Grey Archway.
My heart would break without her on this island,
With its great, Grey Archway.
My life was of her life upon this island,
With its great, Grey Archway.
My mother's soul has wandered from this island,
With its great, Grey Archway.
My feet must follow hers beyond this island,
With its great, Grey Archway.
"As Yaada chanted and wailed her farewell she moved slowly towards
the edge of the cliff. On its brink she hovered a moment with
outstretched arms, as a sea gull poises on its weight--then she
called:
"'Ulka, my Ulka! Your hand is innocent of wrong; it was the evil
magic of your rival that slew my mother. I must go to her; even you
cannot keep me here; will you stay, or come with me? Oh! my Ulka!'
"The slender, gloriously young boy sprang toward her; their hands
closed one within the other; for a second they poised on the brink
of the rocks, radiant as stars; then together they plunged into
the sea."
* * * * *
The legend was ended. Long ago we had passed the island with its
"Grey Archway"; it was melting into the twilight, far astern.
As I brooded over this strange tale of a daughter's devotion, I
watched the sea and sky for something that would give me a clue
to the inevitable sequel that the tillicum, like all his race,
was surely withholding until the opportune moment.
Something flashed through the darkening waters not a stone's-throw
from the steamer. I leaned forward, watching it intently. Two
silvery fish were making a succession of little leaps and plunges
along the surface of the sea, their bodies catching the last tints
of sunset, like flashing jewels. I looked at the tillicum quickly.
He was watching me--a world of anxiety in his half-mournful eyes.
"And those two silvery fish?" I questioned.
He smiled. The anxious look vanished. "I was right," he said; "you
do know us and our ways, for you are one of us. Yes, those fish are
seen only in these waters; there are never but two of them. They
are Yaada and her mate, seeking for the soul of the Haida woman--her
mother."
DEADMAN'S ISLAND
It is dusk on the Lost Lagoon,
And we two dreaming the dusk away,
Beneath the drift of a twilight grey--
Beneath the drowse of an ending day
And the curve of a golden moon.
It is dark in the Lost Lagoon,
And gone are the depths of haunting blue,
The grouping gulls, and the old canoe,
The singing firs, and the dusk and--you,
And gone is the golden moon.
O! lure of the Lost Lagoon--
I dream to-night that my paddle blurs
The purple shade where the seaweed stirs--
I hear the call of the singing firs
In the hush of the golden moon.
For many minutes we stood silently, leaning on the western rail of
the bridge as we watched the sunset across that beautiful little
basin of water known as Coal Harbor. I have always resented that
jarring, unattractive name, for years ago, when I first plied paddle
across the gunwale of a light little canoe, and idled about its
margin, I named the sheltered little cove the Lost Lagoon. This
was just to please my own fancy, for, as that perfect summer month
drifted on, the ever-restless tides left the harbor devoid of water
at my favorite canoeing hour, and my pet idling-place was lost for
many days--hence my fancy to call it the Lost Lagoon. But the
chief, Indian-like, immediately adopted the name, at least when he
spoke of the place to me, and, as we watched the sun slip behind the
rim of firs, he expressed the wish that his dug-out were here instead
of lying beached at the farther side of the park.
"If canoe was here, you and I we paddle close to shores all 'round
your Lost Lagoon: we make track just like half-moon. Then we paddle
under this bridge, and go channel between Deadman's Island and
park. Then 'round where cannon speak time at nine o'clock. Then
'cross Inlet to Indian side of Narrows."
I turned to look eastward, following in fancy the course he had
sketched. The waters were still as the footsteps of the oncoming
twilight, and, floating in a pool of soft purple, Deadman's Island
rested like a large circle of candle-moss.
"Have you ever been on it?" he asked as he caught my gaze centering
on the irregular outline of the island pines.
"I have prowled the length and depth of it," I told him, "climbed
over every rock on its shores, crept under every tangled growth of
its interior, explored its overgrown trails, and more than once
nearly got lost in its very heart."
"Yes," he half laughed, "it pretty wild; not much good for
anything."
"People seem to think it valuable," I said. "There is a lot of
litigation--of fighting going on now about it."
"Oh! that the way always," he said, as though speaking of a long
accepted fact. "Always fight over that place. Hundreds of years
ago they fight about it; Indian people; they say hundreds of years
to come everybody will still fight--never be settled what that
place is, who it belong to, who has right to it. No, never settle.
Deadman's Island always mean fight for someone."
"So the Indians fought amongst themselves about it?" I remarked,
seemingly without guile, although my ears tingled for the legend
I knew was coming.
"Fought like lynx at close quarters," he answered. "Fought, killed
each other, until the island ran with blood redder than that sunset,
and the sea-water about it was stained flame color--it was then,
my people say, that the scarlet fire-flower was first seen growing
along this coast."
"It is a beautiful color--the fire-flower," I said.
"It should be fine color, for it was born and grew from the hearts
of fine tribes-people--very fine people," he emphasized.
We crossed to the eastern rail of the bridge, and stood watching the
deep shadows that gathered slowly and silently about the island; I
have seldom looked upon anything more peaceful.
The chief sighed. "We have no such men now, no fighters like those
men, no hearts, no courage like theirs. But I tell you the story;
you understand it then. Now all peace; to-night all good tillicums;
even dead man's spirit does not fight now, but long time after it
happen those spirits fought."
"And the legend?" I ventured.
