{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_28483/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_28483","id":"gutenberg_28483","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28483","summary":null,"tags":["Category: French Literature","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Legends -- British Columbia -- Vancouver"],"text":"Produced by Al Haines\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Cover art]\n\n\n\n\n\n[Frontispiece: E. Pauline Johnson]\n\n\n\n\n\nLegends of\n\nVancouver\n\n\nBy\n\nE. PAULINE JOHNSON\n\n(Tekahionwake)\n\n\n\n_Eighth Edition_\n\nILLUSTRATED\n\n\n\n\nPublished by\n\nSaturday Sunset Presses\n\nVancouver, B. C.\n\n1913\n\n\n\n\nCOPYRIGHT, 1911, BY E. PAULINE JOHNSON\n\n\n\n\nThese legends are printed by courtesy of the \"Vancouver Daily\nProvince,\" in which journal they first appeared.\n\n\n\nPrinted by\n\nSATURDAY SUNSET PRESSES\n\nVancouver, B. C.\n\n\n\n\nPreface\n\nI have been asked to write a preface to these Legends of Vancouver,\nwhich, in conjunction with the members of the Publication\nSub-committee--Mrs. Lefevre, Mr. L. W. Makovski and Mr. R. W.\nDouglas--I have helped to put through the press.  But scarcely any\nprefatory remarks are necessary.  This book may well stand on its own\nmerits.  Still, it may be permissible to record one's glad satisfaction\nthat a poet has arisen to cast over the shoulders of our grey\nmountains, our trail-threaded forests, our tide-swept waters, and the\nstreets and skyscrapers of our hurrying city, a gracious mantle of\nromance.  Pauline Johnson has linked the vivid present with the\nimmemorial past.  Vancouver takes on a new aspect as we view it through\nher eyes.  In the imaginative power that she has brought to these\nsemi-historical sagas, and in the liquid flow of her rhythmical prose,\nshe has shown herself to be a literary worker of whom we may well be\nproud: she has made a most estimable contribution to purely Canadian\nliterature.\n\nBERNARD McEVOY\n\n\n\n\nAuthor's Foreword\n\nThese legends (with two or three exceptions) were told to me personally\nby my honored friend, the late Chief Joe Capilano, of Vancouver, whom I\nhad the privilege of first meeting in London in 1906, when he visited\nEngland and was received at Buckingham Palace by their Majesties King\nEdward VII and Queen Alexandra.\n\nTo the fact that I was able to greet Chief Capilano in the Chinook\ntongue, while we were both many thousands of miles from home, I owe the\nfriendship and the confidence which he so freely gave me when I came to\nreside on the Pacific Coast.  These legends he told me from time to\ntime, just as the mood possessed him, and he frequently remarked that\nthey had never been revealed to any other English-speaking person save\nmyself.\n\nE. PAULINE JOHNSON (Tekahionwake)\n\n\n\n\nBiographical Notice\n\nE. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) is the youngest child of a family of\nfour born to the late G. H. M. Johnson (Onwanonsyshon), Head Chief of\nthe Six Nations Indians, and his wife Emily S. Howells.  The latter was\nof English parentage, her birthplace being Bristol, but the land of her\nadoption Canada.\n\nChief Johnson was of the renowned Mohawk tribe, being a scion of one of\nthe fifty noble families which composed the historical confederation\nfounded by Hiawatha upwards of four hundred years ago, and known at\nthat period as the Brotherhood of the Five Nations, but which was\nafterwards named the Iroquois by the early French missionaries and\nexplorers.  For their loyalty to the British Crown they were granted\nthe magnificent lands bordering the Grand River, in the County of\nBrant, Ontario, on which the tribes still live.\n\nIt was upon this Reserve, on her father's estate, \"Chiefswood,\" that\nPauline Johnson was born.  The loyalty of her ancestors breathes in her\nprose, as well as in her poetic writings.\n\nHer education was neither extensive nor elaborate.  It embraced neither\nhigh school nor college.  A nursery governess for two years at home,\nthree years at an Indian day school half a mile from her home, and two\nyears in the Central School of the city of Brantford, was the extent of\nher educational training.  But, besides this, she acquired a wide\ngeneral knowledge, having been through childhood and early girlhood a\ngreat reader, especially of poetry.  Before she was twelve years old\nshe had read Scott, Longfellow, Byron, Shakespeare, and such books as\nAddison's \"Spectator,\" Foster's Essays and Owen Meredith's writings.\n\nThe first periodicals to accept her poems and place them before the\npublic were \"Gems of Poetry,\" a small magazine published in New York,\nand \"The Week,\" established by the late Prof. Goldwin Smith, of\nToronto, the New York \"Independent\" and Toronto \"Saturday Night.\"\nSince then she has contributed to most of the high-grade magazines,\nboth on this continent and England.\n\nHer writings having brought her into notice, the next step in Miss\nJohnson's career was her appearance on the public platform as a reciter\nof her own poems.  For this she had natural talent, and in the exercise\nof it she soon developed a marked ability, joined with a personal\nmagnetism, that was destined to make her a favorite with audiences from\nthe Atlantic to the Pacific.  Her friend, Mr. Frank Yeigh, of Toronto,\nprovided for a series of recitals having that scope, with the object of\nenabling her to go to England to arrange for the publication of her\npoems.  Within two years this aim was accomplished, her book of poems,\n\"The White Wampum,\" being published by John Lane, of the Bodley Head.\nShe took with her numerous letters of introduction, including one from\nthe Governor-General, the Earl of Aberdeen, and she soon gained both\nsocial and literary standing.  Her book was received with much favor,\nboth by reviewers and the public.  After giving many recitals in\nfashionable drawing-rooms, she returned to Canada, and made her first\ntour to the Pacific Coast, giving recitals at all the cities and towns\nen route.  Since then she has crossed the Rocky Mountains no fewer than\nnineteen times.\n\nMiss Johnson's pen had not been idle, and in 1903 the Geo. N. Morang\nCo., of Toronto, published her second book of poems, entitled \"Canadian\nBorn,\" which was also well received.\n\nAfter a number of recitals, which included Newfoundland and the\nMaritime Provinces, she went to England again in 1906 and made her\nfirst appearance in Steinway Hall, under the distinguished patronage of\nLord and Lady Strathcona.  In the following year she again visited\nLondon, returning by way of the United States, where she gave many\nrecitals.  After another tour of Canada she decided to give up public\nwork, to make Vancouver, B. C., her home, and to devote herself to\nliterary work.\n\nOnly a woman of remarkable powers of endurance could have borne up\nunder the hardships necessarily encountered in travelling through\nNorth-western Canada in pioneer days as Miss Johnson did; and shortly\nafter settling down in Vancouver the exposure and hardship she had\nendured began to tell on her, and her health completely broke down.\nFor almost a year she has been an invalid, and as she is unable to\nattend to the business herself, a trust has been formed by some of the\nleading citizens of her adopted city for the purpose of collecting and\npublishing for her benefit her later works.  Among these are the\nbeautiful Indian Legends contained in this volume, which she has been\nat great pains to collect, and a series of boys' stories, which have\nbeen exceedingly well received by magazine readers.\n\nDuring the sixteen years Miss Johnson was travelling, she had many\nvaried and interesting experiences.  She travelled the old Battleford\ntrail before the railroad went through, and across the Boundary country\nin British Columbia in the romantic days of the early pioneers.  Once\nshe took an eight hundred and fifty mile drive up the Cariboo trail to\nthe gold fields.  She has always been an ardent canoeist, and has run\nmany strange rivers, crossed many a lonely lake, and camped in many an\nunfrequented place.  These venturesome trips she made more from her\ninherent love of Nature and adventure than from any necessity of her\nprofession.\n\n    *    *    *    *    *\n\nMiss Pauline Johnson died in Vancouver on March 7, 1913.  In accordance\nwith her last wish her ashes were buried in Stanley Park within sight\nand sound of Siwash Rock, where the main driveway round the park,\ncoming from the English Bay entrance, divides east and west--the\nwestern branch sloping down towards the rock and the eastern going to\nthe Big Tree.  An editorial in the \"Vancouver Daily Province\" of March\n8 said:\n\n\"The keynote of her whole disposition was a generous charity towards\neverything and everybody with whom she came in contact.  There was no\ntrouble too great for her to take, no detail too small for her to\nneglect when it was a matter of giving happiness to others.  She was\none of those great souls who would starve themselves on the trail, work\nunwearingly [Transcriber's note: unwearyingly?] for her companions,\ncheer them ever onwards through good times and bad, and rejoice with\nthem when the goal was achieved.  She loved life with a passionate\ndevotion that was almost pathetic in its intensity.  In spite of all\nher travelling, all her experiences, which were by no means easy,\nPauline Johnson never lost her capacity for getting the best out of\nlife.  She was absolutely natural and simple in her love of happiness.\nShe disliked artificiality of any kind.  The seasons as they came and\nwent were in themselves a constant source of pleasure to her.  She\nloved the Pacific coast with its ever-changing colors, the sea and the\ndeeply gashed mountains.  The wind in the great firs and the roaring of\nthe mountain torrents were music in her ears.  With the passing of\nwinter passed also the soul of Pauline Johnson to the happy hunting\ngrounds, there to find eternal freedom untrammeled by mortality.  To\nall who knew her she was the 'best beloved vagabond.'  It was always\nfine weather and good going on the trail of life when Pauline Johnson\nblazed the way.\"\n\n\n\n\nContents\n\n\n  Preface\n  Author's Foreword\n  Biographical Notice\n  The Two Sisters\n  The Siwash Rock\n  The Recluse\n  The Lost Salmon Run\n  The Deep Waters\n  The Sea-Serpent\n  The Lost Island\n  Point Grey\n  The Tulameen Trail\n  The Grey Archway\n  Deadman's Island\n  A Squamish Legend of Napoleon\n  The Lure in Stanley Park\n  Deer Lake\n  A Royal Mohawk Chief\n\n\n\n\nList of Illustrations\n\n\nFrontispiece--Portrait\n\nThe Lions (The Two Sisters)\n\nThe Siwash Rock\n\nCapilano Canyon\n\nThe Capilano River\n\nEntrance to the Narrows\n\nKitsilano Beach\n\nThe Seven Sisters, Stanley Park\n\n\n\n\nThe Two Sisters\n\nTHE LIONS\n\nYou can see them as you look towards the north and the west, where the\ndream hills swim into the sky amid their ever-drifting clouds of pearl\nand grey.  They catch the earliest hint of sunrise, they hold the last\ncolor of sunset.  Twin mountains they are, lifting their twin peaks\nabove the fairest city in all Canada, and known throughout the British\nEmpire as \"The Lions of Vancouver.\"  Sometimes the smoke of forest\nfires blurs them until they gleam like opals in a purple atmosphere,\ntoo beautiful for words to paint.  Sometimes the slanting rains festoon\nscarfs of mist about their crests, and the peaks fade into shadowy\noutlines, melting, melting, forever melting into the distances.  But\nfor most days in the year the sun circles the twin glories with a sweep\nof gold.  The moon washes them with a torrent of silver.  Often-times,\nwhen the city is shrouded in rain, the sun yellows their snows to a\ndeep orange, but through sun and shadow they stand immovable, smiling\nwestward above the waters of the restless Pacific, eastward above the\nsuperb beauty of the Capilano Canyon.  But the Indian tribes do not\nknow these peaks as \"The Lions.\"  Even the Chief, whose feet have so\nrecently wandered to the Happy Hunting Grounds, never heard the name\ngiven them until I mentioned it to him one dreamy August day, as\ntogether we followed the trail leading to the canyon.  He seemed so\nsurprised at the name that I mentioned the reason it had been applied\nto them, asking him if he recalled the Landseer Lions in Trafalgar\nSquare.  Yes, he remembered those splendid sculptures, and his quick\neye saw the resemblance instantly.  It appeared to please him, and his\nfine face expressed the haunting memories of the far-away roar of Old\nLondon.  But the \"call of the blood\" was stronger, and presently he\nreferred to the Indian legend of those peaks--a legend that I have\nreason to believe is absolutely unknown to thousands of Palefaces who\nlook upon \"The Lions\" daily, without the love for them that is in the\nIndian heart; without knowledge of the secret of \"The Two Sisters.\"\nThe legend was intensely fascinating as it left his lips in the quaint\nbroken English that is never so dulcet as when it slips from an Indian\ntongue.  His inimitable gestures, strong, graceful, comprehensive, were\nlike a perfectly chosen frame embracing a delicate painting, and his\nbrooding eyes were as the light in which the picture hung.  \"Many\nthousands of years ago,\" he began, \"there were no twin peaks like\nsentinels guarding the outposts of this sunset coast.  They were placed\nthere long after the first creation, when the Sagalie Tyee moulded the\nmountains, and patterned the mighty rivers where the salmon run,\nbecause of His love for His Indian children, and His Wisdom for their\nnecessities.  In those times there were many and mighty Indian tribes\nalong the Pacific--in the mountain ranges, at the shores and sources of\nthe great Fraser River.  Indian law ruled the land.  Indian customs\nprevailed.  Indian beliefs were regarded.  Those were the legend-making\nages when great things occurred to make the traditions we repeat to our\nchildren today.  Perhaps the greatest of these traditions is the story\nof 'The Two Sisters,' for they are known to us as 'The Chief's\nDaughters,' and to them we owe the Great Peace in which we live, and\nhave lived for many countless moons.  There is an ancient custom\namongst the Coast tribes that when our daughters step from childhood\ninto the great world of womanhood the occasion must be made one of\nextreme rejoicing.  The being who possesses the possibility of someday\nmothering a man child, a warrior, a brave, receives much consideration\nin most nations, but to us, the Sunset Tribes, she is honored above all\npeople.  The parents usually give a great potlatch, and a feast that\nlasts many days.  The entire tribe and the surrounding tribes are\nbidden to this festival.  More than that, sometimes when a great Tyee\ncelebrates for his daughter, the tribes from far up the coast, from the\ndistant north, from inland, from the island, from the Cariboo country,\nare gathered as guests to the feast.  During these days of rejoicing,\nthe girl is placed in a high seat, an exalted position, for is she not\nmarriageable?  And does not marriage mean motherhood?  And does not\nmotherhood mean a vaster nation of brave sons and of gentle daughters,\nwho, in their turn, will give us sons and daughters of their own?\n\n\"But it was many thousands of years ago that a great Tyee had two\ndaughters that grew to womanhood at the same springtime, when the first\ngreat run of salmon thronged the rivers, and the ollallie bushes were\nheavy with blossoms.  These two daughters were young, lovable, and oh!\nvery beautiful.  Their father, the great Tyee, prepared to make a feast\nsuch as the Coast had never seen.  There were to be days and days of\nrejoicing, the people were to come for many leagues, were to bring\ngifts to the girls and to receive gifts of great value from the Chief,\nand hospitality was to reign as long as pleasuring feet could dance,\nand enjoying lips could laugh, and mouths partake of the excellence of\nthe Chief's fish, game and ollallies.\n\n[Illustration: THE LIONS (THE TWO SISTERS)\n  Bishop & Christie, Photo.]\n\n\"The only shadow on the joy of it all was war, for the tribe of the\ngreat Tyee was at war with the Upper Coast Indians, those who lived\nnorth, near what is named by the Paleface as the port of Prince Rupert.\nGiant war canoes slipped along the entire coast, war parties paddled up\nand down, war songs broke the silences of the nights, hatred,\nvengeance, strife, horror festered everywhere like sores on the surface\nof the earth.  But the great Tyee, after warring for weeks, turned and\nlaughed at the battle and the bloodshed, for he had been victor in\nevery encounter, and he could well afford to leave the strife for a\nbrief week and feast in his daughters' honor, nor permit any mere enemy\nto come between him and the traditions of his race and household.  So\nhe turned insultingly deaf ears to their war cries; he ignored with\narrogant indifference their paddle dips that encroached within his own\ncoast waters, and he prepared, as a great Tyee should, to royally\nentertain his tribesmen in honor of his daughters.\n\n\"But seven suns before the great feast, these two maidens came before\nhim, hand clasped in hand.\n\n\"'Oh! our father,' they said, 'may we speak?'\n\n\"'Speak, my daughters, my girls with the eyes of April, the hearts of\nJune'\" (early spring and early summer would be the more accurate Indian\nphrasing).\n\n\"'Some day, Oh! our father, we may mother a man child, who may grow to\nbe just such a powerful Tyee as you are, and for this honor that may\nsome day be ours we have come to crave a favor of you--you, Oh! our\nfather.'\n\n\"'It is your privilege at this celebration to receive any favor your\nhearts may wish,' he replied graciously, placing his fingers beneath\ntheir girlish chins.  'The favor is yours before you ask it, my\ndaughters.'\n\n\"'Will you, for our sakes, invite the great northern hostile tribe--the\ntribe you war upon--to this, our feast?' they asked fearlessly.\n\n\"'To a peaceful feast, a feast in the honor of women?' he exclaimed\nincredulously.\n\n\"'So we would desire it,' they answered.\n\n\"'And so shall it be,' he declared.  'I can deny you nothing this day,\nand some time you may bear sons to bless this peace you have asked, and\nto bless their mother's sire for granting it.'  Then he turned to all\nthe young men of the tribe and commanded, 'Build fires at sunset on all\nthe coast headlands--fires of welcome.  Man your canoes and face the\nnorth, greet the enemy, and tell them that I, the Tyee of the\nCapilanos, ask--no, command that they join me for a great feast in\nhonor of my two daughters.'  And when the northern tribes got this\ninvitation they flocked down the coast to this feast of a Great Peace.\nThey brought their women and their children: they brought game and\nfish, gold and white stone beads, baskets and carven ladles, and\nwonderful woven blankets to lay at the feet of their now acknowledged\nruler, the great Tyee.  And he, in turn, gave such a potlatch that\nnothing but tradition can vie with it.  There were long, glad days of\njoyousness, long pleasurable nights of dancing and camp fires, and vast\nquantities of food.  The war canoes were emptied of their deadly\nweapons and filled with the daily catch of salmon.  The hostile war\nsongs ceased, and in their place were heard the soft shuffle of dancing\nfeet, the singing voices of women, the play-games of the children of\ntwo powerful tribes which had been until now ancient enemies, for a\ngreat and lasting brotherhood was sealed between them--their war songs\nwere ended forever.\n\n\"Then the Sagalie Tyee smiled on His Indian children: 'I will make\nthese young-eyed maidens immortal,' He said.  In the cup of His hands\nHe lifted the Chief's two daughters and set them forever in a high\nplace, for they had borne two offspring--Peace and Brotherhood--each of\nwhich is now a great Tyee ruling this land.\n\n\"And on the mountain crest the Chief's daughters can be seen wrapped in\nthe suns, the snows, the stars of all seasons, for they have stood in\nthis high place for thousands of years, and will stand for thousands of\nyears to come, guarding the peace of the Pacific Coast and the quiet of\nthe Capilano Canyon.\"\n\n      *      *      *      *      *\n\nThis is the Indian legend of \"The Lions of Vancouver\" as I had it from\none who will tell me no more the traditions of his people.\n\n\n\n\nThe Siwash Rock\n\nUnique, and so distinct from its surroundings as to suggest rather the\nhandicraft of man than a whim of Nature, it looms up at the entrance to\nthe Narrows, a symmetrical column of solid grey stone.  There are no\nsimilar formations within the range of vision, or indeed within many a\nday's paddle up and down the coast.  