{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_3478/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_3478","id":"gutenberg_3478","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3478","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Legends -- British Columbia -- Vancouver"],"text":"Produced by Judy Boss and Andrew Sly\n\n\n\n\nLEGENDS OF VANCOUVER\n\nBy E. Pauline Johnson\n(Tekahionwake)\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\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\nown merits.  Still, it may be permissible to record one's glad\nsatisfaction that a poet has arisen to cast over the shoulders of\nour grey mountains, our trail-threaded forests, our tide-swept\nwaters, and the streets and sky-scrapers of our hurrying city, a\ngracious mantle of romance.  Pauline Johnson has linked the vivid\npresent with the immemorial past.  Vancouver takes on a new aspect\nas we view it through her eyes.  In the imaginative power that she\nhas brought to these semi-historical sagas, and in the liquid flow\nof her rhythmical prose, she has shown herself to be a literary\nworker of whom we may well be proud: she has made a most estimable\ncontribution to purely Canadian literature.\n\n                           BERNARD McEVOY\n\n\n\n\nAUTHOR'S FOREWORD\n\n\nThese legends (with two or three exceptions) were told to me\npersonally by my honored friend, the late Chief Joe Capilano, of\nVancouver, whom I had the privilege of first meeting in London in\n1906, when he visited England and was received at Buckingham Palace\nby their Majesties King Edward 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\nowe the friendship and the confidence which he so freely gave me\nwhen I came to reside on the Pacific coast.  These legends he\ntold me from time to time, just as the mood possessed him, and he\nfrequently remarked that they had never been revealed to any other\nEnglish-speaking person save myself.\n\n     E. PAULINE JOHNSON (Tekahionwake)\n\n\n\n\nBIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE\n\n\nE. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) is the youngest child of a family\nof four born to the late G. H. M. Johnson (Onwanonsyshon), Head\nChief of the Six Nations Indians, and his wife Emily S. Howells.\nThe latter was of English parentage, her birthplace being Bristol,\nbut the land of her adoption Canada.\n\nChief Johnson was of the renowned Mohawk tribe, being a scion of\none of the fifty noble families which composed the historical\nconfederation founded by Hiawatha upwards of four hundred years ago,\nand known at that period as the Brotherhood of the Five Nations,\nbut which was afterwards named the Iroquois by the early French\nmissionaries and explorers.  For their loyalty to the British Crown\nthey were granted the magnificent lands bordering the Grand River,\nin the County of Brant, 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\nher prose, as well as in her poetic writings.\n\nHer education was neither extensive nor elaborate.  It embraced\nneither high school nor college.  A nursery governess for two years\nat home, three years at an Indian day school half a mile from her\nhome, and two years in the Central School of the city of Brantford,\nwas the extent of her educational training.  But, besides this, she\nacquired a wide general knowledge, having been through childhood and\nearly girlhood a great reader, especially of poetry.  Before she was\ntwelve years old she had read Scott, Longfellow, Byron, Shakespeare,\nand such books as Addison's \"Spectator,\" Foster's Essays and Owen\nMeredith'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\nYork, and \"The Week,\" established by the late Prof. Goldwin Smith,\nof Toronto, 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\nreciter of her own poems.  For this she had natural talent, and in\nthe exercise of it she soon developed a marked ability, joined with\na personal magnetism, that was destined to make her a favorite with\naudiences from the Atlantic to the Pacific.  Her friend, Mr. Frank\nYeigh, of Toronto, provided for a series of recitals having that\nscope, with the object of enabling her to go to England to arrange\nfor the publication of her poems.  Within two years this aim was\naccomplished, her book of poems, \"The White Wampum,\" being published\nby John Lane, of the Bodley Head.  She took with her numerous\nletters of introduction, including one from the Governor-General,\nthe Earl of Aberdeen, and she soon gained both social and literary\nstanding.  Her book was received with much favor, both by reviewers\nand the public.  After giving many recitals in fashionable\ndrawing-rooms, she returned to Canada, and made her first tour to\nthe Pacific Coast, giving recitals at all the cities and towns en\nroute.  Since then she has crossed the Rocky Mountains no fewer\nthan nineteen times.\n\nMiss Johnson's pen had not been idle, and in 1903 the George\nMorang Co., of Toronto, published her second book of poems,\nentitled \"Canadian Born,\" 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\nof Lord and Lady Strathcona.  In the following year she again\nvisited London, returning by way of the United States, where she\ngave many recitals.  After another tour of Canada she decided to\ngive up public work, to make Vancouver, B. C., her home, and to\ndevote herself to literary 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\nshortly after settling down in Vancouver the exposure and hardship\nshe had endured began to tell on her, and her health completely\nbroke down.  For almost a year she has been an invalid, and as she\nis unable to attend to the business herself, a trust has been formed\nby some of the leading citizens of her adopted city for the purpose\nof collecting and publishing for her benefit her later works.  Among\nthese are the beautiful Indian Legends contained in this volume,\nwhich she has been at great pains to collect, and a series of boys'\nstories, which have been exceedingly well received by magazine\nreaders.