"Oh! yes," he replied, as if suddenly returning to the present from
out a far country in the realm of time. "Indian people, they call
it the 'Legend of the Island of Dead Men.'
"There was war everywhere. Fierce tribes from the northern coast,
savage tribes from the south, all met here and battled and raided,
burned and captured, tortured and killed their enemies. The forests
smoked with camp-fires, the Narrows were choked with war-canoes, and
the Sagalie Tyee--He who is a man of peace--turned His face away
from His Indian children. About this island there was dispute and
contention. The medicine-men from the North claimed it as their
chanting-ground. The medicine-men from the South laid equal claim
to it. Each wanted it as the stronghold of their witchcraft, their
magic. Great bands of these medicine-men met on the small space,
using every sorcery in their power to drive their opponents away.
The witch-doctors of the North made their camp on the northern rim
of the island; those from the South settled along the southern edge,
looking towards what is now the great city of Vancouver. Both
factions danced, chanted, burned their magic powders, built their
magic fires, beat their magic rattles, but neither would give way,
yet neither conquered. About them, on the waters, on the mainlands,
raged the warfare of their respective tribes--the Sagalie Tyee had
forgotten His Indian children.
"After many months, the warriors on both sides weakened. They said
the incantations of the rival medicine-men were bewitching them,
were making their hearts like children's, and their arms nerveless
as women's. So friend and foe arose as one man and drove the
medicine-men from the island, hounded them down the Inlet, herded
them through the Narrows, and banished them out to sea, where they
took refuge on one of the outer islands of the gulf. Then the
tribes once more fell upon each other in battle.
"The warrior blood of the North will always conquer. They are
the stronger, bolder, more alert, more keen. The snows and the
ice of their country make swifter pulse than the sleepy suns of
the South can awake in a man; their muscles are of sterner stuff,
their endurance greater. Yes, the northern tribes will always be
victors.* But the craft and the strategy of the southern tribes
are hard things to battle against. While those of the North
followed the medicine-men farther out to sea to make sure of their
banishment, those from the South returned under cover of night and
seized the women and children and the old, enfeebled men in their
enemy's camp, transported them all to the Island of Dead Men, and
there held them as captives. Their war-canoes circled the island
like a fortification, through which drifted the sobs of the
imprisoned women, the mutterings of the aged men, the wail of
little children.
* Note.--It would almost seem that the chief knew that wonderful poem
of "The Khan's," "The Men of the Northern Zone," wherein he says:
If ever a Northman lost a throne
Did the conqueror come from the South?
Nay, the North shall ever be free ... etc.
"Again and again the men of the North assailed that circle of
canoes, and again and again were repulsed. The air was thick with
poisoned arrows, the water stained with blood. But day by day the
circle of southern canoes grew thinner and thinner; the northern
arrows were telling, and truer of aim. Canoes drifted everywhere,
empty, or, worse still, manned only by dead men. The pick of the
southern warriors had already fallen, when their greatest Tyee
mounted a large rock on the eastern shore. Brave and unmindful of
a thousand weapons aimed at his heart, he uplifted his hand, palm
outward--the signal for conference. Instantly every northern arrow
was lowered, and every northern ear listened for his words.
"'Oh! men of the upper coast,' he said, 'you are more numerous
than we are; your tribe is larger, your endurance greater. We are
growing hungry, we are growing less in numbers. Our captives--your
women and children and old men--have lessened, too, our stores of
food. If you refuse our terms we will yet fight to the finish.
To-morrow we will kill all our captives before your eyes, for we can
feed them no longer, or you can have your wives, your mothers, your
fathers, your children, by giving us for each and every one of them
one of your best and bravest young warriors, who will consent to
suffer death in their stead. Speak! You have your choice.'
"In the northern canoes scores and scores of young warriors leapt
to their feet. The air was filled with glad cries, with exultant
shouts. The whole world seemed to ring with the voices of those
young men who called loudly, with glorious courage:
"'Take me, but give me back my old father.'
"'Take me, but spare to my tribe my little sister.'
"'Take me, but release my wife and boy-baby.'
"So the compact was made. Two hundred heroic, magnificent young men
paddled up to the island, broke through the fortifying circle of
canoes, and stepped ashore. They flaunted their eagle plumes with
the spirit and boldness of young gods. Their shoulders were erect,
their step was firm, their hearts strong. Into their canoes they
crowded the two hundred captives. Once more their women sobbed,
their old men muttered, their children wailed, but those young
copper-colored gods never flinched, never faltered. Their weak and
their feeble were saved. What mattered to them such a little thing
as death?
"The released captives were quickly surrounded by their own people,
but the flower of their splendid nation was in the hands of their
enemies, those valorous young men who thought so little of life that
they willingly, gladly laid it down to serve and to save those they
loved and cared for. Amongst them were war-tried warriors who had
fought fifty battles, and boys not yet full grown, who were drawing
a bow-string for the first time; but their hearts, their courage,
their self-sacrifice were as one.
"Out before a long file of southern warriors they stood. Their
chins uplifted, their eyes defiant, their breasts bared. Each
leaned forward and laid his weapons at his feet, then stood erect,
with empty hands, and laughed forth his challenge to death.
A thousand arrows ripped the air, two hundred gallant northern
throats flung forth a death cry exultant, triumphant as conquering
kings--then two hundred fearless northern hearts ceased to beat.