Amongst all the wonders, the\nnatural beauties that encircle Vancouver, the marvels of mountains\nshaped into crouching lions and brooding beavers, the yawning canyons,\nthe stupendous forest firs and cedars, Siwash Rock stands as distinct,\nas individual, as if dropped from another sphere.\n\nI saw it first in the slanting light of a redly setting August sun; the\nlittle tuft of green shrubbery that crests its summit was black against\nthe crimson of sea and sky, and its colossal base of grey stone gleamed\nlike flaming polished granite.\n\nMy old tillicum lifted his paddle blade to point towards it.  \"You know\nthe story?\" he asked.  I shook my head (experience had taught me his\nlove of silent replies, his moods of legend-telling).  For a time we\npaddled slowly; the rock detached itself from its background of forest\nand shore, and it stood forth like a sentinel--erect, enduring, eternal.\n\n\"Do you think it stands straight--like a man?\" he asked.\n\n\"Yes, like some noble-spirited, upright warrior,\" I replied.\n\n\"It is a man,\" he said, \"and a warrior man, too; a man who fought for\neverything that was noble and upright.\"\n\n\"What do you regard as everything that is noble and upright, Chief?\" I\nasked, curious as to his ideas.  I shall not forget the reply: it was\nbut two words--astounding, amazing words.  He said simply:\n\n\"Clean fatherhood.\"\n\nThrough my mind raced tumultuous recollections of numberless articles\nin yet numberless magazines, all dealing with the recent \"fad\" of\nmotherhood, but I had to hear from the lips of a Squamish Indian Chief\nthe only treatise on the nobility of \"clean fatherhood\" that I have yet\nunearthed.  And this treatise has been an Indian legend for centuries;\nand lest they forget how all-important those two little words must ever\nbe, Siwash Rock stands to remind them, set there by the Deity as a\nmonument to one who kept his own life clean, that cleanliness might be\nthe heritage of the generations to come.\n\nIt was \"thousands of years ago\" (all Indian legends begin in extremely\nremote times) that a handsome boy chief journeyed in his canoe to the\nupper coast for the shy little northern girl whom he brought home as\nhis wife.  Boy though he was, the young chief had proved himself to be\nan excellent warrior, a fearless hunter, and an upright, courageous man\namong men.  His tribe loved him, his enemies respected him, and the\nbase and mean and cowardly feared him.\n\nThe customs and traditions of his ancestors were a positive religion to\nhim, the sayings and the advices of the old people were his creed.  He\nwas conservative in every rite and ritual of his race.  He fought his\ntribal enemies like the savage that he was.  He sang his war songs,\ndanced his war dances, slew his foes, but the little girl-wife from the\nnorth he treated with the deference that he gave his own mother, for\nwas she not to be the mother of his warrior son?\n\nThe year rolled round, weeks merged into months, winter into spring,\nand one glorious summer at daybreak he wakened to her voice calling\nhim.  She stood beside him, smiling.\n\n\"It will be to-day,\" she said proudly.\n\nHe sprang from his couch of wolf skins and looked out upon the coming\nday: the promise of what it would bring him seemed breathing through\nall his forest world.  He took her very gently by the hand and led her\nthrough the tangle of wilderness down to the water's edge, where the\nbeauty spot we moderns call Stanley Park bends about Prospect Point.\n\"I must swim,\" he told her.\n\n\"I must swim, too,\" she smiled with the perfect understanding of two\nbeings who are mated.  For to them the old Indian custom was law--the\ncustom that the parents of a coming child must swim until their flesh\nis so clear and clean that a wild animal cannot scent their proximity.\nIf the wild creatures of the forests have no fear of them, then, and\nonly then, are they fit to become parents, and to scent a human is in\nitself a fearsome thing to all wild creatures.\n\nSo those two plunged into the waters of the Narrows as the grey dawn\nslipped up the eastern skies and all the forest awoke to the life of a\nnew, glad day.  Presently he took her ashore, and smilingly she crept\naway under the giant trees.  \"I must be alone,\" she said, \"but come to\nme at sunrise: you will not find me alone then.\"  He smiled also, and\nplunged back into the sea.  He must swim, swim, swim through this hour\nwhen his fatherhood was coming upon him.  It was the law that he must\nbe clean, spotlessly clean, so that when his child looked out upon the\nworld it would have the chance to live its own life clean.  If he did\nnot swim hour upon hour his child would come to an unclean father.  He\nmust give his child a chance in life; he must not hamper it by his own\nuncleanliness at its birth.  It was the tribal law--the law of\nvicarious purity.\n\nAs he swam joyously to and fro, a canoe bearing four men headed up the\nNarrows.  These men were giants in stature, and the stroke of their\npaddles made huge eddies that boiled like the seething tides.\n\n\"Out from our course!\" they cried as his lithe, copper-colored body\narose and fell with his splendid stroke.  He laughed at them, giants\nthough they were, and answered that he could not cease his swimming at\ntheir demand.\n\n\"But you shall cease!\" they commanded.  \"We are the men (agents) of the\nSagalie Tyee (God), and we command you ashore out of our way!\"  (I find\nin all these Coast Indian legends that the Deity is represented by four\nmen, usually paddling an immense canoe.)\n\nHe ceased swimming, and, lifting his head, defied them.  \"I shall not\nstop, nor yet go ashore,\" he declared, striking out once more to the\nmiddle of the channel.\n\n\"Do you dare disobey us,\" they cried--\"we, the men of the Sagalie Tyee?\nWe can turn you into a fish, or a tree, or a stone for this; do you\ndare disobey the Great Tyee?\"\n\n\"I dare anything for the cleanliness and purity of my coming child.  I\ndare even the Sagalie Tyee Himself, but my child must be born to a\nspotless life.\"\n\nThe four men were astounded.  They consulted together, lighted their\npipes and sat in council.  Never had they, the men of the Sagalie Tyee,\nbeen defied before.  Now, for the sake of a little unborn child, they\nwere ignored, disobeyed, almost despised.  The lithe young\ncopper-colored body still disported itself in the cool waters;\nsuperstition held that should their canoe, or even their paddle blades,\ntouch a human being their marvellous power would be lost.  The handsome\nyoung chief swam directly in their course.  They dared not run him\ndown; if so, they would become as other men.  While they yet counselled\nwhat to do, there floated from out the forest a faint, strange,\ncompelling sound.  They listened, and the young chief ceased his stroke\nas he listened also.  The faint sound drifted out across the waters\nonce more.  It was the cry of a little, little child.  Then one of the\nfour men, he that steered the canoe, the strongest and tallest of them\nall, arose and, standing erect, stretched out his arms towards the\nrising sun and chanted, not a curse on the young chief's disobedience,\nbut a promise of everlasting days and freedom from death.\n\n\"Because you have defied all things that came in your path we promise\nthis to you,\" he chanted; \"you have defied what interferes with your\nchild's chance for a clean life, you have lived as you wish your son to\nlive, you have defied us when we would have stopped your swimming and\nhampered your child's future.  You have placed that child's future\nbefore all things, and for this the Sagalie Tyee commands us to make\nyou forever a pattern for your tribe.  You shall never die, but you\nshall stand through all the thousands of years to come, where all eyes\ncan see you.  You shall live, live, live as an indestructible monument\nto Clean Fatherhood.\"\n\nThe four men lifted their paddles and the handsome young chief swam\ninshore; as his feet touched the line where sea and land met, he was\ntransformed into stone.\n\nThen the four men said, \"His wife and child must ever be near him; they\nshall not die, but live also.\"  And they, too, were turned into stone.\nIf you penetrate the hollows in the woods near Siwash Rock you will\nfind a large rock and a smaller one beside it.  They are the shy little\nbride-wife from the north, with her hour-old baby beside her.  And from\nthe uttermost parts of the world vessels come daily throbbing and\nsailing up the Narrows.  From far trans-Pacific ports, from the frozen\nNorth, from the lands of the Southern Cross, they pass and repass the\nliving rock that was there before their hulls were shaped, that will be\nthere when their very names are forgotten, when their crews and their\ncaptains have taken their long last voyage, when their merchandise has\nrotted, and their owners are known no more.  But the tall, grey column\nof stone will still be there--a monument to one man's fidelity to a\ngeneration yet unborn--and will endure from everlasting to everlasting.\n\n\n[Illustration: Native cradle]\n\n\n[Illustration: THE SIWASH ROCK\n  Bishop & Christie, Photo.]\n\n\n\n\nThe Recluse\n\nJourneying toward the upper course of the Capilano River, about a mile\ncitywards from the dam, you will pass a disused logger's shack.  Leave\nthe trail at this point and strike through the undergrowth for a few\nhundred yards to the left, and you will be on the rocky borders of that\npurest, most restless river in all Canada.  The stream is haunted with\ntradition, teeming with a score of romances that vie with its grandeur\nand loveliness, and of which its waters are perpetually whispering.\nBut I learned this legend from one whose voice was as dulcet as the\nswirling rapids; but, unlike them, that voice is hushed today, while\nthe river still sings on--sings on.\n\nIt was singing in very melodious tones through the long August\nafternoon two summers ago, while we, the chief, his happy-hearted wife\nand bright, young daughter, all lounged amongst the boulders and\nwatched the lazy clouds drift from peak to peak far above us.  It was\none of his inspired days; legends crowded to his lips as a whistle\nteases the mouth of a happy boy, his heart was brimming with tales of\nthe bygones, his eyes were dark with dreams and that strange\nmournfulness that always haunted them when he spoke of long-ago\nromances.  There was not a tree, a boulder, a dash of rapid upon which\nhis glance fell which he could not link with some ancient poetic\nsuperstition.  Then abruptly, in the very midst of his verbal reveries,\nhe turned and asked me if I were superstitious.  Of course I replied\nthat I was.\n\n\"Do you think some happenings will bring trouble later on--will\nforetell evil?\" he asked.\n\nI made some evasive answer, which, however, seemed to satisfy him, for\nhe plunged into the strange tale of the recluse of the canyon with more\nvigor than dreaminess; but first he asked me the question:\n\n\"What do your own tribes, those east of the great mountains, think of\ntwin children?\"\n\nI shook my head.\n\n\"That is enough,\" he said before I could reply.  \"I see, your people do\nnot like them.\"\n\n\"Twin children are almost unknown with us,\" I hastened.  \"They are\nrare, very rare; but it is true we do not welcome them.\"\n\n\"Why?\" he asked abruptly.\n\nI was a little uncertain about telling him.  If I said the wrong thing,\nthe coming tale might die on his lips before it was born to speech, but\nwe understood each other so well that I finally ventured the truth:\n\n\"We Iroquois say that twin children are as rabbits,\" I explained.  \"The\nnation always nicknames the parents 'Tow-wan-da-na-ga.'  That is the\nMohawk for rabbit.\"\n\n\"Is that all?\" he asked curiously.\n\n\"That is all.  Is it not enough to render twin children unwelcome?\" I\nquestioned.\n\nHe thought awhile, then with evident desire to learn how all races\nregarded this occurrence, he said, \"You have been much among the\nPalefaces, what do they say of twins?\"\n\n\"Oh! the Palefaces like them.  They are--they are--oh! well, they say\nthey are very proud of having twins,\" I stammered.  Once again I was\nhardly sure of my ground.  He looked most incredulous, and I was led to\nenquire what his own people of the Squamish thought of this discussed\nproblem.\n\n\"It is no pride to us,\" he said decidedly; \"nor yet is it disgrace of\nrabbits, but it is a fearsome thing--a sign of coming evil to the\nfather, and, worse than that, of coming disaster to the tribe.\"\n\nThen I knew he held in his heart some strange incident that gave\nsubstance to the superstition.  \"Won't you tell it to me?\" I begged.\n\nHe leaned a little backward against a giant boulder, clasping his thin,\nbrown hands about his knees; his eyes roved up the galloping river,\nthen swept down the singing waters to where they crowded past the\nsudden bend, and during the entire recital of the strange legend his\neyes never left that spot where the stream disappeared in its hurrying\njourney to the sea.  Without preamble he began:\n\n\"It was a grey morning when they told him of this disaster that had\nbefallen him.  He was a great chief, and he ruled many tribes on the\nNorth Pacific Coast; but what was his greatness now?  His young wife\nhad borne him twins, and was sobbing out her anguish in the little\nfir-bark lodge near the tidewater.\n\n\"Beyond the doorway gathered many old men and women--old in years, old\nin wisdom, old in the lore and learning of their nations.  Some of them\nwept, some chanted solemnly the dirge of their lost hopes and\nhappiness, which would never return because of this calamity; others\ndiscussed in hushed voices this awesome thing, and for hours their\ngrave council was broken only by the infant cries of the two boy-babies\nin the bark lodge, the hopeless sobs of the young mother, the agonized\nmoans of the stricken chief--their father.\n\n\"'Something dire will happen to the tribe,' said the old men in council.\n\n\"'Something dire will happen to him, my husband,' wept the afflicted\nyoung mother.\n\n\"'Something dire will happen to us all,' echoed the unhappy father.\n\n\"Then an ancient medicine man arose, lifting his arms, outstretching\nhis palms to hush the lamenting throng.  His voice shook with the\nweight of many winters, but his eyes were yet keen and mirrored the\nclear thought and brain behind them, as the still trout pools in the\nCapilano mirror the mountain tops.  His words were masterful, his\ngestures commanding, his shoulders erect and kindly.  His was a\npersonality and an inspiration that no one dared dispute, and his\njudgment was accepted as the words fell slowly, like a doom.\n\n\"'It is the olden law of the Squamish that lest evil befall the tribe\nthe sire of twin children must go afar and alone into the mountain\nfastnesses, there by his isolation and his loneliness to prove himself\nstronger than the threatened evil, and thus to beat back the shadow\nthat would otherwise follow him and all his people.  I, therefore, name\nfor him the length of days that he must spend alone fighting his\ninvisible enemy.  He will know by some great sign in Nature the hour\nthat the evil is conquered, the hour that his race is saved.  He must\nleave before this sun sets, taking with him only his strongest bow, his\nfleetest arrows, and going up into the mountain wilderness remain there\nten days--alone, alone.'\n\n\"The masterful voice ceased, the tribe wailed their assent, the father\narose speechless, his drawn face revealing great agony over this\nseemingly brief banishment.  He took leave of his sobbing wife, of the\ntwo tiny souls that were his sons, grasped his favorite bow and arrows,\nand faced the forest like a warrior.  But at the end of the ten days he\ndid not return, nor yet ten weeks, nor yet ten months.\n\n\"'He is dead,' wept the mother into the baby ears of her two boys.  'He\ncould not battle against the evil that threatened; it was stronger than\nhe--he so strong, so proud, so brave.'\n\n\"'He is dead,' echoed the tribesmen and the tribeswomen.  'Our strong,\nbrave chief, he is dead.'  So they mourned the long year through, but\ntheir chants and their tears but renewed their grief; he did not return\nto them.\n\n\"Meanwhile, far up the Capilano the banished chief had built his\nsolitary home; for who can tell what fatal trick of sound, what current\nof air, what faltering note in the voice of the Medicine Man had\ndeceived his alert Indian ears?  But some unhappy fate had led him to\nunderstand that his solitude must be of ten years' duration, not ten\ndays, and he had accepted the mandate with the heroism of a stoic.  For\nif he had refused to do so his belief was that although the threatened\ndisaster would be spared him, the evil would fall upon his tribe.  Thus\nwas one more added to the long list of self-forgetting souls whose\ncreed has been, 'It is fitting that one should suffer for the people.'\nIt was the world-old heroism of vicarious sacrifice.\n\n\"With his hunting-knife the banished Squamish chief stripped the bark\nfrom the firs and cedars, building for himself a lodge beside the\nCapilano River, where leaping trout and salmon could be speared by\narrow-heads fastened to deftly shaped, long handles.  All through the\nsalmon run he smoked and dried the fish with the care of a housewife.\nThe mountain sheep and goats, and even huge black and cinnamon bears,\nfell before his unerring arrows; the fleet-footed deer never returned\nto their haunts from their evening drinking at the edge of the\nstream--their wild hearts, their agile bodies were stilled when he took\naim.  Smoked hams and saddles hung in rows from the cross poles of his\nbark lodge, and the magnificent pelts of animals carpeted his floors,\npadded his couch and clothed his body.  He tanned the soft doe hides,\nmaking leggings, moccasins and shirts, stitching them together with\ndeer sinew as he had seen his mother do in the long-ago.  He gathered\nthe juicy salmonberries, their acid a sylvan, healthful change from\nmeat and fish.  Month by month and year by year he sat beside his\nlonely camp-fire, waiting for his long term of solitude to end.  One\ncomfort alone was his--he was enduring the disaster, fighting the evil,\nthat his tribe might go unscathed, that his people be saved from\ncalamity.  Slowly, laboriously the tenth year dawned; day by day it\ndragged its long weeks across his waiting heart, for Nature had not yet\ngiven the sign that his long probation was over.\n\n\"Then one hot summer day the Thunder Bird came crashing through the\nmountains about him.  Up from the arms of the Pacific rolled the storm\ncloud, and the Thunder Bird, with its eyes of flashing light, beat its\nhuge vibrating wings on crag and canyon.\n\n\"Upstream, a tall shaft of granite rears its needle-like length.  It is\nnamed 'Thunder Rock,' and wise men of the Paleface people say it is\nrich in ore--copper, silver and gold.  At the base of this shaft the\nSquamish chief crouched when the storm cloud broke and bellowed through\nthe ranges, and on its summit the Thunder Bird perched, its gigantic\nwings threshing the air into booming sounds, into splitting terrors,\nlike the crash of a giant cedar hurtling down the mountain side.\n\n\"But when the beating of those black pinions ceased and the echo of\ntheir thunder waves died down the depths of the canyon, the Squamish\nchief arose as a new man.  The shadow on his soul had lifted, the fears\nof evil were cowed and conquered.  In his brain, his blood, his veins,\nhis sinews, he felt that the poison of melancholy dwelt no more.  He\nhad redeemed his fault of fathering twin children; he had fulfilled the\ndemands of the law of his tribe.\n\n\"As he heard the last beat of the Thunder Bird's wings dying slowly,\nslowly, faintly, faintly, among the crags, he knew that the bird, too,\nwas dying, for its soul was leaving its monster black body, and\npresently that soul appeared in the sky.  He could see it arching\noverhead, before it took its long journey to the Happy Hunting Grounds,\nfor the soul of the Thunder Bird was a radiant half-circle of glorious\ncolor spanning from peak to peak.  He lifted his head then, for he knew\nit was the sign the ancient Medicine Man had told him to wait for--the\nsign that his long banishment was ended.\n\n\"And all these years, down in the tidewater country, the little\nbrown-faced twins were asking childwise, 'Where is our father?  Why\nhave we no father, like other boys?'  To be met only with the\noft-repeated reply, 'Your father is no more.  Your father, the great\nchief, is dead.'\n\n\"But some strange filial intuition told the boys that their sire would\nsome day return.  Often they voiced this feeling to their mother, but\nshe would only weep and say that not even the witchcraft of the great\nMedicine Man could bring him to them.  But when they were ten years old\nthe two children came to their mother, hand within hand.  