"But in the morning the southern tribes found the spot where they
fell peopled with flaming fire-flowers. Dread terror seized upon
them. They abandoned the island, and when night again shrouded
them they manned their canoes and noiselessly slipped through the
Narrows, turned their bows southward, and this coast-line knew
them no more."
"What glorious men!" I half whispered as the chief concluded the
strange legend.
"Yes, men!" he echoed. "The white people call it Deadman's Island.
That is their way; but we of the Squamish call it The Island of
Dead Men."
The clustering pines and the outlines of the island's margin were
now dusky and indistinct. Peace, peace lay over the waters, and the
purple of the summer twilight had turned to grey, but I knew that in
the depths of the undergrowth on Deadman's Island there blossomed
a flower of flaming beauty; its colors were veiled in the coming
nightfall, but somewhere down in the sanctuary of its petals pulsed
the heart's blood of many and valiant men.
A SQUAMISH LEGEND OF NAPOLEON
Holding an important place among the majority of curious tales held
in veneration by the coast tribes are those of the sea-serpent. The
monster appears and reappears with almost monotonous frequency in
connection with history, traditions, legends and superstitions; but
perhaps the most wonderful part it ever played was in the great
drama that held the stage of Europe, and incidentally all the world
during the stormy days of the first Napoleon.
Throughout Canada I have never failed to find an amazing knowledge
of Napoleon Bonaparte amongst the very old and "uncivilized"
Indians. Perhaps they may be unfamiliar with every other historical
character from Adam down, but they will all tell you they have heard
of the "Great French Fighter," as they call the wonderful little
Corsican.
Whether this knowledge was obtained through the fact that our
earliest settlers and pioneers were French, or whether Napoleon's
almost magical fighting career attracted the Indian mind to the
exclusion of lesser warriors, I have never yet decided. But the
fact remains that the Indians of our generation are not as familiar
with Bonaparte's name as were their fathers and grandfathers,
so either the predominance of English-speaking settlers or the
thinning of their ancient war-loving blood by modern civilization
and peaceful times must, one or the other, account for the younger
Indian's ignorance of the Emperor of the French.
In telling me the legend of "The Lost Talisman," my good tillicum,
the late Chief Capilano, began the story with the almost amazing
question, Had I ever heard of Napoleon Bonaparte? It was some
moments before I just caught the name, for his English, always
quaint and beautiful, was at times a little halting; but when he
said, by way of explanation, "You know big fighter, Frenchman.
The English they beat him in big battle," I grasped immediately
of whom he spoke.
"What do you know of him?" I asked.
His voice lowered, almost as if he spoke a state secret. "I know
how it is that English they beat him."
I have read many historians on this event, but to hear the Squamish
version was a novel and absorbing thing. "Yes?" I said--my usual
"leading" word to lure him into channels of tradition.
"Yes," he affirmed. Then, still in a half-whisper, he proceeded to
tell me that it all happened through the agency of a single joint
from the vertebra of a sea-serpent.
In telling me the story of Brockton Point and the valiant boy
who killed the monster, he dwelt lightly on the fact that all
people who approach the vicinity of the creature are palsied,
both mentally and physically--bewitched, in fact--so that their
bones become disjointed and their brains incapable; but to-day he
elaborated upon this peculiarity until I harked back to the boy
of Brockton Point and asked how it was that his body and brain
escaped this affliction.
"He was all good, and had no greed," he replied. "He was proof
against all bad things."
I nodded understandingly, and he proceeded to tell me that all
successful Indian fighters and warriors carried somewhere about
their person a joint of a sea-serpent's vertebra; that the
medicine-men threw "the power" about them so that they were not
personally affected by this little "charm," but that immediately
they approached an enemy the "charm" worked disaster, and victory
was assured to the fortunate possessor of the talisman. There was
one particularly effective joint that had been treasured and
carried by the warriors of a great Squamish family for a century.
These warriors had conquered every foe they encountered, until
the talisman had become so renowned that the totem-pole of their
entire "clan" was remodelled, and the new one crested by the
figure of a single joint of a sea-serpent's vertebra.
About this time stories of Napoleon's first great achievements
drifted across the seas; not across the land--and just here may
be a clue to buried Coast-Indian history, which those who are
cleverer at research than I can puzzle over. The chief was most
emphatic about the source of Indian knowledge of Napoleon.
"I suppose you heard of him from Quebec, through, perhaps, some
of the French priests," I remarked.
"No, no," he contradicted hurriedly. "Not from East; we hear it
from over the Pacific from the place they call Russia." But who
conveyed the news or by what means it came he could not further
enlighten me. But a strange thing happened to the Squamish family
about this time. There was a large blood connection, but the only
male member living was a very old warrior, the hero of many battles
and the possessor of the talisman. On his death-bed his women of
three generations gathered about him; his wife, his sisters, his
daughters, his granddaughters, but not one man, nor yet a boy of
his own blood, stood by to speed his departing warrior spirit to
the land of peace and plenty.
"The charm cannot rest in the hands of women," he murmured almost
with his last breath. "Women may not war and fight other nations or
other tribes; women are for the peaceful lodge and for the leading
of little children. They are for holding baby hands, teaching baby
feet to walk. No, the charm cannot rest with you, women. I have
no brother, no cousin, no son, no grandson, and the charm must not
go to a lesser warrior than I. None of our tribe, nor of any tribe
on the coast, ever conquered me. The charm must go to one as
unconquerable as I have been. When I am dead send it across the
great salt chuck, to the victorious 'Frenchman'; they call him
Napoleon Bonaparte." They were his last words.
The older women wished to bury the charm with him, but the younger
women, inspired with the spirit of their generation, were determined
to send it over-seas. "In the grave it will be dead," they argued.
"Let it still live on. Let it help some other fighter to greatness
and victory."
As if to confirm their decision, the next day a small sealing-vessel
anchored in the Inlet. All the men aboard spoke Russian, save
two thin, dark, agile sailors, who kept aloof from the crew and
conversed in another language. These two came ashore with part of
the crew and talked in French with a wandering Hudson's Bay trapper,
who often lodged with the Squamish people. Thus the women, who yet
mourned over their dead warrior, knew these two strangers to be
from the land where the great "Frenchman" was fighting against
the world.
Here I interrupted the chief. "How came the Frenchmen in a Russian
sealer?" I asked.
"Captives," he replied. "Almost slaves, and hated by their captors,
as the majority always hate the few. So the women drew those two
Frenchmen apart from the rest and told them the story of the bone of
the sea-serpent, urging them to carry it back to their own country
and give it to the great 'Frenchman' who was as courageous and as
brave as their dead leader.
"The Frenchmen hesitated; the talisman might affect them, they said;
might jangle their own brains, so that on their return to Russia
they would not have the sagacity to plan an escape to their own
country; might disjoint their bodies, so that their feet and hands
would be useless, and they would become as weak as children. But
the women assured them that the charm only worked its magical powers
over a man's enemies, that the ancient medicine-men had 'bewitched'
it with this quality. So the Frenchmen took it and promised that if
it were in the power of man they would convey it to 'the Emperor.'
"As the crew boarded the sealer, the women watching from the shore
observed strange contortions seize many of the men; some fell on
the deck; some crouched, shaking as with palsy; some writhed for
a moment, then fell limp and seemingly boneless; only the two
Frenchmen stood erect and strong and vital--the Squamish talisman
had already overcome their foes. As the little sealer set sail
up the gulf she was commanded by a crew of two Frenchmen--men who
had entered these waters as captives, who were leaving them as
conquerors. The palsied Russians were worse than useless, and
what became of them the chief could not state; presumably they
were flung overboard, and by some trick of a kindly fate the
Frenchmen at last reached the coast of France.
"Tradition is so indefinite about their movements subsequent to
sailing out of the Inlet that even the ever-romantic and vividly
colored imaginations of the Squamish people have never supplied
the details of this beautifully childish, yet strangely historical
fairy-tale. But the voices of the trumpets of war, the beat of drums
throughout Europe heralded back to the wilds of the Pacific Coast
forests the intelligence that the great Squamish 'charm' eventually
reached the person of Napoleon; that from this time onward his
career was one vast victory, that he won battle after battle,
conquered nation after nation, and, but for the direst calamity
that could befall a warrior, would eventually have been master of
the world."
"What was this calamity, Chief?" I asked, amazed at his knowledge
of the great historical soldier and strategist.
The chief's voice again lowered to a whisper--his face was almost
rigid with intentness as he replied:
"He lost the Squamish charm--lost it just before one great fight
with the English people."
I looked at him curiously; he had been telling me the oddest mixture
of history and superstition, of intelligence and ignorance, the
most whimsically absurd, yet impressive, tale I ever heard from
Indian lips.
"What was the name of the great fight--did you ever hear it?"
I asked, wondering how much he knew of events which took place
at the other side of the world a century agone.
"Yes," he said, carefully, thoughtfully; "I hear the name sometime
in London when I there. Railroad station there--same name."
"Was it Waterloo?" I asked.
He nodded quickly, without a shadow of hesitation. "That the one,"
he replied. "That's it, Waterloo."
THE LURE IN STANLEY PARK
There is a well-known trail in Stanley Park that leads to what I
always love to call the "Cathedral Trees"--that group of some
half-dozen forest giants that arch overhead with such superb
loftiness. But in all the world there is no cathedral whose marble
or onyx columns can vie with those straight, clean, brown tree-boles
that teem with the sap and blood of life. There is no fresco that
can rival the delicacy of lace-work they have festooned between
you and the far skies. No tiles, no mosaic or inlaid marbles, are
as fascinating as the bare, russet, fragrant floor outspreading
about their feet. They are the acme of Nature's architecture, and
in building them she has outrivalled all her erstwhile conceptions.
She will never originate a more faultless design, never erect a more
perfect edifice. But the divinely moulded trees and the man-made
cathedral have one exquisite characteristic in common. It is the
atmosphere of holiness. Most of us have better impulses after
viewing a stately cathedral, and none of us can stand amid that
majestic forest group without experiencing some elevating
thoughts, some refinement of our coarser nature. Perhaps those who
read this little legend will never again look at those cathedral
trees without thinking of the glorious souls they contain, for
according to the Coast Indians they do harbor human souls, and the
world is better because they once had the speech and the hearts of
mighty men.
My tillicum did not use the word "lure" in telling me this legend.