They were\narmed with their little hunting-knives, their salmon spears, their tiny\nbows and arrows.\n\n\"'We go to find our father,' they said.\n\n\"'Oh! useless quest,' wailed the mother.\n\n\"'Oh! useless quest,' echoed the tribes-people.\n\n\"But the great Medicine Man said, 'The heart of a child has invisible\neyes, perhaps the child-eyes see him.  The heart of a child has\ninvisible ears, perhaps the child-ears hear him call.  Let them go.'\nSo the little children went forth into the forest; their young feet\nflew as though shod with wings, their young hearts pointed to the north\nas does the white man's compass.  Day after day they journeyed\nup-stream, until rounding a sudden bend they beheld a bark lodge with a\nthin blue curl of smoke drifting from its roof.\n\n\"'It is our father's lodge,' they told each other, for their childish\nhearts were unerring in response to the call of kinship.  Hand-in-hand\nthey approached, and entering the lodge, said the one word, 'Come.'\n\n\"The great Squamish chief outstretched his arms towards them, then\ntowards the laughing river, then towards the mountains.\n\n\"'Welcome, my sons!' he said.  'And good-bye, my mountains, my\nbrothers, my crags and my canyons!'  And with a child clinging to each\nhand he faced once more the country of the tidewater.\"\n\n      *      *      *      *      *\n\nThe legend was ended.\n\nFor a long time he sat in silence.  He had removed his gaze from the\nbend in the river, around which the two children had come and where the\neyes of the recluse had first rested on them after ten years of\nsolitude.\n\nThe chief spoke again, \"It was here, on this spot we are sitting, that\nhe built his lodge: here he dwelt those ten years alone, alone.\"\n\nI nodded silently.  The legend was too beautiful to mar with comments,\nand as the twilight fell, we threaded our way through the underbrush,\npast the disused logger's camp and into the trail that leads citywards.\n\n\n[Illustration: Decoration]\n\n\n[Illustration: Capilano Canyon.\n  Bishop & Christie, Photo.]\n\n\n\n\nThe Lost Salmon Run\n\nGreat had been the \"run,\" and the sockeye season was almost over.  For\nthat reason I wondered many times why my old friend, the klootchman,\nhad failed to make one of the fishing fleet.  She was an indefatigable\nworkwoman, rivalling her husband as an expert catcher, and all the year\nthrough she talked of little else but the coming run.  But this\nespecial season she had not appeared amongst her fellow-kind.  The\nfleet and the canneries knew nothing of her, and when I enquired of her\ntribes-people they would reply without explanation, \"She not here this\nyear.\"\n\nBut one russet September afternoon I found her.  I had idled down the\ntrail from the swans' basin in Stanley Park to the rim that skirts the\nNarrows, and I saw her graceful, high-bowed canoe heading for the beach\nthat is the favorite landing place of the \"tillicums\" from the Mission.\nHer canoe looked like a dream-craft, for the water was very still, and\neverywhere a blue film hung like a fragrant veil, for the peat on Lulu\nIsland had been smoldering for days and its pungent odors and blue-grey\nhaze made a dream-world of sea and shore and sky.\n\nI hurried upshore, hailing her in the Chinook, and as she caught my\nvoice she lifted her paddle directly above her head in the Indian\nsignal of greeting.\n\nAs she beached, I greeted her with extended eager hands to assist her\nashore, for the klootchman is getting to be an old woman; albeit she\npaddles against tidewater like a boy in his teens.\n\n\"No,\" she said, as I begged her to come ashore.  \"I not wait--me.  I\njust come to fetch Maarda; she been city; she come soon--now.\"  But she\nleft her \"working\" attitude and curled like a schoolgirl in the bow of\nthe canoe, her elbows resting on her paddle which she had flung across\nthe gunwales.\n\n\"I have missed you, klootchman; you have not been to see me for three\nmoons, and you have not fished or been at the canneries,\" I remarked.\n\n\"No,\" she said.  \"I stay home this year.\"  Then leaning towards me with\ngrave import in her manner, her eyes, her voice, she added, \"I have a\ngrandchild, born first week July, so--I stay.\"\n\nSo this explained her absence.  I, of course, offered congratulations\nand enquired all about the great event, for this was her first\ngrandchild, and the little person was of importance.\n\n\"And are you going to make a fisherman of him?\" I asked.\n\n\"No, no, not boy-child, it is girl-child,\" she answered with some\nindescribable trick of expression that led me to know she preferred it\nso.\n\n\"You are pleased it is a girl?\" I questioned in surprise.\n\n\"Very pleased,\" she replied emphatically.  \"Very good luck to have girl\nfor first grandchild.  Our tribe not like yours; we want girl children\nfirst; we not always wish boy-child born just for fight.  Your people,\nthey care only for war-path; our tribe more peaceful.  Very good sign\nfirst grandchild to be girl.  I tell you why: girl-child maybe some\ntime mother herself; very grand thing to be mother.\"\n\nI felt I had caught the secret of her meaning.  She was rejoicing that\nthis little one should some time become one of the mothers of her race.\nWe chatted over it a little longer and she gave me several playful\n\"digs\" about my own tribe thinking so much less of motherhood than\nhers, and so much more of battle and bloodshed.  Then we drifted into\ntalk of the sockeye run and of the hyiu chickimin the Indians would get.\n\n\"Yes, hyiu chickimin,\" she repeated with a sigh of satisfaction.\n\"Always; and hyiu muck-a-muck when big salmon run.  No more ever come\nthat bad year when not any fish.\"\n\n\"When was that?\" I asked.\n\n\"Before you born, or I, or\"--pointing across the park to the distant\ncity of Vancouver, that breathed its wealth and beauty across the\nSeptember afternoon--\"before that place born, before white man came\nhere--oh! long before.\"\n\nDear old klootchman!  I knew by the dusk in her eyes that she was back\nin her Land of Legends, and that soon I would be the richer in my hoard\nof Indian lore.  She sat, still leaning on her paddle; her eyes,\nhalf-closed, rested on the distant outline of the blurred heights\nacross the Inlet.  I shall not further attempt her broken English, for\nthis is but the shadow of her story, and without her unique personality\nthe legend is as a flower that lacks both color and fragrance.  She\ncalled it \"The Lost Salmon Run.\"\n\n\"The wife of the Great Tyee was but a wisp of a girl, but all the world\nwas young in those days; even the Fraser River was young and small, not\nthe mighty water it is today; but the pink salmon crowded its throat\njust as they do now, and the tillicums caught and salted and smoked the\nfish just as they have done this year, just as they will always do.\nBut it was yet winter, and the rains were slanting and the fogs\ndrifting, when the wife of the Great Tyee stood before him and said:\n\n\"'Before the salmon run I shall give to you a great gift.  Will you\nhonor me most if it is the gift of a boy-child or a girl-child?'  The\nGreat Tyee loved the woman.  He was stern with his people, hard with\nhis tribe; he ruled his council fires with a will of stone.  His\nmedicine men said he had no human heart in his body; his warriors said\nhe had no human blood in his veins.  But he clasped this woman's hands,\nand his eyes, his lips, his voice, were gentle as her own, as he\nreplied:\n\n\"'Give to me a girl-child--a little girl-child--that she may grow to be\nlike you, and, in her turn, give to her husband children.'\n\n\"But when the tribes-people heard of his choice they arose in great\nanger.  They surrounded him in a deep, indignant circle.  'You are a\nslave to the woman,' they declared, 'and now you desire to make\nyourself a slave to a woman-baby.  We want an heir--a man-child to be\nour Great Tyee in years to come.  When you are old and weary of tribal\naffairs, when you sit wrapped in your blanket in the hot summer\nsunshine, because your blood is old and thin, what can a girl-child do\nto help either you or us?  Who, then, will be our Great Tyee?'\n\n\"He stood in the centre of the menacing circle, his arms folded, his\nchin raised, his eyes hard as flint.  His voice, cold as stone, replied:\n\n\"'Perhaps she will give you such a man-child, and, if so, the child is\nyours; he will belong to you, not to me; he will become the possession\nof the people.  But if the child is a girl she will belong to me--she\nwill be mine.  You cannot take her from me as you took me from my\nmother's side and forced me to forget my aged father in my service to\nmy tribe; she will belong to me, will be the mother of my\ngrandchildren, and her husband will be my son.'\n\n\"'You do not care for the good of your tribe.  You care only for your\nown wishes and desires,' they rebelled.  'Suppose the salmon run is\nsmall, we will have no food; suppose there is no man-child, we will\nhave no Great Tyee to show us how to get food from other tribes, and we\nshall starve.'\n\n\"'Your hearts are black and bloodless,' thundered the Great Tyee,\nturning upon them fiercely, 'and your eyes are blinded.  Do you wish\nthe tribe to forget how great is the importance of a child that will\nsome day be a mother herself, and give to your children and\ngrandchildren a Great Tyee?  Are the people to live, to thrive, to\nincrease, to become more powerful with no mother-women to bear future\nsons and daughters?  Your minds are dead, your brains are chilled.\nStill, even in your ignorance, you are my people: you and your wishes\nmust be considered.  I call together the great medicine men, the men of\nwitchcraft, the men of magic.  They shall decide the laws which will\nfollow the bearing of either boy or girl-child.  What say you, oh!\nmighty men?'\n\n\"Messengers were then sent up and down the coast, sent far up the\nFraser River, and to the valley lands inland for many leagues,\ngathering as they journeyed all the men of magic that could be found.\nNever were so many medicine men in council before.  They built fires\nand danced and chanted for many days.  They spoke with the gods of the\nmountains, with the gods of the sea, then 'the power' of decision came\nto them.  They were inspired with a choice to lay before the\ntribes-people, and the most ancient medicine man in all the coast\nregion arose and spoke their resolution:\n\n\"'The people of the tribe cannot be allowed to have all things.  They\nwant a boy-child and they want a great salmon run also.  They cannot\nhave both.  The Sagalie Tyee has revealed to us, the great men of\nmagic, that both these things will make the people arrogant and\nselfish.  They must choose between the two.'\n\n\"'Choose, oh! you ignorant tribes-people,' commanded the Great Tyee.\n'The wise men of our coast have said that the girl-child who will some\nday bear children of her own, will also bring abundance of salmon at\nher birth; but the boy-child brings to you but himself.'\n\n\"'Let the salmon go,\" shouted the people, 'but give us a future Great\nTyee.  Give us the boy-child.'\n\n\"And when the child was born it was a boy.\n\n\"'Evil will fall upon you,' wailed the Great Tyee.  'You have despised\na mother-woman.  You will suffer evil and starvation and hunger and\npoverty, oh! foolish tribes-people.  Did you not know how great a\ngirl-child is?'\n\n\"That spring, people from a score of tribes came up to the Fraser for\nthe salmon run.  They came great distances--from the mountains, the\nlakes, the far-off dry lands, but not one fish entered the vast rivers\nof the Pacific Coast.  The people had made their choice.  They had\nforgotten the honor that a mother-child would have brought them.  They\nwere bereft of their food.  They were stricken with poverty.  Through\nthe long winter that followed they endured hunger and starvation.\nSince then our tribe has always welcomed girl-children--we want no more\nlost runs.\"\n\nThe klootchman lifted her arms from her paddle as she concluded; her\neyes left the irregular outline of the violet mountains.  She had come\nback to this year of grace--her Legend Land had vanished.\n\n\"So,\" she added, \"you see now, maybe, why I glad my grandchild is girl;\nit means big salmon run next year.\"\n\n\"It is a beautiful story, klootchman,\" I said, \"and I feel a cruel\ndelight that your men of magic punished the people for their\nill-choice.\"\n\n\"That because you girl-child yourself,\" she laughed.\n\nThere was the slightest whisper of a step behind me.  I turned to find\nMaarda almost at my elbow.  The rising tide was unbeaching the canoe,\nand as Maarda stepped in and the klootchman slipped astern, it drifted\nafloat.\n\n\"Kla-how-ya,\" nodded the klootchman as she dipped her paddle-blade in\nexquisite silence.\n\n\"Kla-how-ya,\" smiled Maarda.\n\n\"Kla-how-ya, tillicums,\" I replied, and watched for many moments as\nthey slipped away into the blurred distance, until the canoe merged\ninto the violet and grey of the farther shore.\n\n\n[Illustration: Native tool]\n\n\n\n\nThe Deep Waters\n\nFar over your left shoulder as your boat leaves the Narrows to thread\nthe beautiful waterways that lead to Vancouver Island, you will see the\nsummit of Mount Baker robed in its everlasting whiteness and always\nreflecting some wonderful glory from the rising sun, the golden\nnoontide, or the violet and amber sunset.  This is the Mount Ararat of\nthe Pacific Coast peoples; for those readers who are familiar with the\nways and beliefs and faiths of primitive races will agree that it is\ndifficult to discover anywhere in the world a race that has not some\nstory of the Deluge, which they have chronicled and localized to fit\nthe understanding and the conditions of the nation that composes their\nown immediate world.\n\nAmongst the red nations of America I doubt if any two tribes have the\nsame ideas regarding the Flood.  Some of the traditions concerning this\nvast whim of Nature are grotesque in the extreme; some are impressive;\nsome even profound; but of all the stories of the Deluge that I have\nbeen able to collect I know of not a single one that can even begin to\nequal in beauty of conception, let alone rival in possible reality and\ntruth, the Squamish legend of \"The Deep Waters.\"\n\nI here quote the legend of \"mine own people,\" the Iroquois tribes of\nOntario, regarding the Deluge.  I do this to paint the color of\ncontrast in richer shades, for I am bound to admit that we who pride\nourselves on ancient intellectuality have but a childish tale of the\nFlood when compared with the jealously preserved annals of the\nSquamish, which savour more of history than tradition.  With \"mine own\npeople,\" animals always play a much more important part and are endowed\nwith a finer intelligence than humans.  I do not find amid my notes a\nsingle tradition of the Iroquois wherein animals do not figure, and our\nstory of the Deluge rests entirely with the intelligence of sea-going\nand river-going creatures.  With us, animals in olden times were\ngreater than man; but it is not so with the Coast Indians, except in\nrare instances.\n\nWhen a Coast Indian consents to tell you a legend he will, without\nvariation, begin it with, \"It was before the white people came.\"\n\nThe natural thing for you then to ask is, \"But who were here then?\"\n\nHe will reply, \"Indians, and just the trees, and animals, and fishes,\nand a few birds.\"\n\nSo you are prepared to accept the animal world as intelligent\nco-habitants of the Pacific slope, but he will not lead you to think he\nregards them as equals, much less superiors.  But to revert to \"mine\nown people\": they hold the intelligence of wild animals far above that\nof man, for perhaps the one reason that when an animal is sick it\neffects its own cure; it knows what grasses and herbs to eat, what to\navoid, while the sick human calls the medicine man, whose wisdom is not\nonly the result of years of study, but also heredity; consequently any\ngreat natural event, such as the Deluge, has much to do with the wisdom\nof the creatures of the forests and the rivers.\n\nIroquois tradition tells us that once this earth was entirely submerged\nin water, and during this period for many days a busy little muskrat\nswam about vainly looking for a foothold of earth wherein to build his\nhouse.  In his search he encountered a turtle also leisurely swimming,\nso they had speech together, and the muskrat complained of weariness;\nhe could find no foothold; he was tired of incessant swimming, and\nlonged for land such as his ancestors enjoyed.  The turtle suggested\nthat the muskrat should dive and endeavor to find earth at the bottom\nof the sea.  Acting on this advice the muskrat plunged down, then arose\nwith his two little forepaws grasping some earth he had found beneath\nthe waters.\n\n\"Place it on my shell and dive again for more,\" directed the turtle.\nThe muskrat did so, but when he returned with his paws filled with\nearth he discovered the small quantity he had first deposited on the\nturtle's shell had doubled in size.  The return from the third trip\nfound the turtle's load again doubled.  So the building went on at\ndouble compound increase, and the world grew its continents and its\nislands with great rapidity, and now rests on the shell of a turtle.\n\nIf you ask an Iroquois, \"And did no men survive this flood?\" he will\nreply, \"Why should men survive?  The animals are wiser then men; let\nthe wisest live.\"\n\nHow, then, was the earth re-peopled?\n\nThe Iroquois will tell you that the otter was a medicine man; that in\nswimming and diving about he found corpses of men and women; he sang\nhis medicine songs and they came to life, and the otter brought them\nfish for food until they were strong enough to provide for themselves.\nThen the Iroquois will conclude his tale with, \"You know well that the\notter has greater wisdom than a man.\"\n\nSo much for \"mine own people\" and our profound respect for the superior\nintelligence of our little brothers of the animal world.\n\nBut the Squamish tribe hold other ideas.  It was on a February day that\nI first listened to this beautiful, humane story of the Deluge.  My\nroyal old tillicum had come to see me through the rains and mists of\nlate winter days.  The gateways of my wigwam always stood open--very\nwidely open--for his feet to enter, and this especial day he came with\nthe worst downpour of the season.\n\nWomanlike, I protested with a thousand contradictions in my voice that\nhe should venture out to see me on such a day.  It was \"Oh!  Chief, I\nam so glad to see you!\" and it was \"Oh!  Chief, why didn't you stay at\nhome on such a wet day--your poor throat will suffer.\"  But I soon had\nquantities of hot tea for him, and the huge cup my own father always\nused was his--as long as the Sagalie Tyee allowed his dear feet to\nwander my way.  The immense cup stands idle and empty now for the\nsecond time.\n\nHelping him off with his great-coat, I chatted on about the deluge of\nrain, and he remarked it was not so very bad, as one could yet walk.\n\n\"Fortunately, yes, for I cannot swim,\" I told him.\n\nHe laughed, replying, \"Well, it is not so bad as when the Great Deep\nWaters covered the world.\"\n\nImmediately I foresaw the coming legend, so crept into the shell of\nmonosyllables.\n\n\"No?\" I questioned.\n\n\"No,\" he replied.  \"For one time there was no land here at all;\neverywhere there was just water.\"\n\n\"I can quite believe it,\" I remarked caustically.\n\nHe laughed--that irresistible, though silent, David Warfield laugh of\nhis that always brought a responsive smile from his listeners.  Then he\nplunged directly into the tradition, with no preface save a\ncomprehensive sweep of his wonderful hands towards my wide window,\nagainst which the rains were beating.\n\n\"It was after a long, long time of this--this rain.  The mountain\nstreams were swollen, the rivers choked, the sea began to rise--and yet\nit rained; for weeks and weeks it rained.\"  He ceased speaking, while\nthe shadows of centuries gone crept into his eyes.  Tales of the misty\npast always inspired him.\n\n\"Yes,\" he continued.  \"It rained for weeks and weeks, while the\nmountain torrents roared thunderingly down, and the sea crept silently\nup.  The level lands were first to float in sea water, then to\ndisappear.  The slopes were next to slip into the sea.  The world was\nslowly being flooded.  Hurriedly the Indian tribes gathered in one\nspot, a place of safety far above the reach of the on-creeping sea.\nThe spot was the circling shore of Lake Beautiful, up the North Arm.\nThey held a Great Council and decided at once upon a plan of action.  A\ngiant canoe should be built, and some means contrived to anchor it in\ncase the waters mounted to the heights.  The men undertook the canoe,\nthe women the anchorage.\n\n\"A giant tree was felled, and day and night the men toiled over its\nconstruction into the most stupendous canoe the world has ever known.