There is no equivalent for the word in the Chinook tongue, but the
gestures of his voiceful hands so expressed the quality of something
between magnetism and charm that I have selected this word "lure"
as best fitting what he wished to convey. Some few yards beyond
the cathedral trees, an overgrown disused trail turns into the dense
wilderness to the right. Only Indian eyes could discern that trail,
and the Indians do not willingly go to that part of the park to the
right of the great group. Nothing in this, nor yet the next world
would tempt a Coast Indian into the compact centres of the wild
portions of the park, for therein, concealed cunningly, is the
"lure" they all believe in. There is not a tribe in the entire
district that does not know of this strange legend. You will hear
the tale from those that gather at Eagle Harbor for the fishing,
from the Fraser River tribes, from the Squamish at the Narrows, from
the Mission, from up the Inlet, even from the tribes at North Bend,
but no one will volunteer to be your guide, for having once come
within the "aura" of the lure it is a human impossibility to leave
it. Your will-power is dwarfed, your intelligence blighted, your
feet will refuse to lead you out by a straight trail, you will
circle, circle for evermore about this magnet, for if death kindly
comes to your aid your immortal spirit will go on in that endless
circling that will bar it from entering the Happy Hunting Grounds.
And, like the cathedral trees, the lure once lived, a human soul,
but in this instance it was a soul depraved, not sanctified. The
Indian belief is very beautiful concerning the results of good and
evil in the human body. The Sagalie Tyee [God] has His own way
of immortalizing each. People who are wilfully evil, who have no
kindness in their hearts, who are bloodthirsty, cruel, vengeful,
unsympathetic, the Sagalie Tyee turns to solid stone that will
harbor no growth, even that of moss or lichen, for these stones
contain no moisture, just as their wicked hearts lacked the milk of
human kindness. The one famed exception, wherein a good man was
transformed into stone, was in the instance of Siwash Rock, but as
the Indian tells you of it he smiles with gratification as he calls
your attention to the tiny tree cresting that imperial monument.
He says the tree was always there to show the nations that the good
in this man's heart kept on growing even when his body had ceased
to be. On the other hand, the Sagalie Tyee transforms the kindly
people, the humane, sympathetic, charitable, loving people into
trees, so that after death they may go on forever benefiting all
mankind; they may yield fruit, give shade and shelter, afford
unending service to the living by their usefulness as building
material and as firewood. Their saps and gums, their fibres, their
leaves, their blossoms, enrich, nourish, and sustain the human form;
no evil is produced by trees--all, all is goodness, is hearty, is
helpfulness and growth. They give refuge to the birds, they give
music to the winds, and from them are carved the bows and arrows,
the canoes and paddles, bowls, spoons, and baskets. Their service
to mankind is priceless; the Indian that tells you this tale will
enumerate all these attributes and virtues of the trees. No
wonder the Sagalie Tyee chose them to be the abode of souls good
and great.
But the lure in Stanley Park is that most dreaded of all things, an
evil soul. It is embodied in a bare, white stone, which is shunned
by moss and vine and lichen, but over which are splashed innumerable
jet-black spots that have eaten into the surface like an acid.
This condemned soul once animated the body of a witch-woman, who
went up and down the coast, over seas and far inland, casting her
evil eye on innocent people, and bringing them untold evils and
diseases. About her person she carried the renowned "Bad Medicine"
that every Indian believes in--medicine that weakened the arm of
the warrior in battle, that caused deformities, that poisoned minds
and characters, that engendered madness, that bred plagues and
epidemics; in short, that was the seed of every evil that could
befall mankind. This witch-woman herself was immune from death;
generations were born and grew to old age, and died, and other
generations arose in their stead, but the witch-woman went about,
her heart set against her kind. Her acts were evil, her purposes
wicked. She broke hearts and bodies and souls; she gloried in tears,
and revelled in unhappiness, and sent them broadcast wherever she
wandered. And in His high heaven the Sagalie Tyee wept with sorrow
for His afflicted human children. He dared not let her die, for
her spirit would still go on with its evil doing. In mighty anger
He gave command to His Four Men (always representing the Deity)
that they should turn this witch-woman into a stone and enchain
her spirit in its centre, that the curse of her might be lifted
from the unhappy race.
So the Four Men entered their giant canoe, and headed, as was
their custom, up the Narrows. As they neared what is now known
as Prospect Point they heard from the heights above them a laugh,
and, looking up, they beheld the witch-woman jeering defiantly at
them. They landed, and, scaling the rocks, pursued her as she
danced away, eluding them like a will-o'-the-wisp as she called
out to them sneeringly:
"Care for yourselves, oh! men of the Sagalie Tyee, or I shall blight
you with my evil eye. Care for yourselves and do not follow me."
On and on she danced through the thickest of the wilderness, on and
on they followed until they reached the very heart of the sea-girt
neck of land we know as Stanley Park. Then the tallest, the
mightiest of the Four Men, lifted his hand and cried out: "Oh!
woman of the stony heart, be stone for evermore, and bear forever
a black stain for each one of your evil deeds." And as he spoke
the witch-woman was transformed into this stone that tradition says
is in the centre of the park.
Such is the "Legend of the Lure." Whether or not this stone is really
in existence who knows? One thing is positive, however: no Indian
will ever help to discover it.
Three different Indians have told me that fifteen or eighteen years
ago, two tourists--a man and a woman--were lost in Stanley Park.
When found a week later the man was dead, the woman mad, and each
of my informants firmly believed they had, in their wanderings,
encountered "the stone" and were compelled to circle around it,
because of its powerful lure.
But this wild tale, fortunately, had a most beautiful conclusion.
The Four Men, fearing that the evil heart imprisoned in the stone
would still work destruction, said: "At the end of the trail we
must place so good and great a thing that it will be mightier,
stronger, more powerful than this evil." So they chose from the
nations the kindliest, most benevolent men, men whose hearts were
filled with the love of their fellow-beings, and transformed these
merciful souls into the stately group of "Cathedral Trees."
How well the purpose of the Sagalie Tyee has wrought its effect
through time! The good has predominated, as He planned it to, for
is not the stone hidden in some unknown part of the park where eyes
do not see it and feet do not follow--and do not the thousands
who come to us from the uttermost parts of the world seek that
wondrous beauty spot, and stand awed by the majestic silence, the
almost holiness of that group of giants?
More than any other legend that the Indians about Vancouver have
told me does this tale reveal the love of the coast native for
kindness and his hatred of cruelty. If these tribes really have
ever been a warlike race I cannot think they pride themselves much
on the occupation. If you talk with any of them, and they mention
some man they particularly like or admire, their first qualification
of him is: "He's a kind man." They never say he is brave, or rich,
or successful, or even strong, that characteristic so loved by
the red man. To these coast tribes if a man is "kind" he is
everything. And almost without exception their legends deal with
rewards for tenderness and self-abnegation, and personal and mental
cleanliness.
Call them fairy-tales if you wish to, they all have a reasonableness
that must have originated in some mighty mind, and, better than that,
they all tell of the Indian's faith in the survival of the best
impulses of the human heart, and the ultimate extinction of the
worst.
In talking with my many good tillicums, I find this witch-woman
legend is the most universally known and thoroughly believed in
of all traditions they have honored me by revealing to me.
DEER LAKE
Few white men ventured inland, a century ago, in the days of the
first Chief Capilano, when the spoils of the mighty Fraser River
poured into copper-colored hands, but did not find their way to the
remotest corners of the earth, as in our times, when the gold from
its sources, the salmon from its mouth, the timber from its shores
are world-known riches.
The fisherman's craft, the hunter's cunning, were plied where now
cities and industries, trade and commerce, buying and selling, hold
sway. In those days the moccasined foot awoke no echo in the forest
trails. Primitive weapons, arms, implements, and utensils were the
only means of the Indians' food-getting. His livelihood depended
upon his own personal prowess, his skill in woodcraft and water
lore. And, as this is a story of an elk-bone spear, the reader must
first be in sympathy with the fact that this rude instrument, most
deftly fashioned, was of priceless value to the first Capilano, to
whom it had come through three generations of ancestors, all of whom
had been experienced hunters and dexterous fishermen.
Capilano himself was without a rival as a spearman. He knew the
moods of the Fraser River, the habits of its thronging tenants, as
no other man has ever known them before or since. He knew every
isle and inlet along the coast, every boulder, the sand-bars, the
still pools, the temper of the tides. He knew the spawning-grounds,
the secret streams that fed the larger rivers, the outlets of
rock-bound lakes, the turns and tricks of swirling rapids. He
knew the haunts of bird and beast and fish and fowl, and was
master of the arts and artifice that man must use when matching
his brain against the eluding wiles of the untamed creatures of
the wilderness.
Once only did his cunning fail him, once only did Nature baffle
him with her mysterious fabric of waterways and land-lures. It
was when he was led to the mouth of the unknown river, which has
evaded discovery through all the centuries, but which--so say the
Indians--still sings on its way through some buried channel that
leads from the lake to the sea.
He had been sealing along the shores of what is now known as Point
Grey. His canoe had gradually crept inland, skirting up the coast
to the mouth of False Creek. Here he encountered a very king of
seals, a colossal creature that gladdened the hunter's eyes as
game worthy of his skill. For this particular prize he would cast
the elk-bone spear. It had never failed his sire, his grandsire,
his great-grandsire. He knew it would not fail him now. A long,
pliable, cedar-fibre rope lay in his canoe. Many expert fingers had
woven and plaited the rope, had beaten and oiled it until it was
soft and flexible as a serpent. This he attached to the spearhead,
and with deft, unerring aim cast it at the king seal. The weapon
struck home. The gigantic creature shuddered, and, with a cry like
a hurt child, it plunged down into the sea. With the rapidity and
strength of a giant fish it scudded inland with the rising tide,
while Capilano paid out the rope its entire length, and, as it
stretched taut, felt the canoe leap forward, propelled by the mighty
strength of the creature which lashed the waters into whirlpools, as
though it was possessed with the power and properties of a whale.
Up the stretch of False Creek the man and monster drove their
course, where a century hence great city bridges were to over-arch
the waters. They strove and struggled each for the mastery; neither
of them weakened, neither of them faltered--the one dragging, the
other driving. In the end it was to be a matching of brute and
human wits, not forces. As they neared the point where now Main
Street bridge flings its shadow across the waters, the brute
leaped high into the air, then plunged headlong into the depths.
The impact ripped the rope from Capilano's hands. It rattled
across the gunwale. He stood staring at the spot where it had
disappeared--the brute had been victorious. At low tide the Indian
made search. No trace of his game, of his precious elk-bone spear,
of his cedar-fibre rope, could be found. With the loss of the
latter he firmly believed his luck as a hunter would be gone. So he
patrolled the mouth of False Creek for many moons. His graceful,
high-bowed canoe rarely touched other waters, but the seal king had
disappeared. Often he thought long strands of drifting sea grasses
were his lost cedar-fibre rope. With other spears, with other
cedar-fibres, with paddle-blade and cunning traps he dislodged the
weeds from their moorings, but they slipped their slimy lengths
through his eager hands: his best spear with its attendant coil
was gone.