\nNot an hour, not a moment, but many worked, while the toil-wearied ones\nslept, only to awake to renewed toil.  Meanwhile the women also worked\nat a cable--the largest, the longest, the strongest that Indian hands\nand teeth had ever made.  Scores of them gathered and prepared the\ncedar fibre; scores of them plaited, rolled and seasoned it; scores of\nthem chewed upon it inch by inch to make it pliable; scores of them\noiled and worked, oiled and worked, oiled and worked it into a\nsea-resisting fabric.  And still the sea crept up, and up, and up.  It\nwas the last day; hope of life for the tribe, of land for the world,\nwas doomed.  Strong hands, self-sacrificing hands fastened the cable\nthe women had made--one end to the giant canoe, the other about an\nenormous boulder, a vast immovable rock as firm as the foundations of\nthe world--for might not the canoe with its priceless freight drift\nout, far out, to sea, and when the water subsided might not this ship\nof safety be leagues and leagues beyond the sight of land on the\nstorm-driven Pacific?\n\n\"Then with the bravest hearts that ever beat, noble hands lifted every\nchild of the tribe into this vast canoe; not one single baby was\noverlooked.  The canoe was stocked with food and fresh water, and\nlastly, the ancient men and women of the race selected as guardians to\nthese children the bravest, most stalwart, handsomest young man of the\ntribe, and the mother of the youngest baby in the camp--she was but a\ngirl of sixteen, her child but two weeks old; but she, too, was brave\nand very beautiful.  These two were placed, she at the bow of the canoe\nto watch, he at the stern to guide, and all the little children crowded\nbetween.\n\n\"And still the sea crept up, and up, and up.  At the crest of the\nbluffs about Lake Beautiful the doomed tribes crowded.  Not a single\nperson attempted to enter the canoe.  There was no wailing, no crying\nout for safety.  'Let the little children, the young mother, and the\nbravest and best of our young men live,' was all the farewell those in\nthe canoe heard as the waters reached the summit, and--the canoe\nfloated.  Last of all to be seen was the top of the tallest tree,\nthen--all was a world of water.\n\n\"For days and days there was no land--just the rush of swirling,\nsnarling sea; but the canoe rode safely at anchor, the cable those\nscores of dead, faithful women had made held true as the hearts that\nbeat behind the toil and labor of it all.\n\n\"But one morning at sunrise, far to the south a speck floated on the\nbreast of the waters; at midday it was larger; at evening it was yet\nlarger.  The moon arose, and in its magic light the man at the stern\nsaw it was a patch of land.  All night he watched it grow, and at\ndaybreak looked with glad eyes upon the summit of Mount Baker.  He cut\nthe cable, grasped his paddle in his strong, young hands, and steered\nfor the south.  When they landed, the waters were sunken half down the\nmountain side.  The children were lifted out; the beautiful young\nmother, the stalwart young brave, turned to each other, clasped hands,\nlooked into each others eyes--and smiled.\n\n\"And down in the vast country that lies between Mount Baker and the\nFraser River they made a new camp, built new lodges, where the little\nchildren grew and thrived, and lived and loved, and the earth was\nre-peopled by them.\n\n\"The Squamish say that in a gigantic crevice half way to the crest of\nMount Baker may yet be seen the outlines of an enormous canoe, but I\nhave never seen it myself.\"\n\nHe ceased speaking with that far-off cadence in his voice with which he\nalways ended a legend, and for a long time we both sat in silence\nlistening to the rains that were still beating against the window.\n\n\n[Illustration: Native canoe]\n\n\n\n\nThe Sea-Serpent\n\nThere is one vice that is absolutely unknown to the red man; he was\nborn without it, and amongst all the deplorable things he has learned\nfrom the white races, this, at least, he has never acquired.  That is\nthe vice of avarice.  That the Indian looks upon greed of gain,\nmiserliness, avariciousness and wealth accumulated above the head of\nhis poorer neighbor as one of the lowest degradations he can fall to,\nis perhaps more aptly illustrated in this legend than anything I could\nquote to demonstrate his horror of what he calls \"the white man's\nunkindness.\"  In a very wide and varied experience with many tribes, I\nhave yet to find even one instance of avarice, and I have encountered\nbut one single case of a \"stingy Indian,\" and this man was so marked\namongst his fellows that at mention of his name his tribes-people\njeered and would remark contemptuously that he was like a white\nman--hated to share his money and his possessions.  All red races are\nborn Socialists, and most tribes carry out their communistic ideas to\nthe letter.  Amongst the Iroquois it is considered disgraceful to have\nfood if your neighbor has none.  To be a creditable member of the\nnation you must divide your possessions with your less fortunate\nfellows.  I find it much the same amongst the Coast Indians, though\nthey are less bitter in their hatred of the extremes of wealth and\npoverty than are the Eastern tribes.  Still, the very fact that they\nhave preserved this legend, in which they liken avarice to a slimy\nsea-serpent, shows the trend of their ideas; shows, too, that an Indian\nis an Indian, no matter what his tribe; shows that he cannot or will\nnot hoard money; shows that his native morals demand that the spirit of\ngreed must be strangled at all cost.\n\nThe Chief and I had sat long over our luncheon.  He had been talking of\nhis trip to England and of the many curious things he had seen.  At\nlast, in an outburst of enthusiasm, he said: \"I saw everything in the\nworld--everything but a sea-serpent!\"\n\n\"But there is no such thing as a sea-serpent,\" I laughed, \"so you must\nhave really seen everything in the world.\"\n\nHis face clouded; for a moment he sat in silence; then looking directly\nat me said, \"Maybe none now, but long ago there was one here--in the\nInlet.\"\n\n\"How long ago?\" I asked.\n\n\"When first the white gold-hunters came,\" he replied.  \"Came with\ngreedy, clutching fingers, greedy eyes, greedy hearts.  The white men\nfought, murdered, starved, went mad with love of that gold far up the\nFraser River.  Tillicums were tillicums no more, brothers were foes,\nfathers and sons were enemies.  Their love of the gold was a curse.\"\n\n\"Was it then the sea-serpent was seen?\" I asked, perplexed with the\nproblem of trying to connect the gold-seekers with such a monster.\n\n\"Yes, it was then, but----\"--he hesitated, then plunged into the\nassertion, \"but you will not believe the story if you think there is no\nsuch thing as a sea-serpent.\"\n\n\"I shall believe whatever you tell me, Chief,\" I answered; \"I am only\ntoo ready to believe.  You know I come of a superstitious race, and all\nmy association with the Palefaces has never yet robbed me of my\nbirthright to believe strange traditions.\"\n\n\"You always understand,\" he said after a pause.\n\n\"It's my heart that understands,\" I remarked quietly.\n\nHe glanced up quickly, and with one of his all too few radiant smiles,\nhe laughed.\n\n\"Yes, skookum tum-tum.\"  Then without further hesitation he told the\ntradition, which, although not of ancient happening, is held in great\nreverence by his tribe.  During its recital he sat with folded arms,\nleaning on the table, his head and shoulders bending eagerly towards me\nas I sat at the opposite side.  It was the only time he ever talked to\nme when he did not use emphasising gesticulations, but his hands never\nonce lifted: his wonderful eyes alone gave expression to what he called\n\"The Legend of the 'Salt-chuck Oluk'\" (sea-serpent).\n\n[Illustration: THE CAPILANO RIVER\n  Bishop & Christie, Photo.]\n\n\"Yes, it was during the first gold craze, and many of our young men\nwent as guides to the whites far up the Fraser.  When they returned\nthey brought these tales of greed and murder back with them, and our\nold people and our women shook their heads and said evil would come of\nit.  But all our young men, except one, returned as they went--kind to\nthe poor, kind to those who were foodless, sharing whatever they had\nwith their tillicums.  But one, by name Shak-shak (The Hawk), came back\nwith hoards of gold nuggets, chickimin,[1] everything; he was rich like\nthe white men, and, like them, he kept it.  He would count his\nchickimin, count his nuggets, gloat over them, toss them in his palms.\nHe rested his head on them as he slept, he packed them about with him\nthrough the day.  He loved them better than food, better than his\ntillicums, better than his life.  The entire tribe arose.  They said\nShak-shak had the disease of greed; that to cure it he must give a\ngreat potlatch, divide his riches with the poorer ones, share them with\nthe old, the sick, the foodless.  But he jeered and laughed and told\nthem No, and went on loving and gloating over his gold.\n\n\"Then the Sagalie Tyee spoke out of the sky and said, 'Shak-shak, you\nhave made of yourself a loathsome thing; you will not listen to the cry\nof the hungry, to the call of the old and sick; you will not share your\npossessions; you have made of yourself an outcast from your tribe and\ndisobeyed the ancient laws of your people.  Now I will make of you a\nthing loathed and hated by all men, both white and red.  You will have\ntwo heads, for your greed has two mouths to bite.  One bites the poor,\nand one bites your own evil heart--and the fangs in these mouths are\npoison, poison that kills the hungry, and poison that kills your own\nmanhood.  Your evil heart will beat in the very centre of your foul\nbody, and he that pierces it will kill the disease of greed forever\nfrom amongst his people.'  And when the sun arose above the North Arm\nthe next morning the tribes-people saw a gigantic sea-serpent stretched\nacross the surface of the waters.  One hideous head rested on the\nbluffs at Brockton Point, the other rested on a group of rocks just\nbelow Mission, at the western edge of North Vancouver.  If you care to\ngo there some day I will show you the hollow in one great stone where\nthat head lay.  The tribes-people were stunned with horror.  They\nloathed the creature, they hated it, they feared it.  Day after day it\nlay there, its monstrous heads lifted out of the waters, its mile-long\nbody blocking all entrance from the Narrows, all outlet from the North\nArm.  The chiefs made council, the medicine men danced and chanted, but\nthe salt-chuck oluk never moved.  It could not move, for it was the\nhated totem of what now rules the white man's world--greed and love of\nchickimin.  No one can ever move the love of chickimin from the white\nman's heart, no one can ever make him divide all with the poor.  But\nafter the chiefs and medicine men had done all in their power, and\nstill the salt-chuck oluk lay across the waters, a handsome boy of\nsixteen approached them and reminded them of the words of the Sagalie\nTyee, 'that he that pierced the monster's heart would kill the disease\nof greed forever amongst his people.'\n\n\"'Let me try to find this evil heart, oh! great men of my tribe,' he\ncried.  'Let me war upon this creature; let me try to rid my people of\nthis pestilence.'\n\n\"The boy was brave and very beautiful.  His tribes-people called him\nthe Tenas Tyee (Little Chief) and they loved him.  Of all his wealth of\nfish and furs, of game and hykwa (large shell money) he gave to the\nboys who had none; he hunted food for the old people; he tanned skins\nand furs for those whose feet were feeble, whose eyes were fading,\nwhose blood ran thin with age.\n\n\"'Let him go!' cried the tribes-people.  'This unclean monster can only\nbe overcome by cleanliness, this creature of greed can only be\noverthrown by generosity.  Let him go!'  The chiefs and the medicine\nmen listened, then consented.  'Go,' they commanded, 'and fight this\nthing with your strongest weapons--cleanliness and generosity.'\n\n\"The Tenas Tyee turned to his mother.  'I shall be gone four days,' he\ntold her, 'and I shall swim all that time.  I have tried all my life to\nbe generous, but the people say I must be clean also to fight this\nunclean thing.  While I am gone put fresh furs on my bed every day,\neven if I am not here to lie on them; if I know my bed, my body and my\nheart are all clean I can overcome this serpent.'\n\n\"'Your bed shall have fresh furs every morning,' his mother said simply.\n\n\"The Tenas Tyee then stripped himself and, with no clothing save a\nbuckskin belt into which he thrust his hunting-knife, he flung his\nlithe young body into the sea.  But at the end of four days he did not\nreturn.  Sometimes his people could see him swimming far out in\nmid-channel, endeavoring to find the exact centre of the serpent, where\nlay its evil, selfish heart; but on the fifth morning they saw him rise\nout of the sea, climb to the summit of Brockton Point and greet the\nrising sun with outstretched arms.  Weeks and months went by, still the\nTenas Tyee would swim daily searching for that heart of greed; and each\nmorning the sunrise glinted on his slender young copper-colored body as\nhe stood with outstretched arms at the tip of Brockton Point, greeting\nthe coming day and then plunging from the summit into the sea.\n\n\"And at his home on the north shore his mother dressed his bed with\nfresh furs each morning.  The seasons drifted by, winter followed\nsummer, summer followed winter.  But it was four years before the Tenas\nTyee found the centre of the great salt-chuck oluk and plunged his\nhunting-knife into its evil heart.  In its death-agony it writhed\nthrough the Narrows, leaving a trail of blackness on the waters.  Its\nhuge body began to shrink, to shrivel; it became dwarfed and withered,\nuntil nothing but the bones of its back remained, and they,\nsea-bleached and lifeless, soon sank to the bed of the ocean leagues\noff from the rim of land.  But as the Tenas Tyee swam homeward and his\nclean, young body crossed through the black stain left by the serpent,\nthe waters became clear and blue and sparkling.  He had overcome even\nthe trail of the salt-chuck oluk.\n\n\"When at last he stood in the doorway of his home he said, 'My mother,\nI could not have killed the monster of greed amongst my people had you\nnot helped me by keeping one place for me at home fresh and clean for\nmy return.'\n\n\"She looked at him as only mothers look.  'Each day these four years,\nfresh furs have I laid for your bed.  Sleep now, and rest, oh! my Tenas\nTyee,' she said.\"\n\n      *      *      *      *      *\n\nThe Chief unfolded his arms, and his voice took another tone as he\nsaid, \"What do you call that story--a legend?\"\n\n\"The white people would call it an allegory,\" I answered.  He shook his\nhead.\n\n\"No savvy,\" he smiled.\n\nI explained as simply as possible, and with his customary alertness he\nimmediately understood.  \"That's right,\" he said.  \"That's what we say\nit means, we Squamish, that greed is evil and not clean, like the\nsalt-chuck oluk.  That it must be stamped out amongst our people,\nkilled by cleanliness and generosity.  The boy that overcame the\nserpent was both these things.\"\n\n\"What became of this splendid boy?\" I asked.\n\n\"The Tenas Tyee?  Oh! some of our old, old people say they sometimes\nsee him now, standing on Brockton Point, his bare young arms\noutstretched to the rising sun,\" he replied.\n\n\"Have you ever seen him, Chief?\" I questioned.\n\n\"No,\" he answered simply.  But I have never heard such poignant regret\nas his wonderful voice crowded into that single word.\n\n\n[1] Money.\n\n\n\n\nThe Lost Island\n\n\"Yes,\" said my old tillicum, \"we Indians have lost many things.  We\nhave lost our lands, our forests, our game, our fish; we have lost our\nancient religion, our ancient dress; some of the younger people have\neven lost their fathers' language and the legends and traditions of\ntheir ancestors.  We cannot call those old things back to us; they will\nnever come again.  We may travel many days up the mountain trails, and\nlook in the silent places for them.  They are not there.  We may paddle\nmany moons on the sea, but our canoes will never enter the channel that\nleads to the yesterdays of the Indian people.  These things are lost,\njust like 'The Island of the North Arm.'  They may be somewhere nearby,\nbut no one can ever find them.\"\n\n\"But there are many islands up the North Arm,\" I asserted.\n\n\"Not the island we Indian people have sought for many tens of summers,\"\nhe replied sorrowfully.\n\n\"Was it ever there?\" I questioned.\n\n\"Yes, it was there,\" he said.  \"My grand-sires and my great-grandsires\nsaw it; but that was long ago.  My father never saw it, though he spent\nmany days in many years searching, always searching, for it.  I am an\nold man myself, and I have never seen it, though from my youth I, too,\nhave searched.  Sometimes in the stillness of the nights I have paddled\nup in my canoe.\"  Then, lowering his voice: \"Twice I have seen its\nshadow: high rocky shores, reaching as high as the tree tops on the\nmainland, then tall pines and firs on its summit like a king's crown.\nAs I paddled up the Arm one summer night, long ago, the shadow of these\nrocks and firs fell across my canoe, across my face, and across the\nwaters beyond.  I turned rapidly to look.  There was no island there,\nnothing but a wide stretch of waters on both sides of me, and the moon\nalmost directly overhead.  Don't say it was the shore that shadowed\nme,\" he hastened, catching my thought.  \"The moon was above me; my\ncanoe scarce made a shadow on the still waters.  No, it was not the\nshore.\"\n\n\"Why do you search for it?\" I lamented, thinking of the old dreams in\nmy own life whose realization I have never attained.\n\n\"There is something on that island that I want.  I shall look for it\nuntil I die, for it is there,\" he affirmed.\n\nThere was a long silence between us after that.  I had learned to love\nsilences when with my old tillicum, for they always led to a legend.\nAfter a time he began voluntarily:\n\n\"It was more than one hundred years ago.  This great city of Vancouver\nwas but the dream of the Sagalie Tyee (God) at that time.  The dream\nhad not yet come to the white man; only one great Indian medicine man\nknew that some day a great camp for Palefaces would lie between False\nCreek and the Inlet.  This dream haunted him; it came to him night and\nday--when he was amid his people laughing and feasting, or when he was\nalone in the forest chanting his strange songs, beating his hollow\ndrum, or shaking his wooden witch-rattle to gain more power to cure the\nsick and the dying of his tribe.  For years this dream followed him.\nHe grew to be an old, old man, yet always he could hear voices, strong\nand loud, as when they first spoke to him in his youth, and they would\nsay: 'Between the two narrow strips of salt water the white men will\ncamp--many hundreds of them, many thousands of them.  The Indians will\nlearn their ways, will live as they do, will become as they are.  There\nwill be no more great war dances, no more fights with other powerful\ntribes; it will be as if the Indians had lost all bravery, all courage,\nall confidence.'  He hated the voices, he hated the dream; but all his\npower, all his big medicine, could not drive them away.  He was the\nstrongest man on all the North Pacific Coast.  He was mighty and very\ntall, and his muscles were as those of Leloo, the timber wolf, when he\nis strongest to kill his prey.  He could go for many days without food;\nhe could fight the largest mountain lion; he could overthrow the\nfiercest grizzly bear; he could paddle against the wildest winds and\nride the highest waves.  He could meet his enemies and kill whole\ntribes single-handed.  His strength, his courage, his power, his\nbravery, were those of a giant.  He knew no fear; nothing in the sea,\nor in the forest, nothing in the earth or the sky, could conquer him.\nHe was fearless, fearless.  Only this haunting dream of the coming\nwhite man's camp he could not drive away; it was the one thing in life\nhe had tried to kill and failed.  It drove him from the feasting, drove\nhim from the pleasant lodges, the fires, the dancing, the story-telling\nof his people in their camp by the water's edge, where the salmon\nthronged and the deer came down to drink of the mountain streams.  He\nleft the Indian village, chanting his wild songs as he went.  Up\nthrough the mighty forests he climbed, through the trailless deep\nmosses and matted vines, up to the summit of what the white men call\nGrouse Mountain.  For many days he camped there.  He ate no food, he\ndrank no water, but sat and sang his medicine songs through the dark\nhours and through the day.  