The following year he was sealing again off the coast of Point Grey,
and one night, after sunset, he observed the red reflection from the
west, which seemed to transfer itself to the eastern skies. Far
into the night dashes of flaming scarlet pulsed far beyond the head
of False Creek. The color rose and fell like a beckoning hand, and,
Indian-like, he immediately attached some portentous meaning to
the unusual sight. That it was some omen he never doubted, so he
paddled inland, beached his canoe, and took the trail towards the
little group of lakes that crowd themselves into the area that lies
between the present cities of Vancouver and New Westminster. But
long before he reached the shores of Deer Lake he discovered that
the beckoning hand was in reality flame. The little body of water
was surrounded by forest fires. One avenue alone stood open. It
was a group of giant trees that as yet the flames had not reached.
As he neared the point he saw a great moving mass of living things
leaving the lake and hurrying northward through this one egress. He
stood, listening, intently watching with alert eyes; the zwirr of
myriads of little travelling feet caught his quick ear--the moving
mass was an immense colony of beaver. Thousands upon thousands
of them. Scores of baby beavers staggered along, following their
mothers; scores of older beavers that had felled trees and built
dams through many seasons; a countless army of trekking fur-bearers,
all under the generalship of a wise old leader, who, as king of the
colony, advanced some few yards ahead of his battalions. Out of
the waters through the forest towards the country to the north they
journeyed. Wandering hunters said they saw them cross Burrard Inlet
at the Second Narrows, heading inland as they reached the farther
shore. But where that mighty army of royal little Canadians set
up their new colony no man knows. Not even the astuteness of the
first Capilano ever discovered their destination. Only one thing
was certain: Deer Lake knew them no more.
After their passing the Indian retraced their trail to the water's
edge. In the red glare of the encircling fires he saw what he at
first thought was some dead and dethroned king beaver on the shore.
A huge carcass lay half in, half out, of the lake. Approaching
it, he saw the wasted body of a giant seal. There could never be
two seals of that marvellous size. His intuition now grasped the
meaning of the omen of the beckoning flame that had called him from
the far coasts of Point Grey. He stooped above his dead conqueror
and found, embedded in its decaying flesh, the elk-bone spear of
his forefathers, and, trailing away at the water's rim, was a long,
flexible, cedar-fibre rope.
As he extracted this treasured heirloom he felt the "power," that
men of magic possess, creep up his sinewy arms. It entered his
heart, his blood, his brain. For a long time he sat and chanted
songs that only great medicine-men may sing, and, as the hours
drifted by, the heat of the forest fires subsided, the flames
diminished into smouldering blackness. At daybreak the forest
fire was dead, but its beckoning fingers had served their purpose.
The magic elk-bone spear had come back to its own.
Until the day of his death the first Capilano searched for the
unknown river up which the seal travelled from False Creek to
Deer Lake; but its channel is a secret that even Indian eyes have
not seen.
But although those of the Squamish tribe tell and believe that the
river still sings through its hidden trail that leads from Deer Lake
to the sea, its course is as unknown, its channel is as hopelessly
lost as the brave little army of beavers that a century ago
marshalled their forces and travelled up into the great lone north.
A ROYAL MOHAWK CHIEF
How many Canadians are aware that in Prince Arthur, Duke of
Connaught, and only surviving son of Queen Victoria, who has been
appointed to represent King George V. in Canada, they undoubtedly
have what many wish for--one bearing an ancient Canadian title as
Governor-General of all the Dominion? It would be difficult to find
a man more Canadian than any one of the fifty chiefs who compose
the parliament of the ancient Iroquois nation, that loyal race of
Redskins that has fought for the British crown against all of the
enemies thereof, adhering to the British flag through the wars
against both the French and the colonists.
Arthur, Duke of Connaught, is the only living white man who to-day
has an undisputed right to the title of "Chief of the Six Nations
Indians" (known collectively as the Iroquois). He possesses the
privilege of sitting in their councils, of casting his vote on all
matters relative to the governing of the tribes, the disposal of
reservation lands, the appropriation of both the principal and
interest of the more than half a million dollars these tribes hold
in Government bonds at Ottawa, accumulated from the sales of their
lands. In short, were every drop of blood in his royal veins red,
instead of blue, he could not be more fully qualified as an Indian
chief than he now is, not even were his title one of the fifty
hereditary ones whose illustrious names composed the Iroquois
confederacy before the Paleface ever set foot in America.
It was on the occasion of his first visit to Canada in 1869, when
he was little more than a boy, that Prince Arthur received, upon
his arrival at Quebec, an address of welcome from his royal mother's
"Indian Children" on the Grand River Reserve, in Brant county,
Ontario. In addition to this welcome they had a request to make of
him: would he accept the title of Chief and visit their reserve to
give them the opportunity of conferring?
One of the great secrets of England's success with savage races has
been her consideration, her respect, her almost reverence of native
customs, ceremonies, and potentates. She wishes her own customs
and kings to be honored, so she freely accords like honor to her
subjects, it matters not whether they be white, black, or red.
Young Arthur was delighted--royal lads are pretty much like all
other boys; the unique ceremony would be a break in the endless
round of state receptions, banquets, and addresses. So he accepted
the Red Indians' compliment, knowing well that it was the loftiest
honor these people could confer upon a white man.