Before him--far beneath his feet--lay the\nnarrow strip of land between the two salt waters.  Then the Sagalie\nTyee gave him the power to see far into the future.  He looked across a\nhundred years, just as he looked across what you call the Inlet, and he\nsaw mighty lodges built close together, hundreds and thousands of them;\nlodges of stone and wood, and long straight trails to divide them.  He\nsaw these trails thronging with Palefaces; he heard the sound of the\nwhite man's paddle-dip on the waters, for it is not silent like the\nIndian's; he saw the white man's trading posts, saw the fishing nets,\nheard his speech.  Then the vision faded as gradually as it came.  The\nnarrow strip of land was his own forest once more.\n\n\"'I am old,' he called, in his sorrow and his trouble for his people.\n'I am old, oh, Sagalie Tyee!  Soon I shall die and go to the Happy\nHunting Grounds of my fathers.  Let not my strength die with me.  Keep\nliving for all time my courage, my bravery, my fearlessness.  Keep them\nfor my people that they may be strong enough to endure the white man's\nrule.  Keep my strength living for them; hide it so that the Paleface\nmay never find or see it.'\n\n\"Then he came down from the summit of Grouse Mountain.  Still chanting\nhis medicine songs he entered his canoe, and paddled through the colors\nof the setting sun far up the North Arm.  When night fell he came to an\nisland with misty shores of great grey rock; on its summit tall pines\nand firs circled like a king's crown.  As he neared it he felt all his\nstrength, his courage, his fearlessness, leaving him; he could see\nthese things drift from him on to the island.  They were as the clouds\nthat rest on the mountains, grey-white and half transparent.  Weak as a\nwoman he paddled back to the Indian village; he told them to go and\nsearch for 'The Island,' where they would find all his courage, his\nfearlessness and his strength, living, living forever.  He slept then,\nbut--in the morning he did not awake.  Since then our young men and our\nold have searched for 'The Island.'  It is there somewhere, up some\nlost channel, but we cannot find it.  When we do, we will get back all\nthe courage and bravery we had before the white man came, for the great\nmedicine man said those things never die--they live for one's children\nand grandchildren.\"\n\nHis voice ceased.  My whole heart went out to him in his longing for\nthe lost island.  I thought of all the splendid courage I knew him to\npossess, so made answer: \"But you say that the shadow of this island\nhas fallen upon you; is it not so, tillicum?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he said half mournfully.  \"But only the shadow.\"\n\n\n[Illustration: Native cradle?]\n\n\n\n\nPoint Grey\n\n\"Have you ever sailed around Point Grey?\" asked a young Squamish\ntillicum of mine who often comes to see me, to share a cup of tea and a\ntaste of muck-a-muck, that otherwise I should eat in solitude.\n\n\"No,\" I admitted, I had not had that pleasure, for I did not know the\nuncertain waters of English Bay sufficiently well to venture about its\nheadlands in my frail canoe.\n\n\"Some day, perhaps next summer, I'll take you there in a sail-boat, and\nshow you the big rock at the southwest of the Point.  It is a strange\nrock; we Indian people call it Homolsom.\"\n\n\"What an odd name,\" I commented.  \"Is it a Squamish word?--it does not\nsound to me like one.\"\n\n\"It is not altogether Squamish, but half Fraser River language.  The\nPoint was the dividing line between the grounds and waters of the two\ntribes, so they agreed to make the name 'Homolsom' from the two\nlanguages.\"\n\nI suggested more tea, and, as he sipped it, he told me the legend that\nfew of the younger Indians know.  That he believes the story himself is\nbeyond question, for many times he admitted having tested the virtues\nof this rock, and it had never once failed him.  All people that have\nto do with water craft are superstitious about some things, and I\nfreely acknowledge that times innumerable I have \"whistled up\" a wind\nwhen dead calm threatened, or stuck a jack-knife in the mast, and\nafterwards watched with great contentment the idle sail fill, and the\ncanoe pull out to a light breeze.  So, perhaps, I am prejudiced in\nfavor of this legend of Homolsom Rock, for it strikes a very responsive\nchord in that portion of my heart that has always throbbed for the sea.\n\n\"You know,\" began my young tillicum, \"that only waters unspoiled by\nhuman hands can be of any benefit.  One gains no strength by swimming\nin any waters heated or boiled by fires that men build.  To grow strong\nand wise one must swim in the natural rivers, the mountain torrents,\nthe sea, just as the Sagalie Tyee made them.  Their virtues die when\nhuman beings try to improve them by heating or distilling, or placing\neven tea in them, and so--what makes Homolsom Rock so full of 'good\nmedicine' is that the waters that wash up about it are straight from\nthe sea, made by the hand of the Great Tyee, and unspoiled by the hand\nof man.\n\n\"It was not always there, that great rock, drawing its strength and its\nwonderful power from the seas, for it, too, was once a Great Tyee, who\nruled a mighty tract of waters.  He was god of all the waters that wash\nthe coast, of the Gulf of Georgia, of Puget Sound, of the Straits of\nJuan de Fuca, of the waters that beat against even the west coast of\nVancouver Island, and of all the channels that cut between the\nCharlotte Islands.  He was Tyee of the West Wind, and his storms and\ntempests were so mighty that the Sagalie Tyee Himself could not control\nthe havoc that he created.  He warred upon all fishing craft, he\ndemolished canoes and sent men to graves in the sea.  He uprooted\nforests and drove the surf on shore heavy with wreckage of despoiled\ntrees and with beaten and bruised fish.  He did all this to reveal his\npowers, for he was cruel and hard of heart, and he would laugh and defy\nthe Sagalie Tyee, and looking up to the sky he would call, 'See how\npowerful I am, how mighty, how strong; I am as great as you.'\n\n\"It was at this time that the Sagalie Tyee in the persons of the Four\nMen came in the great canoe up over the rim of the Pacific, in that age\nthousands of years ago when they turned the evil into stone, and the\nkindly into trees.\n\n\"'Now,' said the god of the West Wind, 'I can show how great I am.  I\nshall blow a tempest that these men may not land on my coast.  They\nshall not ride my seas and sounds and channels in safety.  I shall\nwreck them and send their bodies into the great deeps, and I shall be\nSagalie Tyee in their place and ruler of all the world.'  So the god of\nthe West Wind blew forth his tempests.  The waves arose mountain high,\nthe seas lashed and thundered along the shores.  The roar of his mighty\nbreath could be heard wrenching giant limbs from the forest trees,\nwhistling down the canyons and dealing death and destruction for\nleagues and leagues along the coast.  But the canoe containing the Four\nMen rode upright through all the heights and hollows of the seething\nocean.  No curling crest or sullen depth could wreck that magic craft,\nfor the hearts it bore were filled with kindness for the human race,\nand kindness cannot die.\n\n\"It was all rock and dense forest, and unpeopled; only wild animals and\nsea birds sought the shelter it provided from the terrors of the West\nWind; but he drove them out in sullen anger, and made on this strip of\nland his last stand against the Four Men.  The Paleface calls the place\nPoint Grey, but the Indians yet speak of it as 'The Battle Ground of\nthe West Wind.'  All his mighty forces he now brought to bear against\nthe oncoming canoe; he swept great hurricanes about the stony ledges;\nhe caused the sea to beat and swirl in tempestuous fury along its\nnarrow fastnesses, but the canoe came nearer and nearer, invincible as\nthose shores, and stronger than death itself.  As the bow touched the\nland the Four Men arose and commanded the West Wind to cease his war\ncry, and, mighty though he had been, his voice trembled and sobbed\nitself into a gentle breeze, then fell to a whispering note, then faded\ninto exquisite silence.\n\n\"'Oh, you evil one with the unkind heart,' cried the Four Men, 'you\nhave been too great a god for even the Sagalie Tyee to obliterate you\nforever, but you shall live on, live now to serve, not to hinder\nmankind.  You shall turn into stone where you now stand, and you shall\nrise only as men wish you to.  Your life from this day shall be for the\ngood of man, for when the fisherman's sails are idle and his lodge is\nleagues away you shall fill those sails and blow his craft free, in\nwhatever direction he desires.  You shall stand where you are through\nall the thousands upon thousands of years to come, and he who touches\nyou with his paddle-blade shall have his desire of a breeze to carry\nhim home.'\"\n\nMy young tillicum had finished his tradition, and his great solemn eyes\nregarded me half-wistfully.\n\n\"I wish you could see Homolsom Rock,\" he said.  \"For that is he who was\nonce the Tyee of the West Wind.\"\n\n\"Were you ever becalmed around Point Grey?\" I asked irrelevantly.\n\n\"Often,\" he replied.  \"But I paddle up to the rock and touch it with\nthe tip of my paddle-blade, and no matter which way I want to go the\nwind will blow free for me, if I wait a little while.\"\n\n\"I suppose your people all do this?\" I replied.\n\n\"Yes, all of them,\" he answered.  \"They have done it for hundreds of\nyears.  You see the power in it is just as great now as at first, for\nthe rock feeds every day on the unspoiled sea that the Sagalie Tyee\nmade.\"\n\n\n\n\nThe Tulameen Trail\n\nDid you ever \"holiday\" through the valley lands of the Dry Belt?  Ever\nspend days and days in a swinging, swaying coach, behind a\nfour-in-hand, when \"Curly\" or \"Nicola Ned\" held the ribbons, and tooled\nhis knowing little leaders and wheelers down those horrifying mountain\ntrails that wind like russet skeins of cobweb through the heights and\ndepths of the Okanagan, the Nicola and the Similkameen countries?  If\nso, you have listened to the call of the Skookum Chuck, as the Chinook\nspeakers call the rollicking, tumbling streams that sing their way\nthrough the canyons with a music so dulcet, so insistent, that for many\nmoons the echo of it lingers in your listening ears, and you will,\nthrough all the years to come, hear the voices of those mountain rivers\ncalling you to return.\n\nBut the most haunting of all the melodies is the warbling laughter of\nthe Tulameen; its delicate note is far more powerful, more far-reaching\nthan the throaty thunders of Niagara.  That is why the Indians of the\nNicola country still cling to their old-time story that the Tulameen\ncarries the spirit of a young girl enmeshed in the wonders of its\nwinding course; a spirit that can never free itself from the canyons,\nto rise above the heights and follow its fellows to the Happy Hunting\nGrounds, but which is contented to entwine its laughter, its sobs, its\nlonely whispers, its still lonelier call for companionship, with the\nwild music of the waters that sing forever beneath the western stars.\n\nAs your horses plod up and up the almost perpendicular trail that leads\nout of the Nicola Valley to the summit, a paradise of beauty outspreads\nat your feet; the color is indescribable in words, the atmosphere\nthrills you.  Youth and the pulse of rioting blood are yours again,\nuntil, as you near the heights, you become strangely calmed by the\nvoiceless silence of it all, a silence so holy that it seems the whole\nworld about you is swinging its censer before an altar in some dim\nremote cathedral!  The choir voices of the Tulameen are yet very far\naway across the summit, but the heights of the Nicola are the silent\nprayer that holds the human soul before the first great chords swell\ndown from the organ loft.  In this first long climb up miles and miles\nof trail, even the staccato of the drivers' long black-snake whip is\nhushed.  He lets his animals pick their own sure-footed way, but once\nacross the summit he gathers the reins in his steely fingers, gives a\nlow, quick whistle, the whiplash curls about the ears of the leaders\nand the plunge down the dip of the mountain begins.  Every foot of the\nway is done at a gallop.  The coach rocks and swings as it dashes\nthrough a trail rough-hewn from the heart of the forest; at times the\nangles are so abrupt that you cannot see the heads of the leaders as\nthey swing around the grey crags that almost scrape the tires on the\nleft, while within a foot of the rim of the trail the right wheels\nwhirl along the edge of a yawning canyon.  The rhythm of the\nhoof-beats, the recurrent low whistle and crack of the whiplash, the\noccasional rattle of pebbles showering down to the depths, loosened by\nrioting wheels, have broken the sacred silence.  Yet above all those\nnearby sounds there seems to be an indistinct murmur, which grows\nsweeter, more musical, as you gain the base of the mountains, where it\nrises above all harsher notes.  It is the voice of the restless\nTulameen as it dances and laughs through the rocky throat of the\ncanyon, three hundred feet below.  Then, following the song, comes a\nglimpse of the river itself--white garmented in the film of its\ncountless rapids, its showers of waterfalls.  It is as beautiful to\nlook at as to listen to, and it is here, where the trail winds about\nand above it for leagues, that the Indians say it caught the spirit of\nthe maiden that is still interlaced in its loveliness.\n\nIt was in one of the terrible battles that raged between the valley\ntribes before the white man's footprints were seen along these trails.\nNone can now tell the cause of this warfare, but the supposition is\nthat it was merely for tribal supremacy--that primeval instinct that\nassails the savage in both man and beast, that drives the hill men to\nbloodshed and the leaders of buffalo herds to conflict.  It is the\ngreed to rule; the one barbarous instinct that civilization has never\nyet been able to eradicate from armed nations.  This war of the tribes\nof the valley lands was of years in duration; men fought and women\nmourned, and children wept, as all have done since time began.  It\nseemed an unequal battle, for the old experienced war-tried chief and\nhis two astute sons were pitted against a single young Tulameen brave.\nBoth factors had their loyal followers, both were indomitable as to\ncourage and bravery, both were determined and ambitious, both were\nskilled fighters.\n\n[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE NARROWS, VANCOUVER, B.C.\n  Bishop & Christie, Photo.]\n\nBut on the older man's side were experience and two other wary,\nstrategic brains to help him, while on the younger was but the\nadvantage of splendid youth and unconquerable persistence.  But at\nevery pitched battle, at every skirmish, at every single-handed\nconflict the younger man gained little by little, the older man lost\nstep by step.  The experience of age was gradually but inevitably\ngiving way to the strength and enthusiasm of youth.  Then one day they\nmet face to face and alone--the old war-scarred chief, the young\nbattle-inspired brave.  It was an unequal combat, and at the close of a\nbrief but violent struggle the younger had brought the older to his\nknees.  Standing over him with up-poised knife the Tulameen brave\nlaughed sneeringly, and said:\n\n\"Would you, my enemy, have this victory as your own?  If so, I give it\nto you; but in return for my submission I demand of you--your daughter.\"\n\nFor an instant the old chief looked in wonderment at his conqueror; he\nthought of his daughter only as a child who played about the forest\ntrails or sat obediently beside her mother in the lodge, stitching her\nlittle moccasins or weaving her little baskets.\n\n\"My daughter!\" he answered sternly.  \"My daughter--who is barely out of\nher own cradle basket--give her to you, whose hands, are blood-dyed\nwith the killing of a score of my tribe?  You ask for this thing?\"\n\n\"I do not ask it,\" replied the young brave.  \"I demand it; I have seen\nthe girl and I shall have her.\"\n\nThe old chief sprang to his feet and spat out his refusal.  \"Keep your\nvictory, and I keep my girl-child,\" though he knew he was not only\ndefying his enemy, but defying death as well.\n\nThe Tulameen laughed lightly, easily.  \"I shall not kill the sire of my\nwife,\" he taunted.  \"One more battle must we have, but your girl-child\nwill come to me.\"\n\nThen he took his victorious way up the trail, while the old chief\nwalked with slow and springless step down into the canyon.\n\nThe next morning the chief's daughter was loitering along the heights,\nlistening to the singing river, and sometimes leaning over the\nprecipice to watch its curling eddies and dancing waterfalls.  Suddenly\nshe heard a slight rustle, as though some passing bird's wing had dipt\nthe air.  Then at her feet there fell a slender, delicately shaped\narrow.  It fell with spent force, and her Indian woodcraft told her it\nhad been shot to her, not at her.  She started like a wild animal.\nThen her quick eye caught the outline of a handsome, erect figure that\nstood on the heights across the river.  She did not know him as her\nfather's enemy.  She only saw him to be young, stalwart and of\nextraordinary, manly beauty.  The spirit of youth and of a certain\nsavage coquetry awoke within her.  Quickly she fitted one of her own\ndainty arrows to the bow string and sent it winging across the narrow\ncanyon; it fell, spent, at his feet, and he knew she had shot it to\nhim, not at him.\n\nNext morning, woman-like, she crept noiselessly to the brink of the\nheights.  Would she see him again--that handsome brave?  Would he speed\nanother arrow to her?  She had not yet emerged from the tangle of\nforest before it fell, its faint-winged flight heralding its coming.\nNear the feathered end was tied a tassel of beautiful ermine tails.\nShe took from her wrist a string of shell beads, fastened it to one of\nher little arrows and winged it across the canyon, as yesterday.\n\nThe following morning before leaving the lodge she fastened the tassel\nof ermine tails in her straight, black hair.  Would he see them?  But\nno arrow fell at her feet that day, but a dearer message was there on\nthe brink of the precipice.  He himself awaited her coming--he who had\nnever left her thoughts since that first arrow came to her from his\nbow-string.  His eyes burned with warm fires, as she approached, but\nhis lips said simply: \"I have crossed the Tulameen River.\"  Together\nthey stood, side by side, and looked down at the depths before them,\nwatching in silence the little torrent rollicking and roystering over\nits boulders and crags.\n\n\"That is my country,\" he said, looking across the river.  \"This is the\ncountry of your father, and of your brothers; they are my enemies.  I\nreturn to my own shore tonight.  Will you come with me?\"\n\nShe looked up into his handsome young face.  So this was her father's\nfoe--the dreaded Tulameen!\n\n\"Will you come?\" he repeated.\n\n\"I will come,\" she whispered.\n\nIt was in the dark of the moon and through the kindly night he led her\nfar up the rocky shores to the narrow belt of quiet waters, where they\ncrossed in silence into his own country.  A week, a month, a long\ngolden summer, slipped by, but the insulted old chief and his enraged\nsons failed to find her.\n\nThen one morning as the lovers walked together on the heights above the\nfar upper reaches of the river, even the ever-watchful eyes of the\nTulameen failed to detect the lurking enemy.  Across the narrow canyon\ncrouched and crept the two outwitted brothers of the girl-wife at his\nside; their arrows were on their bow-strings, their hearts on fire with\nhatred and vengeance.  Like two evil-winged birds of prey those arrows\nsped across the laughing river, but before they found their mark in the\nbreast of the victorious Tulameen the girl had unconsciously stepped\nbefore him.  With a little sigh, she slipped into his arms, her\nbrothers' arrows buried into her soft, brown flesh.\n\nIt was many a moon before his avenging hand succeeded in slaying the\nold chief and those two hated sons of his.  But when this was finally\ndone the handsome young Tulameen left his people, his tribe, his\ncountry, and went into the far north.  \"For,\" he said, as he sang his\nfarewell war song, \"my heart lies dead in the Tulameen River.\"\n\n    *    *    *    *    *\n\nBut the spirit of his girl-wife still sings through the canyon, its\nsong blending with the music of that sweetest-voiced river in all the\ngreat valleys of the Dry Belt.  That is why this laughter, the sobbing\nmurmur of the beautiful Tulameen will haunt for evermore the ear that\nhas once listened to its song.\n\n\n\n\nThe Grey Archway\n\nThe steamer, like a huge shuttle, wove in and out among the countless\nsmall islands; its long trailing scarf of grey smoke hung heavily along\nthe uncertain shores, casting a shadow over the pearly waters of the\nPacific, which swung lazily from rock to rock in indescribable beauty.\n\nAfter dinner I wandered astern with the traveller's ever-present hope\nof seeing the beauties of a typical Northern sunset, and by some happy\nchance I placed my deck stool near an old tillicum, who was leaning on\nthe rail, his pipe between his thin curved lips, his brown hands\nclasped idly, his sombre eyes looking far out to sea, as though they\nsearched the future--or was it that they were seeing the past?\n\n\"Kla-how-ya, tillicum!\" I greeted.\n\nHe glanced round, and half smiled.\n\n\"Kla-how-ya, tillicum!\" he replied, with the warmth of friendliness I\nhave always met with among the Pacific tribes.\n\nI drew my deck stool nearer to him, and he acknowledged the action with\nanother half smile, but did not stir from his entrenchment, remaining\nas if hedged about with an inviolable fortress of exclusiveness.  Yet I\nknew that my Chinook salutation would be a drawbridge by which I might\nhope to cross the moat into his castle of silence.\n\nIndian-like, he took his time before continuing the acquaintance.  Then\nhe began in most excellent English:\n\n\"You do not know these Northern waters?\"\n\nI shook my head.\n\nAfter many moments he leaned forward, looking along the curve of the\ndeck, up the channels and narrows we were threading, to a broad strip\nof waters off the port bow.  Then he pointed with that peculiar,\nthoroughly Indian gesture of the palm uppermost.\n\n\"Do you see it--over there?  The small island?  It rests on the edge of\nthe water, like a grey gull.\"\n\nIt took my unaccustomed eyes some moments to discern it; then all at\nonce I caught its outline, veiled in the mists of distance--grey,\ncobwebby, dreamy.\n\n\"Yes,\" I replied, \"I see it now.  You will tell me of it--tillicum?\"\n\nHe gave a swift glance at my dark skin, then nodded.  \"You are one of\nus,\" he said, with evidently no thought of a possible contradiction.\n\"And you will understand, or I should not tell you.  You will not smile\nat the story, for you are one of us.\"\n\n\"I am one of you, and I shall understand,\" I answered.\n\nIt was a full half-hour before we neared the island, yet neither of us\nspoke during that time; then, as the \"grey gull\" shaped itself into\nrock and tree and crag, I noticed in the very centre a stupendous pile\nof stone lifting itself skyward, without fissure or cleft; but a\npeculiar haziness about the base made me peer narrowly to catch the\nperfect outline.\n\n\"It is the 'Grey Archway,'\" he explained, simply.\n\nOnly then did I grasp the singular formation before us; the rock was a\nperfect archway, through which we could see the placid Pacific\nshimmering in the growing colors of the coming sunset at the opposite\nrim of the island.\n\n\"What a remarkable whim of Nature!\" I exclaimed, but his brown hand was\nlaid in a contradictory grasp on my arm, and he snatched up my comment\nalmost with impatience.\n\n\"No, it was not Nature,\" he said.  \"That is the reason I say you will\nunderstand--you are one of us--you will know what I tell you is true.\nThe Great Tyee did not make that archway, it was--\"here his voice\nlowered--\"it was magic, red man's medicine and magic--you savvy?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said.  \"Tell me, for I--savvy.\"\n\n\"Long time ago,\" he began, stumbling into a half-broken English\nlanguage, because, I think, of the atmosphere and environment, \"long\nbefore you were born, or your father, or grandfather, or even his\nfather, this strange thing happened.  It is a story for women to hear,\nto remember.  Women are the future mothers of the tribe, and we of the\nPacific Coast hold such in high regard, in great reverence.  The women\nwho are mothers--o-ho!--they are the important ones, we say.  Warriors,\nfighters, brave men, fearless daughters, owe their qualities to these\nmothers--eh, is it not always so?\"\n\nI nodded silently.  The island was swinging nearer to us, the \"Grey\nArchway\" loomed almost above us, the mysticism crowded close, it\nenveloped me, caressed me, appealed to me.\n\n\"And?\" I hinted.\n\n\"And,\" he proceeded, \"this 'Grey Archway' is a story of mothers, of\nmagic, of witchcraft, of warriors, of--love.\"\n\nAn Indian rarely uses the word \"love,\" and when he does it expresses\nevery quality, every attribute, every intensity, emotion and passion\nembraced in those four little letters.  Surely this was an exceptional\nstory I was to hear.\n\nI did not answer, only looked across the pulsing waters toward the\n\"Grey Archway,\" which the sinking sun was touching with soft pastels,\ntints one could give no name to, beauties impossible to describe.\n\n\"You have not heard of Yaada?\" he questioned.  Then fortunately he\ncontinued without waiting for a reply.  He well knew that I had never\nheard of Yaada, so why not begin without preliminary to tell me of\nher?--so--\n\n\"Yaada was the loveliest daughter of the Haida tribe.  Young braves\nfrom all the islands, from the mainland, from the upper Skeena country\ncame, hoping to carry her to their far-off lodges, but they always\nreturned alone.  She was the most desired of all the island maidens,\nbeautiful, brave, modest, the daughter of her own mother.\n\n\"But there was a great man, a very great man--a medicine man, skilful,\npowerful, influential, old, deplorably old, and very, very rich; he\nsaid, 'Yaada shall be my wife.'  And there was a young fisherman,\nhandsome, loyal, boyish, poor, oh! very poor, and gloriously young, and\nhe, too, said, 'Yaada shall be my wife.'\n\n\"But Yaada's mother sat apart and thought and dreamed, as mothers will.\nShe said to herself, 'The great medicine man has power, has vast\nriches, and wonderful magic, why not give her to him?  But Ulka has the\nboy's heart, the boy's beauty, he is very brave, very strong; why not\ngive her to him?'\n\n\"But the laws of the great Haida tribe prevailed.  Its wise men said,\n'Give the girl to the greatest man, give her to the most powerful, the\nrichest.  The man of magic must have his choice.'\n\n\"But at this the mother's heart grew as wax in the summer sunshine--it\nis a strange quality that mothers' hearts are made of!  'Give her to\nthe best man--the man her heart holds highest,' said this Haida mother.\n\n\"Then Yaada spoke: 'I am the daughter of my tribe; I would judge of men\nby their excellence.  He who proves most worthy I shall marry; it is\nnot riches that make a good husband; it is not beauty that makes a good\nfather for one's children.  Let me and my tribe see some proof of the\nexcellence of these two men--then, only, shall I choose who is to be\nthe father of my children.  Let us have a trial of their skill; let\nthem show me how evil or how beautiful is the inside of their hearts.\nLet each of them throw a stone with some intent, some purpose in their\nhearts.  He who makes the noblest mark may call me wife.'\n\n\"'Alas!  Alas!' wailed the Haida mother.  'This casting of stones does\nnot show worth.  It but shows prowess.'\n\n\"'But I have implored the Sagalie Tyee of my father, and of his fathers\nbefore him, to help me to judge between them by this means,' said the\ngirl.  'So they must cast the stones.  In this way only shall I see\ntheir innermost hearts.'\n\n\"The medicine man never looked so old as at that moment; so hopelessly\nold, so wrinkled, so palsied: he was no mate for Yaada.  Ulka never\nlooked so god-like in his young beauty, so gloriously young, so\ncourageous.  The girl, looking at him, loved him--almost was she\nplacing her hand in his, but the spirit of her forefathers halted her.\nShe had spoken the word--she must abide by it.  'Throw!' she commanded.\n\n\"Into his shrivelled fingers the great medicine man took a small, round\nstone, chanting strange words of magic all the while; his greedy eyes\nwere on the girl, his greedy thoughts about her.\n\n\"Into his strong, young fingers Ulka took a smooth, flat stone; his\nhandsome eyes were lowered in boyish modesty, his thoughts were\nworshipping her.  The great medicine man cast his missile first; it\nswept through the air like a shaft of lightning, striking the great\nrock with a force that shattered it.  At the touch of that stone the\n'Grey Archway' opened and has remained opened to this day.\n\n\"'Oh, wonderful power and magic!' clamored the entire tribe.  'The very\nrocks do his bidding.'\n\n\"But Yaada stood with eyes that burned in agony.  Ulka could never\ncommand such magic--she knew it.  But at her side Ulka was standing\nerect, tall, slender and beautiful, but just as he cast his missile the\nevil voice of the old medicine man began a still more evil incantation.\nHe fixed his poisonous eyes on the younger man, eyes with hideous magic\nin their depths--ill-omened and enchanted with 'bad medicine.'  The\nstone left Ulka's fingers; for a second it flew forth in a straight\nline, then as the evil voice of the old man grew louder in its\nincantations the stone curved.  Magic had waylaid the strong arm of the\nyoung brave.  The stone poised an instant above the forehead of Yaada's\nmother, then dropped with the weight of many mountains, and the last\nlong sleep fell upon her.\n\n\"'Slayer of my mother!' stormed the girl, her suffering eyes fixed upon\nthe medicine man.  'Oh, I now see your black heart through your black\nmagic.  Through, good magic you cut the 'Great Archway,' but your evil\nmagic you used upon young Ulka.  I saw your wicked eyes upon him; I\nheard your wicked incantations; I know your wicked heart.  You used\nyour heartless magic in hope of winning me--in hope of making him an\noutcast of the tribe.  You cared not for my sorrowing heart, my\nmotherless life to come.'  Then, turning to the tribe, she demanded:\n'Who of you saw his evil eyes fixed on Ulka?  Who of you heard his evil\nsong?'\n\n\"'I,' and 'I,' and 'I,' came voice after voice.\n\n\"'The very air is poisoned that we breathe about him,' they shouted.\n'The young man is blameless, his heart is as the sun, but the man who\nhas used his evil magic has a heart black and cold as the hours before\nthe dawn.'\n\n\"Then Yaada's voice arose in a strange, sweet, sorrowful chant:\n\n  My feet shall walk no more upon this island,\n    With its great, Grey Archway.\n  My mother sleeps forever on this island,\n    With its great, Grey Archway.\n  My heart would break without her on this island,\n    With its great, Grey Archway.\n\n  My life was of her life upon this island,\n    With its great, Grey Archway.\n  My mother's soul has wandered from this island,\n    With its great, Grey Archway.\n  My feet must follow hers beyond this island,\n    With its great, Grey Archway.\n\n\n\"As Yaada chanted and wailed her farewell, she moved slowly towards the\nedge of the cliff.  On its brink she hovered a moment with outstretched\narms, as a sea gull poises on its weight--then she called:\n\n\"'Ulka, my Ulka!  Your hand is innocent of wrong; it was the evil magic\nof your rival that slew my mother.  I must go to her; even you cannot\nkeep me here; will you stay, or come with me?  Oh! my Ulka!'\n\n\"The slender, gloriously young boy sprang toward her; their hands\nclosed one within the other; for a second they poised on the brink of\nthe rocks, radiant as stars; then together they plunged into the sea.\"\n\n      *      *      *      *      *\n\nThe legend was ended.  Long ago we had passed the island with its \"Grey\nArchway\"; it was melting into the twilight, far astern.\n\nAs I brooded over this strange tale of a daughter's devotion, I watched\nthe sea and sky for something that would give me a clue to the\ninevitable sequel that the tillicum, like all his race, was surely\nwithholding until the opportune moment.\n\nSomething flashed through the darkening waters not a stone's throw from\nthe steamer.  I leaned forward, watching it intently.  Two silvery fish\nwere making a succession of little leaps and plunges along the surface\nof the sea, their bodies catching the last tints of sunset, like\nflashing jewels.  I looked at the tillicum quickly.  He was watching\nme--a world of anxiety in his half-mournful eyes.\n\n\"And those two silvery fish?\" I questioned.\n\nHe smiled.  The anxious look vanished.  \"I was right,\" he said; \"you do\nknow us and our ways, for you are one of us.  Yes, those fish are seen\nonly in these waters; there are never but two of them.  They are Yaada\nand her mate, seeking for the soul of the Haida woman--her mother.\"\n\n\n[Illustration: Native art]\n\n\n\n\nDeadman's Island\n\n  It is dusk on the Lost Lagoon,\n  And we two dreaming the dusk away,\n  Beneath the drift of a twilight grey--\n  Beneath the drowse of an ending day.\n  And the curve of a golden moon.\n\n  It is dark in the Lost Lagoon.\n  And gone are the depths of haunting blue,\n  The grouping gulls, and the old canoe,\n  The singing firs, and the dusk and--you,\n  And gone is the golden moon.\n\n  O! lure of the Lost Lagoon--\n  I dream tonight that my paddle blurs\n  The purple shade where the seaweed stirs--\n  I hear the call of the singing firs\n  In the hush of the golden moon.\n\n\nFor many minutes we stood silently, leaning on the western rail of the\nbridge as we watched the sun set across that beautiful little water\nknown as Coal Harbor.  I have always resented that jarring,\nunattractive name, for years ago, when I first plied paddle across the\ngunwale of a light little canoe, and idled about its margin, I named\nthe sheltered little cove the Lost Lagoon.  This was just to please my\nown fancy, for as that perfect summer month drifted on, the\never-restless tides left the harbor devoid of water at my favorite\ncanoeing hour, and my pet idling place was lost for many days--hence my\nfancy to call it the Lost Lagoon.  But the chief, Indian-like,\nimmediately adopted the name, at least when he spoke of the place to\nme, and as we watched the sun slip behind the rim of firs, he expressed\nthe wish that his dugout were here instead of lying beached at the\nfarther side of the park.\n\n\"If canoe was here, you and I we paddle close to shores all 'round your\nLost Lagoon: we make track just like half moon.  Then we paddle under\nthis bridge, and go channel between Deadman's Island and park.  Then\n'round where cannon speak time at nine o'clock.  Then 'cross Inlet to\nIndian side of Narrows.\"\n\nI turned to look eastward, following in fancy the course he had\nsketched; the waters were still as the footstep of the oncoming\ntwilight, and, floating in a pool of soft purple, Deadman's Island\nrested like a large circle of candle moss.\n\n\"Have you ever been on it?\" he asked as he caught my gaze centering on\nthe irregular outline of the island pines.\n\n\"I have prowled the length and depth of it,\" I told him.  \"Climbed over\nevery rock on its shores, crept under every tangled growth of its\ninterior, explored its overgrown trails, and more than once nearly got\nlost in its very heart.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he half laughed, \"it pretty wild; not much good for anything.\"\n\n\"People seem to think it valuable,\" I said.  \"There is a lot of\nlitigation--of fighting going on now about it.\"\n\n\"Oh! that the way always,\" he said as though speaking of a long\naccepted fact.  \"Always fight over that place.  Hundreds of years ago\nthey fight about it; Indian people; they say hundreds of years to come\neverybody will still fight--never be settled what that place is, who it\nbelong to, who has right to it.  No, never settle.  Deadman's Island\nalways mean fight for someone.\"\n\n\"So the Indians fought amongst themselves about it?\" I remarked,\nseemingly without guile, although my ears tingled for the legend I knew\nwas coming.\n\n\"Fought like lynx at close quarters,\" he answered.  \"Fought, killed\neach other, until the island ran with blood redder than that sunset,\nand the sea water about it was stained flame color--it was then, my\npeople say, that the scarlet fire-flower was first seen growing along\nthis coast.\"\n\n\"It is a beautiful color--the fire-flower,\" I said.\n\n\"It should be fine color, for it was born and grew from the hearts of\nfine tribes-people--very fine people,\" he emphasized.\n\nWe crossed to the eastern rail of the bridge, and stood watching the\ndeep shadows that gathered slowly and silently about the island; I have\nseldom looked upon anything more peaceful.\n\nThe chief sighed.  \"We have no such men now, no fighters like those\nmen, no hearts, no courage like theirs.  But I tell you the story; you\nunderstand it then.  Now all peace; to-night all good tillicums; even\ndead man's spirit does not fight now, but long time after it happen\nthose spirits fought.\"\n\n\"And the legend?\" I ventured.\n\n\"Oh! yes,\" he replied, as if suddenly returning to the present from out\na far country in the realm of time.  \"Indian people, they call it the\n'Legend of the Island of Dead Men.'\n\n\"There was war everywhere.  Fierce tribes from the northern coast,\nsavage tribes from the south, all met here and battled and raided,\nburned and captured, tortured and killed their enemies.  The forests\nsmoked with camp fires, the Narrows were choked with war canoes, and\nthe Sagalie Tyee--He who is a man of peace--turned His face away from\nHis Indian children.  About this island there was dispute and\ncontention.  The medicine men from the North claimed it as their\nchanting ground.  The medicine men from the South laid equal claim to\nit.  Each wanted it as the stronghold of their witchcraft, their magic.\nGreat bands of these medicine men met on the small space, using every\nsorcery in their power to drive their opponents away.  The witch\ndoctors of the North made their camp on the northern rim of the island;\nthose from the South settled along the southern edge, looking towards\nwhat is now the great city of Vancouver.  Both factions danced,\nchanted, burned their magic powders, built their magic fires, beat\ntheir magic rattles, but neither would give way, yet neither conquered.\nAbout them, on the waters, on the mainlands, raged the warfare of their\nrespective tribes--the Sagalie Tyee had forgotten His Indian children.\n\n\"After many months, the warriors on both sides weakened.  They said the\nincantations of the rival medicine men were bewitching them, were\nmaking their hearts like children's, and their arms nerveless as\nwomen's.  So friend and foe arose as one man and drove the medicine men\nfrom the island, hounded them down the Inlet, herded them through the\nNarrows and banished them out to sea, where they took refuge on one of\nthe outer islands of the gulf.  Then the tribes once more fell upon\neach other in battle.\n\n\"The warrior blood of the North will always conquer.  They are the\nstronger, bolder, more alert, more keen.  The snows and the ice of\ntheir country make swifter pulse than the sleepy suns of the South can\nawake in a man; their muscles are of sterner stuff, their endurance\ngreater.  Yes, the northern tribes will always be victors.[1]  But the\ncraft and the strategy of the southern tribes are hard things to battle\nagainst.  While those of the North followed the medicine men farther\nout to sea to make sure of their banishment, those from the South\nreturned under cover of night and seized the women and children and the\nold, enfeebled men in their enemy's camp, transported them all to the\nIsland of Dead Men, and there held them as captives.  Their war canoes\ncircled the island like a fortification, through which drifted the sobs\nof the imprisoned women, the mutterings of the aged men, the wail of\nlittle children.\n\n\"Again and again the men of the North assailed that circle of canoes,\nand again and again were repulsed.  The air was thick with poisoned\narrows, the water stained with blood.  But day by day the circle of\nsouthern canoes grew thinner and thinner; the northern arrows were\ntelling, and truer of aim.  Canoes drifted everywhere, empty, or worse\nstill, manned only by dead men.  The pick of the southern warriors had\nalready fallen, when their greatest Tyee mounted a large rock on the\neastern shore.  Brave and unmindful of a thousand weapons aimed at his\nheart, he uplifted his hand, palm outward--the signal for conference.\nInstantly every northern arrow was lowered, and every northern ear\nlistened for his words.\n\n[Illustration: KITSILANO BEACH, VANCOUVER, B.C.  Bishop & Christie,\nPhoto.]\n\n\"'Oh! men of the upper coast,' he said, 'you are more numerous than we\nare; your tribe is larger; your endurance greater.  We are growing\nhungry, we are growing less in numbers.  Our captives--your women and\nchildren and old men--have lessened, too, our stores of food.  