It was the morning of October first when the royal train steamed
into the little city of Brantford, where carriages awaited to
take the Prince and his suite to the "Old Mohawk Church," in the
vicinity of which the ceremony was to take place. As the Prince's
especial escort, Onwanonsyshon, head chief of the Mohawks, rode on a
jet-black pony beside the carriage. The chief was garmented in full
native costume--a buckskin suit, beaded moccasins, headband of owl's
and eagle's feathers, and ornaments hammered from coin silver that
literally covered his coat and leggings. About his shoulders was
flung a scarlet blanket, consisting of the identical broadcloth from
which the British army tunics are made; this he "hunched" with his
shoulders from time to time in true Indian fashion. As they drove
along the Prince chatted boyishly with his Mohawk escort, and once
leaned forward to pat the black pony on its shining neck and speak
admiringly of it. It was a warm autumn day: the roads were dry and
dusty, and, after a mile or so, the boy-prince brought from beneath
the carriage seat a basket of grapes. With his handkerchief he
flicked the dust from them, handed a bunch to the chief, and took
one himself. An odd spectacle to be traversing a country road: an
English prince and an Indian chief, riding amicably side by side,
enjoying a banquet of grapes like two school-boys.
On reaching the church, Arthur leapt lightly to the greensward.
For a moment he stood, rigid, gazing before him at his future
brother-chiefs. His escort had given him a faint idea of what
he was to see, but he certainly never expected to be completely
surrounded by three hundred full-blooded Iroquois braves and
warriors, such as now encircled him on every side. Every Indian
was in war-paint and feathers, some stripped to the waist, their
copper-colored skins brilliant with paints, dyes, and "patterns";
all carried tomahawks, scalping-knives, and bows and arrows. Every
red throat gave a tremendous war-whoop as he alighted, which was
repeated again and again, as for that half moment he stood silent, a
slim, boyish figure, clad in light grey tweeds--a singular contrast
to the stalwarts in gorgeous costumes who crowded about him. His
young face paled to ashy whiteness, then with true British grit he
extended his right hand and raised his black "billy-cock" hat with
his left. At the same time he took one step forward. Then the
war-cries broke forth anew, deafening, savage, terrible cries, as
one by one the entire three hundred filed past, the Prince shaking
hands with each one, and removing his glove to do so. This strange
reception over, Onwanonsyshon rode up, and, flinging his scarlet
blanket on the grass, dismounted and asked the Prince to stand
on it.
Then stepped forward an ancient chief, father of Onwanonsyshon,
and Speaker of the Council. He was old in inherited and personal
loyalty to the British crown. He had fought under Sir Isaac Brock
at Queenston Heights in 1812, while yet a mere boy, and upon him was
laid the honor of making his Queen's son a chief. Taking Arthur
by the hand, this venerable warrior walked slowly to and fro across
the blanket, chanting as he went the strange, wild formula of
induction. From time to time he was interrupted by loud expressions
of approval and assent from the vast throng of encircling braves,
but apart from this no sound was heard but the low, weird monotone
of a ritual older than the white man's foot-prints in North America.
It is necessary that a chief of each of the three "clans" of the
Mohawks shall assist in this ceremony. The veteran chief, who sang
the formula, was of the Bear clan. His son, Onwanonsyshon, was of
the Wolf (the clanship descends through the mother's side of the
family). Then one other chief, of the Turtle clan, and in whose
veins coursed the blood of the historic Brant, now stepped to the
edge of the scarlet blanket. The chant ended, these two young
chiefs received the Prince into the Mohawk tribe, conferring upon
him the name of "Kavakoudge," which means "the sun flying from
East to West under the guidance of the Great Spirit."
Onwanonsyshon then took from his waist a brilliant deep-red sash,
heavily embroidered with beads, porcupine quills, and dyed
moose-hair, placing it over the Prince's left shoulder and knotting
it beneath his right arm. The ceremony was ended. The constitution
that Hiawatha had founded centuries ago, a constitution wherein
fifty chiefs, no more, no less, should form the parliament of the
"Six Nations," had been shattered and broken, because this race of
loyal red men desired to do honor to a slender young boy-prince,
who now bears the fifty-first title of the Iroquois.
Many white men have received from these same people honorary titles,
but none has been bestowed through the ancient ritual, with the
imperative members of the three clans assisting, save that borne
by Arthur of Connaught.
After the ceremony the Prince entered the church to autograph his
name in the ancient Bible, which, with a silver Holy Communion
service, a bell, two tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments,
and a bronze British coat of arms, had been presented to the
Mohawks by Queen Anne. He inscribed "Arthur" just below the
"Albert Edward," which, as Prince of Wales, the late King wrote
when he visited Canada in 1860.
When he returned to England Chief Kavakoudge sent his portrait,
together with one of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort, to
be placed in the Council House of the "Six Nations," where they
decorate the walls to-day.
As I write, I glance up to see, in a corner of my room, a draping
scarlet blanket, made of British army broadcloth, for the chief who
rode the jet-black pony so long ago was the writer's father. He
was not here to wear it when Arthur of Connaught again set foot on
Canadian shores.
Many of these facts I have culled from a paper that lies on my desk;
it is yellowing with age, and bears the date, "Toronto, October 2,
1869," and on the margin is written, in a clear, half-boyish hand,
"Onwanonsyshon, with kind regards from your brother-chief, Arthur."
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