If you\nrefuse our terms we will yet fight to the finish.  Tomorrow we will\nkill all our captives before your eyes, for we can feed them no longer,\nor you can have your wives, your mothers, your fathers, your children,\nby giving us for each and every one of them one of your best and\nbravest young warriors, who will consent to suffer death in their\nstead.  Speak!  You have your choice.'\n\n\"In the northern canoes scores and scores of young warriors leapt to\ntheir feet.  The air was filled with glad cries, with exultant shouts.\nThe whole world seemed to ring with the voices of those young men who\ncalled loudly, with glorious courage:\n\n\"'Take me, but give me back my old father.'\n\n\"'Take me, but spare to my tribe my little sister.'\n\n\"'Take me, but release my wife and boy-baby.'\n\n\"So the compact was made.  Two hundred heroic, magnificent young men\npaddled up to the island, broke through the fortifying circle of canoes\nand stepped ashore.  They flaunted their eagle plumes with the spirit\nand boldness of young gods.  Their shoulders were erect, their step was\nfirm, their hearts strong.  Into their canoes they crowded the two\nhundred captives.  Once more their women sobbed, their old men\nmuttered, their children wailed, but those young copper-colored gods\nnever flinched, never faltered.  Their weak and their feeble were\nsaved.  What mattered to them such a little thing as death?\n\n\"The released captives were quickly surrounded by their own people, but\nthe flower of their splendid nation was in the hands of their enemies,\nthose valorous young men who thought so little of life that they\nwillingly, gladly laid it down to serve and to save those they loved\nand cared for.  Amongst them were war-tried warriors who had fought\nfifty battles, and boys not yet full grown, who were drawing a bow\nstring for the first time, but their hearts, their courage, their\nself-sacrifice were as one.\n\n\"Out before a long file of southern warriors they stood.  Their chins\nuplifted, their eyes defiant, their breasts bared.  Each leaned forward\nand laid his weapons at his feet, then stood erect, with empty hands,\nand laughed forth their challenge to death.  A thousand arrows ripped\nthe air, two hundred gallant northern throats flung forth a death cry\nexultant, triumphant as conquering kings--then two hundred fearless\nnorthern hearts ceased to beat.\n\n\"But in the morning the southern tribes found the spot where they fell\npeopled with flaming fire-flowers.  Dread terror seized upon them.\nThey abandoned the island, and when night again shrouded them they\nmanned their canoes and noiselessly slipped through the Narrows, turned\ntheir bows southward and this coast line knew them no more.\"\n\n\"What glorious men,\" I half whispered as the chief concluded the\nstrange legend.\n\n\"Yes, men!\" he echoed.  \"The white people call it Deadman's Island.\nThat is their way; but we of the Squamish call it The Island of Dead\nMen.\"\n\nThe clustering pines and the outlines of the island's margin were now\ndusky and indistinct.  Peace, peace lay over the waters, and the purple\nof the summer twilight had turned to grey, but I knew that in the\ndepths of the undergrowth on Deadman's Island there blossomed a flower\nof flaming beauty; its colors were veiled in the coming nightfall, but\nsomewhere down in the sanctuary of its petals pulsed the heart's blood\nof many and valiant men.\n\n\n[1] Note.--It would almost seem that the chief knew that wonderful poem\nof \"The Khan's,\" \"The Men of the Northern Zone,\" wherein he says:\n\n  If ever a Northman lost a throne\n  Did the conqueror come from the South?\n  Nay, the North shall ever be free ... etc.\n\n\n[Illustration: Gold panning pan, pick, shovel]\n\n\n\n\nA Squamish Legend of Napoleon\n\nHolding an important place among the majority of curious tales held in\nveneration by the coast tribes are those of the sea-serpent.  The\nmonster appears and reappears with almost monotonous frequency in\nconnection with history, traditions, legends and superstitions; but\nperhaps the most wonderful part it ever played was in the great drama\nthat held the stage of Europe, and incidentally all the world during\nthe stormy days of the first Napoleon.\n\nThroughout Canada I have never failed to find an amazing knowledge of\nNapoleon Bonaparte amongst the very old and \"uncivilized\" Indians.\nPerhaps they may be unfamiliar with every other historical character\nfrom Adam down, but they will all tell you they have heard of the\n\"Great French Fighter,\" as they call the wonderful little Corsican.\n\nWhether this knowledge was obtained through the fact that our earliest\nsettlers and pioneers were French, or whether Napoleon's almost magical\nfighting career attracted the Indian mind to the exclusion of lesser\nwarriors, I have never yet decided.  But the fact remains that the\nIndians of our generation are not as familiar with Bonaparte's name as\nwere their fathers and grandfathers, so either the predominance of\nEnglish-speaking settlers or the thinning of their ancient war-loving\nblood by modern civilization and peaceful times, must one or the other\naccount for the younger Indian's ignorance of the Emperor of the French.\n\nIn telling me the legend of The Lost Talisman, my good tillicum, the\nlate Chief Capilano, began the story with the almost amazing question,\nHad I ever heard of Napoleon Bonaparte?  It was some moments before I\njust caught the name, for his English, always quaint and beautiful, was\nat times a little halting; but when he said by way of explanation, \"You\nknow big fighter, Frenchman.  The English they beat him in big battle,\"\nI grasped immediately of whom he spoke.\n\n\"What do you know of him?\" I asked.\n\nHis voice lowered, almost as if he spoke a state secret.  \"I know how\nit is that English they beat him.\"\n\nI have read many historians on this event, but to hear the Squamish\nversion was a novel and absorbing thing.  \"Yes?\" I said--my usual\n\"leading\" word to lure him into channels of tradition.\n\n\"Yes,\" he affirmed.  Then, still in a half whisper, he proceeded to\ntell me that it all happened through the agency of a single joint from\nthe vertebra of a sea-serpent.\n\nIn telling me the story of Brockton Point and the valiant boy who\nkilled the monster, he dwelt lightly on the fact that all people who\napproach the vicinity of the creature are palsied, both mentally and\nphysically--bewitched, in fact--so that their bones become disjointed\nand their brains incapable; but to-day he elaborated upon this\npeculiarity until I harked back to the boy of Brockton Point and asked\nhow it was that his body and brain escaped this affliction.\n\n\"He was all good, and had no greed,\" he replied.  \"He proof against all\nbad things.\"\n\nI nodded understandingly, and he proceeded to tell me that all\nsuccessful Indian fighters and warriors carried somewhere about their\nperson a joint of a sea-serpent's vertebra, that the medicine men threw\n\"the power\" about them so that they were not personally affected by\nthis little \"charm,\" but that immediately they approached an enemy the\n\"charm\" worked disaster, and victory was assured to the fortunate\npossessor of the talisman.  There was one particularly effective joint\nthat had been treasured and carried by the warriors of a great Squamish\nfamily for a century.  These warriors had conquered every foe they\nencountered, until the talisman had become so renowned that the totem\npole of their entire \"clan\" was remodelled, and the new one crested by\nthe figure of a single joint of a sea-serpent's vertebra.\n\nAbout this time stories of Napoleon's first great achievements drifted\nacross the seas; not across the land--and just here may be a clue to\nburied coast-Indian history, which those who are cleverer at research\nthan I, can puzzle over.  The chief was most emphatic about the source\nof Indian knowledge of Napoleon.\n\n\"I suppose you heard of him from Quebec, through, perhaps, some of the\nFrench priests,\" I remarked.\n\n\"No, no,\" he contradicted hurriedly.  \"Not from East; we hear it from\nover the Pacific, from the place they call Russia.\"  But who conveyed\nthe news or by what means it came he could not further enlighten me.\nBut a strange thing happened to the Squamish family about this time.\nThere was a large blood connection, but the only male member living was\na very old warrior, the hero of many battles, and the possessor of the\ntalisman.  On his death-bed his women of three generations gathered\nabout him; his wife, his sisters, his daughters, his granddaughters,\nbut not one man, nor yet a boy of his own blood stood by to speed his\ndeparting warrior spirit to the land of peace and plenty.\n\n\"The charm cannot rest in the hands of women,\" he murmured almost with\nhis last breath.  \"Women may not war and fight other nations or other\ntribes; women are for the peaceful lodge and for the leading of little\nchildren.  They are for holding baby hands, teaching baby feet to walk.\nNo, the charm cannot rest with you, women.  I have no brother, no\ncousin, no son, no grandson, and the charm must not go to a lesser\nwarrior than I.  None of our tribe, nor of any tribe on the coast, ever\nconquered me.  The charm must go to one as unconquerable as I have\nbeen.  When I am dead send it across the great salt chuck, to the\nvictorious 'Frenchman'; they call him Napoleon Bonaparte.\"  They were\nhis last words.\n\nThe older women wished to bury the charm with him, but the younger\nwomen, inspired with the spirit of their generation, were determined to\nsend it over seas.  \"In the grave it will be dead,\" they argued.  \"Let\nit still live on.  Let it help some other fighter to greatness and\nvictory.\"\n\nAs if to confirm their decision, the next day a small sealing vessel\nanchored in the Inlet.  All the men aboard spoke Russian, save two\nthin, dark, agile sailors, who kept aloof from the crew and conversed\nin another language.  These two came ashore with part of the crew and\ntalked in French with a wandering Hudson's Bay trapper, who often\nlodged with the Squamish people.  Thus the women, who yet mourned over\ntheir dead warrior, knew these two strangers to be from the land where\nthe great \"Frenchman\" was fighting against the world.\n\nHere I interrupted the chief.  \"How came the Frenchmen in a Russian\nsealer?\" I asked.\n\n\"Captives,\" he replied.  \"Almost slaves, and hated by their captors, as\nthe majority always hate the few.  So the women drew those two\nFrenchmen apart from the rest and told them the story of the bone of\nthe sea-serpent, urging them to carry it back to their own country and\ngive it to the great 'Frenchman' who was as courageous and as brave as\ntheir dead leader.\n\n\"The Frenchmen hesitated; the talisman might affect them, they said;\nmight jangle their own brains, so that on their return to Russia they\nwould not have the sagacity to plan an escape to their own country;\nmight disjoint their bodies, so that their feet and hands would be\nuseless, and they would become as weak as children.  But the women\nassured them that the charm only worked its magical powers over a man's\nenemies, that the ancient medicine men had 'bewitched' it with this\nquality.  So the Frenchmen took it and promised that if it were in the\npower of man they would convey it to 'the Emperor.'\n\n\"As the crew boarded the sealer, the women watching from the shore\nobserved strange contortions seize many of the men; some fell on the\ndeck; some crouched, shaking as with palsy; some writhed for a moment,\nthen fell limp and seemingly boneless; only the two Frenchmen stood\nerect and strong and vital--the Squamish talisman had already overcome\ntheir foes.  As the little sealer set sail up the gulf she was\ncommanded by a crew of two Frenchmen--men who had entered these waters\nas captives, who were leaving them as conquerors.  The palsied Russians\nwere worse than useless, and what became of them the chief could not\nstate; presumably they were flung overboard, and by some trick of a\nkindly fate the Frenchmen at last reached the coast of France.\n\n\"Tradition is so indefinite about their movements subsequent to sailing\nout of the Inlet, that even the ever-romantic and vividly colored\nimaginations of the Squamish people have never supplied the details of\nthis beautifully childish, yet strangely historical fairy tale.  But\nthe voices of the trumpets of war, the beat of drums throughout Europe\nheralded back to the wilds of the Pacific Coast forests the\nintelligence that the great Squamish 'charm' eventually reached the\nperson of Napoleon; that from this time onward his career was one vast\nvictory, that he won battle after battle, conquered nation after\nnation, and but for the direst calamity that could befall a warrior\nwould eventually have been master of the world.\"\n\n\"What was this calamity, Chief?\" I asked, amazed at his knowledge of\nthe great historical soldier and strategist.\n\nThe chief's voice again lowered to a whisper--his face was almost rigid\nwith intentness as he replied:\n\n\"He lost the Squamish charm--lost it just before one great fight with\nthe English people.\"\n\nI looked at him curiously; he had been telling me the oddest mixture of\nhistory and superstition, of intelligence and ignorance, the most\nwhimsically absurd, yet impressive, tale I ever heard from Indian lips.\n\n\"What was the name of the great fight--did you ever hear it?\" I asked,\nwondering how much he knew of events which took place at the other side\nof the world a century agone.\n\n\"Yes,\" he said, carefully, thoughtfully; \"I hear the name sometime in\nLondon when I there.  Railroad station there--same name.\"\n\n\"Was it Waterloo?\" I asked.\n\nHe nodded quickly, without a shadow of hesitation.  \"That the one,\" he\nreplied; \"that's it, Waterloo.\"\n\n\n[Illustration: Native bowl]\n\n\n\n\nThe Lure in Stanley Park\n\nThere is a well-known trail in Stanley Park that leads to what I always\nlove to call the \"Cathedral Trees\"--that group of some half-dozen\nforest giants that arch overhead with such superb loftiness.  But in\nall the world there is no cathedral whose marble or onyx columns can\nvie with those straight, clean, brown tree-boles that teem with the sap\nand blood of life.  There is no fresco that can rival the delicacy of\nlace-work they have festooned between you and the far skies.  No tiles,\nno mosaic or inlaid marbles, are as fascinating as the bare, russet,\nfragrant floor outspreading about their feet.  They are the acme of\nNature's architecture, and in building them she has outrivalled all her\nerstwhile conceptions.  She will never originate a more faultless\ndesign, never erect a more perfect edifice.  But the divinely moulded\ntrees and the man-made cathedral have one exquisite characteristic in\ncommon.  It is the atmosphere of holiness.  Most of us have better\nimpulses after viewing a stately cathedral, and none of us can stand\namid that majestic forest group without experiencing some elevating\nthoughts, some refinement of our coarser nature.  Perhaps those who\nread this little legend will never again look at those cathedral trees\nwithout thinking of the glorious souls they contain, for according to\nthe Coast Indians they do harbor human souls, and the world is better\nbecause they once had the speech and the hearts of mighty men.\n\nMy tillicum did not use the word \"lure\" in telling me this legend.\nThere is no equivalent for the word in the Chinook tongue, but the\ngestures of his voiceful hands so expressed the quality of something\nbetween magnetism and charm that I have selected this word \"lure\" as\nbest fitting what he wished to convey.  Some few yards beyond the\ncathedral trees, an overgrown disused trail turns into the dense\nwilderness to the right.  Only Indian eyes could discern that trail,\nand the Indians do not willingly go to that part of the park to the\nright of the great group.  Nothing in this, nor yet the next world\nwould tempt a Coast Indian into the compact centres of the wild\nportions of the park, for therein, concealed cunningly, is the \"lure\"\nthey all believe in.  There is not a tribe in the entire district that\ndoes not know of this strange legend.  You will hear the tale from\nthose that gather at Eagle Harbor for the fishing, from the Fraser\nRiver tribes, from the Squamish at the Narrows, from the Mission, from\nup the Inlet, even from the tribes at North Bend, but no one will\nvolunteer to be your guide, for having once come within the \"aura\" of\nthe lure it is a human impossibility to leave it.  Your will-power is\ndwarfed, your intelligence blighted, your feet will refuse to lead you\nout by a straight trail, you will circle, circle for evermore about\nthis magnet, for if death kindly comes to your aid your immortal spirit\nwill go on in that endless circling that will bar it from entering the\nHappy Hunting Grounds.\n\nAnd, like the cathedral trees, the lure once lived, a human soul, but\nin this instance it was a soul depraved, not sanctified.  The Indian\nbelief is very beautiful concerning the results of good and evil in the\nhuman body.  The Sagalie Tyee (God) has His own way of immortalizing\neach.  People who are wilfully evil, who have no kindness in their\nhearts, who are bloodthirsty, cruel, vengeful, unsympathetic, the\nSagalie Tyee turns to solid stone that will harbor no growth, even that\nof moss or lichen, for these stones contain no moisture, just as their\nwicked hearts lacked the milk of human kindness.  The one famed\nexception, wherein a good man was transformed into stone, was in the\ninstance of Siwash Rock, but as the Indian tells you of it he smiles\nwith gratification as he calls your attention to the tiny tree cresting\nthat imperial monument.  He says the tree was always there to show the\nnations that the good in this man's heart kept on growing even when his\nbody had ceased to be.  On the other hand the Sagalie Tyee transforms\nthe kindly people, the humane, sympathetic, charitable, loving people\ninto trees, so that after death they may go on forever benefiting all\nmankind; they may yield fruit, give shade and shelter, afford unending\nservice to the living, by their usefulness as building material and as\nfirewood.  Their saps and gums, their fibres, their leaves, their\nblossoms, enrich, nourish and sustain the human form; no evil is\nproduced by trees--all, all is goodness, is hearty, is helpfulness and\ngrowth.  They give refuge to the birds, they give music to the winds,\nand from them are carved the bows and arrows, the canoes and paddles,\nbowls, spoons and baskets.  Their service to mankind is priceless; the\nIndian that tells you this tale will enumerate all these attributes and\nvirtues of the trees.  No wonder the Sagalie Tyee chose them to be the\nabode of souls good and great.\n\nBut the lure in Stanley Park is that most dreaded of all things, an\nevil soul.  It is embodied in a bare, white stone, which is shunned by\nmoss and vine and lichen, but over which are splashed innumerable\njet-black spots that have eaten into the surface like an acid.\n\nThis condemned soul once animated the body of a witch-woman, who went\nup and down the coast, over seas and far inland, casting her evil eye\non innocent people, and bringing them untold evils and diseases.  About\nher person she carried the renowned \"Bad Medicine\" that every Indian\nbelieves in--medicine that weakened the arm of the warrior in battle,\nthat caused deformities, that poisoned minds and characters, that\nengendered madness, that bred plagues and epidemics; in short, that was\nthe seed of every evil that could befall mankind.  This witch-woman\nherself was immune from death; generations were born and grew to old\nage, and died, and other generations arose in their stead, but the\nwitch-woman went about, her heart set against her kind; her acts were\nevil, her purposes wicked, she broke hearts and bodies, and souls; she\ngloried in tears, and revelled in unhappiness, and sent them broadcast\nwherever she wandered.  And in His high heaven the Sagalie Tyee wept\nwith sorrow for His afflicted human children.  He dared not let her\ndie, for her spirit would still go on with its evil doing.  In mighty\nanger He gave command to His Four Men (always representing the Deity)\nthat they should turn this witch-woman into a stone and enchain her\nspirit in its centre, that the curse of her might be lifted from the\nunhappy race.\n\nSo the Four Men entered their giant canoe, and headed, as was their\ncustom, up the Narrows.  As they neared what is now known as Prospect\nPoint they heard from the heights above them a laugh, and looking up\nthey beheld the witch-woman jeering defiantly at them.  They landed\nand, scaling the rocks, pursued her as she danced away, eluding them\nlike a will-o'-the-wisp as she called out to them sneeringly:\n\n\"Care for yourselves, oh! men of the Sagalie Tyee, or I shall blight\nyou with my evil eye.  Care for yourselves and do not follow me.\"  On\nand on she danced through the thickest of the wilderness, on and on\nthey followed until they reached the very heart of the seagirt neck of\nland we know as Stanley Park.  Then the tallest, the mightiest of the\nFour Men, lifted his hand and cried out: \"Oh! woman of the stony heart,\nbe stone for evermore, and bear forever a black stain for each one of\nyour evil deeds.\"  And as he spoke the witch-woman was transformed into\nthis stone that tradition says is in the centre of the park.  Such is\nthe legend of the Lure.  Whether or not this stone is really in\nexistence--who knows?  One thing is positive, however, no Indian will\never help to discover it.\n\nThree different Indians have told me that fifteen or eighteen years ago\ntwo tourists--a man and a woman--were lost in Stanley Park.  When found\na week later, the man was dead, the woman mad, and each of my\ninformants firmly believed they had, in their wanderings, encountered\n\"the stone\" and were compelled to circle around it, because of its\npowerful lure.\n\nBut this wild tale fortunately has a most beautiful conclusion.  The\nFour Men, fearing that the evil heart imprisoned in the stone would\nstill work destruction, said: \"At the end of the trail we must place so\ngood and great a thing that it will be mightier, stronger, more\npowerful than this evil.\"  So they chose from the nations the\nkindliest, most benevolent men, men whose hearts were filled with the\nlove of their fellow-beings, and transformed these merciful souls into\nthe stately group of \"Cathedral Trees.\"\n\nHow well the purpose of the Sagalie Tyee has wrought its effect through\ntime!  The good has predominated as He planned it to, for is not the\nstone hidden in some unknown part of the park where eyes do not see it\nand feet do not follow--and do not the thousands who come to us from\nthe uttermost parts of the world seek that wondrous beauty spot, and\nstand awed by the majestic silence, the almost holiness of that group\nof giants?\n\nMore than any other legend that the Indians about Vancouver have told\nme does this tale reveal the love of the Coast native for kindness, and\nhis hatred of cruelty.  If these tribes really have ever been a warlike\nrace I cannot think they pride themselves much on the occupation.  If\nyou talk with any of them and they mention some man they particularly\nlike or admire, their first qualification of him is: \"He's a kind man.\"\nThey never say he is brave, or rich, or successful, or even strong,\nthat characteristic so loved by the red man.  To these Coast tribes if\na man is \"kind\" he is everything.  And almost without exception their\nlegends deal with rewards for tenderness and self-abnegation, and\npersonal and mental cleanliness.\n\nCall them fairy tales if you wish to, they all have a reasonableness\nthat must have originated in some mighty mind, and better than that,\nthey all tell of the Indian's faith in the survival of the best\nimpulses of the human heart, and the ultimate extinction of the worst.\n\nIn talking with my many good tillicums, I find this witch-woman legend\nis the most universally known and thoroughly believed in of all\ntraditions they have honored me by revealing to me.\n\n\n\n\nDeer Lake\n\nFew white men ventured inland, a century ago, in the days of the first\nChief Capilano, when the spoils of the mighty Fraser River poured into\ncopper-colored hands, but did not find their way to the remotest\ncorners of the earth, as in our times, when the gold from its sources,\nthe salmon from its mouth, the timber from its shores are world-known\nriches.\n\nThe fisherman's craft, the hunter's cunning were plied where now cities\nand industries, trade and commerce, buying and selling hold sway.  In\nthose days the moccasined foot awoke no echo in the forest trails.\nPrimitive weapons, arms, implements, and utensils were the only means\nof the Indians' food-getting.  His livelihood depended upon his own\npersonal prowess, his skill in woodcraft and water lore.  And, as this\nis a story of an elk-bone spear, the reader must first be in sympathy\nwith the fact that this rude instrument, most deftly fashioned, was of\npriceless value to the first Capilano, to whom it had come through\nthree generations of ancestors, all of whom had been experienced\nhunters and dexterous fishermen.\n\nCapilano himself was without a rival as a spearsman.  He knew the moods\nof the Fraser River, the habits of its thronging tenants, as no other\nman has ever known them before or since.  He knew every isle and inlet\nalong the coast, every boulder, the sand-bars, the still pools, the\ntemper of the tides.  He knew the spawning grounds, the secret streams\nthat fed the larger rivers, the outlets of rock-bound lakes, the turns\nand tricks of swirling rapids.  He knew the haunts of bird and beast\nand fish and fowl, and was master of the arts and artifice that man\nmust use when matching his brain against the eluding wiles of the\nuntamed creatures of the wilderness.\n\nOnce only did his cunning fail him, once only did Nature baffle him\nwith her mysterious fabric of waterways and land lures.  It was when he\nwas led to the mouth of the unknown river, which has evaded discovery\nthrough all the centuries, but which--so say the Indians--still sings\non its way through some buried channel that leads from the lake to the\nsea.\n\nHe had been sealing along the shores of what is now known as Point\nGrey.  His canoe had gradually crept inland, skirting up the coast to\nthe mouth of False Creek.  Here he encountered a very king of seals, a\ncolossal creature that gladdened the hunter's eyes as game worthy of\nhis skill.  For this particular prize he would cast the elk-bone spear.\nIt had never failed his sire, his grandsire, his great-grandsire.  He\nknew it would not fail him now.  A long, pliable, cedar-fibre rope lay\nin his canoe.  Many expert fingers had woven and plaited that rope, had\nbeaten and oiled it until it was soft and flexible as a serpent.  This\nhe attached to the spearhead, and with deft, unerring aim cast it at\nthe king seal.  The weapon struck home.  The gigantic creature\nshuddered and, with a cry like a hurt child, it plunged down into the\nsea.  With the rapidity and strength of a giant fish it scudded inland\nwith the rising tide, while Capilano paid out the rope its entire\nlength, and, as it stretched taut, felt the canoe leap forward,\npropelled by the mighty strength of the creature which lashed the\nwaters into whirlpools, as though it was possessed with the power and\nproperties of a whale.\n\n[Illustration: THE SEVEN SISTERS, STANLEY PARK.  Bishop & Christie,\nPhoto.]\n\nUp the stretch of False Creek the man and monster drove their course,\nwhere a century hence great city bridges were to over-arch the waters.\nThey strove and struggled each for the mastery, neither of them\nweakened, neither of them faltered--the one dragging, the other\ndriving.  In the end it was to be a matching of brute and human wits,\nnot forces.  As they neared the point where now Main Street bridge\nflings its shadow across the waters, the brute leaped high into the\nair, then plunged headlong into the depths.  The impact ripped the rope\nfrom Capilano's hands.  It rattled across the gunwale.  He stood\nstaring at the spot where it had disappeared--the brute had been\nvictorious.  At low tide the Indian made search.  No trace of his game,\nof his precious elk-bone spear, of his cedar-fibre rope, could be\nfound.  With the loss of the latter he firmly believed his luck as a\nhunter would be gone.  So he patrolled the mouth of False Creek for\nmany moons.  His graceful, high-bowed canoe rarely touched other\nwaters, but the seal king had disappeared.  Often he thought long\nstrands of drifting sea grasses were his lost cedar-fibre rope.  With\nother spears, with other cedar-fibres, with paddle blade and cunning\ntraps he dislodged the weeds from their moorings, but they slipped\ntheir slimy lengths through his eager hands: his best spear with its\nattendant coil was gone.\n\nThe following year he was sealing again off the coast of Point Grey,\nand one night after sunset he observed the red reflection from the\nwest, which seemed to transfer itself to the eastern skies.  Far into\nthe night dashes of flaming scarlet pulsed far beyond the head of False\nCreek.  The color rose and fell like a beckoning hand, and,\nIndian-like, he immediately attached some portentous meaning to the\nunusual sight.  That it was some omen he never doubted, so he paddled\ninland, beached his canoe, and took the trail towards the little group\nof lakes that crowd themselves into the area that lies between the\npresent cities of Vancouver and New Westminster.  But long before he\nreached the shores of Deer Lake he discovered that the beckoning hand\nwas in reality flame.  The little body of water was surrounded by\nforest fires.  One avenue alone stood open.  It was a group of giant\ntrees that as yet the flames had not reached.  As he neared the point\nhe saw a great moving mass of living things leaving the lake and\nhurrying northward through this one egress.  He stood, listening,\nintently watching with alert eyes; the swirr of myriads of little\ntravelling feet caught his quick ear--the moving mass was an immense\ncolony of beaver.  Thousands upon thousands of them.  Scores of baby\nbeavers staggered along, following their mothers; scores of older\nbeavers that had felled trees and built dams through many seasons; a\ncountless army of trekking fur bearers, all under the generalship of a\nwise old leader, who, as king of the colony, advanced some few yards\nahead of his battalions.  Out of the waters through the forest towards\nthe country to the north they journeyed.  Wandering hunters said they\nsaw them cross Burrard Inlet at the Second Narrows, heading inland as\nthey reached the farther shore.  But where that mighty army of royal\nlittle Canadians set up their new colony, no man knows.  Not even the\nastuteness of the first Capilano ever discovered their destination.\nOnly one thing was certain.  Deer Lake knew them no more.\n\nAfter their passing, the Indian retraced their trail to the water's\nedge.  In the red glare of the encircling fires he saw what he at first\nthought was some dead and dethroned king beaver on the shore.  A huge\ncarcass lay half in, half out, of the lake.  Approaching it he saw the\nwasted body of a giant seal.  There could never be two seals of that\nmarvellous size.  His intuition now grasped the meaning of the omen of\nthe beckoning flame that had called him from the far coasts of Point\nGrey.  He stooped above his dead conqueror and found, embedded in its\ndecaying flesh, the elk-bone spear of his forefathers, and trailing\naway at the water's rim was a long flexible cedar-fibre rope.\n\nAs he extracted this treasured heirloom he felt the \"power,\" that men\nof magic possess, creep up his sinewy arms.  It entered his heart, his\nblood, his brain.  For a long time he sat and chanted songs that only\ngreat medicine men may sing, and, as the hours drifted by, the heat of\nthe forest fires subsided, the flames diminished into smouldering\nblackness.  At daybreak the forest fire was dead, but its beckoning\nfingers had served their purpose.  The magic elk-bone spear had come\nback to its own.\n\nUntil the day of his death the first Capilano searched for the unknown\nriver up which the seal travelled from False Creek to Deer Lake, but\nits channel is a secret that even Indian eyes have not seen.\n\nBut although those of the Squamish tribe tell and believe that the\nriver still sings through its hidden trail that leads from Deer Lake to\nthe sea, its course is as unknown, its channel is as hopelessly lost as\nthe brave little army of beavers that a century ago marshalled their\nforces and travelled up into the great lone north.\n\n\n\n\nA Royal Mohawk Chief\n\nHow many Canadians are aware that in Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught,\nand only surviving son of Queen Victoria, who has been appointed to\nrepresent King George V. in Canada, they undoubtedly have what many\nwish for--one bearing an ancient Canadian title as Governor-General of\nall the Dominion?  It would be difficult to find a man more Canadian\nthan any one of the fifty chiefs who compose the parliament of the\nancient Iroquois nation, that loyal race of Redskins that has fought\nfor the British crown against all of the enemies thereof, adhering to\nthe British flag through the wars against both the French and the\ncolonists.\n\nArthur Duke of Connaught is the only living white man who to-day has an\nundisputed right to the title of \"Chief of the Six Nations Indians\"\n(known collectively as the Iroquois).  He possesses the privilege of\nsitting in their councils, of casting his vote on all matters relative\nto the governing of the tribes, the disposal of reservation lands, the\nappropriation of both the principal and interest of the more than half\na million dollars these tribes hold in Government bonds at Ottawa,\naccumulated from the sales of their lands.  In short, were every drop\nof blood in his royal veins red, instead of blue, he could not be more\nfully qualified as an Indian chief than he now is, not even were his\ntitle one of the fifty hereditary ones whose illustrious names composed\nthe Iroquois confederacy before the Paleface ever set foot in America.\n\nIt was on the occasion of his first visit to Canada in 1869, when he\nwas little more than a boy, that Prince Arthur received, upon his\narrival at Quebec, an address of welcome from his Royal mother's\n\"Indian Children\" on the Grand River Reserve, in Brant county, Ontario.\nIn addition to this welcome they had a request to make of him: would he\naccept the title of Chief and visit their reserve to give them the\nopportunity of conferring it?\n\nOne of the great secrets of England's success with savage races has\nbeen her consideration, her respect, her almost reverence of native\ncustoms, ceremonies and potentates.  She wishes her own customs and\nkings to be honored, so she freely accords like honor to her subjects,\nit matters not whether they be white, black or red.\n\nYoung Arthur was delighted--royal lads are pretty much like all other\nboys; the unique ceremony would be a break in the endless round of\nstate receptions, banquets and addresses.  So he accepted the Red\nIndians' compliment, knowing well that it was the loftiest honor those\npeople could confer upon a white man.\n\nIt was the morning of October first when the royal train steamed into\nthe little city of Brantford, where carriages awaited to take the\nPrince and his suite to the \"Old Mohawk Church,\" in the vicinity of\nwhich the ceremony was to take place.  As the Prince's especial escort,\nOnwanonsyshon, head chief of the Mohawks, rode on a jet-black pony\nbeside the carriage.  The chief was garmented in full native costume--a\nbuckskin suit, beaded moccasins, headband of owl's and eagle's\nfeathers, and ornaments hammered from coin silver that literally\ncovered his coat and leggings.  About his shoulders was flung a scarlet\nblanket, consisting of the identical broadcloth from which the British\narmy tunics are made; this he \"hunched\" with his shoulders from time to\ntime in true Indian fashion.  As they drove along, the Prince chatted\nboyishly with his Mohawk escort, and once leaned forward to pat the\nblack pony on its shining neck and speak admiringly of it.  It was a\nwarm autumn day: the roads were dry and dusty, and, after a mile or so,\nthe boy-prince brought from beneath the carriage seat a basket of\ngrapes.  With his handkerchief he flicked the dust from them, handed a\nbunch to the chief and took one himself.  An odd spectacle to be\ntraversing a country road: an English prince and an Indian chief,\nriding amicably side-by-side, enjoying a banquet of grapes like two\nschoolboys.\n\nOn reaching the church, Arthur leapt lightly to the green sward.  For a\nmoment he stood, rigid, gazing before him at his future brother-chiefs.\nHis escort had given him a faint idea of what he was to see, but he\ncertainly never expected to be completely surrounded by three hundred\nfull-blooded Iroquois braves and warriors, such as now encircled him on\nevery side.  Every Indian was in war paint and feathers, some stripped\nto the waist, their copper-colored skins brilliant with paints, dyes\nand \"patterns\"; all carried tomahawks, scalping-knives, and bows and\narrows.  Every red throat gave a tremendous war-whoop as he alighted,\nwhich was repeated again and again, as for that half moment he stood\nsilent, a slim boyish figure, clad in light grey tweeds--a singular\ncontrast to the stalwarts in gorgeous costumes who crowded about him.\nHis young face paled to ashy whiteness, then with true British grit he\nextended his right hand and raised his black \"billy-cock\" hat with his\nleft.  At the same time he took one step forward.  Then the war cries\nbroke forth anew, deafening, savage, terrible cries, as one by one the\nentire three hundred filed past, the Prince shaking hands with each\none, and removing his glove to do so.  This strange reception over,\nOnwanonsyshon rode up, and, flinging his scarlet blanket on the grass,\ndismounted, and asked the Prince to stand on it.\n\nThen stepped forward an ancient chief, father of Onwanonsyshon, and\nSpeaker of the Council.  He was old in inherited and personal loyalty\nto the British crown.  He had fought under Sir Isaac Brock at Queenston\nHeights in 1812, while yet a mere boy, and upon him was laid the honor\nof making his Queen's son a chief.  Taking Arthur by the hand this\nvenerable warrior walked slowly to and fro across the blanket, chanting\nas he went the strange, wild formula of induction.  From time to time\nhe was interrupted by loud expressions of approval and assent from the\nvast throng of encircling braves, but apart from this no sound was\nheard but the low, weird monotone of a ritual older than the white\nman's footprints in North America.\n\nIt is necessary that a chief of each of the three \"clans\" of the\nMohawks shall assist in this ceremony.  The veteran chief, who sang the\nformula, was of the Bear clan.  His son, Onwanonsyshon, was of the Wolf\n(the clan-ship descends through the mother's side of the family).  Then\none other chief, of the Turtle clan, and in whose veins coursed the\nblood of the historic Brant, now stepped to the edge of the scarlet\nblanket.  The chant ended, these two young chiefs received the Prince\ninto the Mohawk tribe, conferring upon him the name of \"Kavakoudge,\"\nwhich means \"the sun flying from East to West under the guidance of the\nGreat Spirit.\"\n\nOnwanonsyshon then took from his waist a brilliant deep-red sash,\nheavily embroidered with beads, porcupine quills and dyed moose hair,\nplacing it over the Prince's left shoulder and knotting it beneath his\nright arm.  The ceremony was ended.  The Constitution that Hiawatha had\nfounded centuries ago, a Constitution wherein fifty chiefs, no more, no\nless, should form the parliament of the \"Six Nations,\" had been\nshattered and broken, because this race of loyal red men desired to do\nhonor to a slender young boy-prince, who now bears the fifty-first\ntitle of the Iroquois.\n\nMany white men have received from these same people honorary titles,\nbut none has been bestowed through the ancient ritual, with the\nimperative members of the three clans assisting, save that borne by\nArthur of Connaught.\n\nAfter the ceremony the Prince entered the church to autograph his name\nin the ancient Bible, which, with a silver Holy Communion service, a\nbell, two tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, and a bronze\nBritish coat-of-arms, had been presented to the Mohawks by Queen Anne.\nHe inscribed \"Arthur\" just below the \"Albert Edward,\" which, as Prince\nof Wales, the late king wrote when he visited Canada in 1860.\n\nWhen he returned to England, Chief Kavakoudge sent his portrait,\ntogether with one of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort, to be\nplaced in the Council House of the \"Six Nations,\" where they decorate\nthe walls today.\n\nAs I write, I glance up to see, in a corner of my room, a draping\nscarlet blanket, made of British army broadcloth, for the chief who\nrode the jet-black pony so long ago was the writer's father.  He was\nnot here to wear it when Arthur of Connaught again set foot on Canadian\nshores.\n\nMany of these facts I have culled from a paper that lies on my desk; it\nis yellowing with age, and bears the date, \"Toronto, October 2, 1869,\"\nand on the margin is written in a clear, half-boyish hand,\n\"Onwanonsyshon, with kind regards from your brother-chief, Arthur.\"\n\n\n[Illustration: Native tools]","title":"Legends of Vancouver","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":28858}