\n\nDuring the sixteen years Miss Johnson was travelling, she had\nmany varied and interesting experiences.  She travelled the old\nBattleford trail before the railroad went through, and across the\nBoundary country in British Columbia in the romantic days of the\nearly pioneers.  Once she took an eight hundred and fifty mile\ndrive up the Cariboo trail to the gold fields.  She has always been\nan ardent canoeist, and has run many strange rivers, crossed many\na lonely lake, and camped in many an unfrequented place.  These\nventuresome trips she made more from her inherent love of Nature\nand adventure than from any necessity of her profession.\n\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\n\nTHE TWO SISTERS\n-----\nTHE LIONS\n\n\nYou can see them as you look towards the north and the west, where\nthe dream-hills swim into the sky amid their ever-drifting clouds\nof pearl and grey.  They catch the earliest hint of sunrise, they\nhold the last color of sunset.  Twin mountains they are, lifting\ntheir twin peaks above the fairest city in all Canada, and known\nthroughout the British Empire as \"The Lions of Vancouver.\"\n\nSometimes the smoke of forest fires blurs them until they gleam like\nopals in a purple atmosphere, too beautiful for words to paint.\nSometimes the slanting rains festoon scarfs of mist about their\ncrests, and the peaks fade into shadowy outlines, melting, melting,\nforever melting into the distances.  But for most days in the year\nthe sun circles the twin glories with a sweep of gold.  The moon\nwashes them with a torrent of silver.  Oftentimes, when the city is\nshrouded in rain, the sun yellows their snows to a deep orange; but\nthrough sun and shadow they stand immovable, smiling westward above\nthe waters of the restless Pacific, eastward above the superb beauty\nof the Capilano Canyon.  But the Indian tribes do not know these\npeaks as \"The Lions.\"  Even the chief, whose feet have so recently\nwandered to the Happy Hunting Grounds, never heard the name given\nthem until I mentioned it to him one dreamy August day, as together\nwe followed the trail leading to the canyon.  He seemed so surprised\nat the name that I mentioned the reason it had been applied to them,\nasking him if he recalled the Landseer Lions in Trafalgar Square.\nYes, he remembered those splendid sculptures, and his quick eye saw\nthe resemblance instantly.  It appeared to please him, and his fine\nface 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\nwho look upon \"The Lions\" daily, without the love for them that is\nin the Indian heart, without knowledge of the secret of \"The Two\nSisters.\"  The legend was intensely fascinating as it left his lips\nin the quaint broken English that is never so dulcet as when it\nslips from an Indian tongue.  His inimitable gestures, strong,\ngraceful, comprehensive, were like a perfectly chosen frame\nembracing a delicate painting, and his brooding eyes were as the\nlight in which the picture hung.  \"Many thousands of years ago,\"\nhe began, \"there were no twin peaks like sentinels guarding the\noutposts of this sunset coast.  They were placed there long after\nthe first creation, when the Sagalie Tyee moulded the mountains,\nand patterned the mighty rivers where the salmon run, because\nof His love for His Indian children, and His wisdom for their\nnecessities.  In those times there were many and mighty Indian\ntribes along the Pacific--in the mountain ranges, at the shores\nand sources of the great Fraser River.  Indian law ruled the land.\nIndian customs prevailed.  Indian beliefs were regarded.  Those\nwere the legend-making ages when great things occurred to make the\ntraditions we repeat to our children to-day.  Perhaps the greatest\nof these traditions is the story of 'The Two Sisters,' for they\nare known to us as 'The Chief's Daughters,' and to them we owe the\nGreat Peace in which we live, and have lived for many countless\nmoons.  There is an ancient custom amongst the coast tribes that,\nwhen our daughters step from childhood into the great world of\nwomanhood, the occasion must be made one of extreme rejoicing.\nThe being who possesses the possibility of some day mothering a\nman-child, a warrior, a brave, receives much consideration in most\nnations; but to us, the Sunset tribes, she is honored above all\npeople.  The parents usually give a great potlatch, and a feast\nthat lasts many days.  The entire tribe and the surrounding tribes\nare bidden to this festival.  More than that, sometimes when a\ngreat Tyee celebrates for his daughter, the tribes from far up the\ncoast, from the distant north, from inland, from the island, from\nthe Cariboo country, are gathered as guests to the feast.  During\nthese days of rejoicing the girl is placed in a high seat, an\nexalted position, for is she not marriageable?  And does not\nmarriage mean motherhood?  And does not motherhood mean a vaster\nnation of brave sons and of gentle daughters, who, in their turn,\nwill 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\nfirst great run of salmon thronged the rivers, and the ollallie\nbushes were heavy with blossoms.  These two daughters were young,\nlovable, and oh! very beautiful.  Their father, the great Tyee,\nprepared to make a feast such as the Coast had never seen.  There\nwere to be days and days of rejoicing, the people were to come for\nmany leagues, were to bring gifts to the girls and to receive gifts\nof great value from the chief, and hospitality was to reign as long\nas pleasuring feet could dance, and enjoying lips could laugh, and\nmouths partake of the excellence of the chief's fish, game, and\nollallies.\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\nRupert.  Giant war-canoes slipped along the entire coast, war\nparties paddled up and down, war-songs broke the silences of the\nnights, hatred, vengeance, strife, horror festered everywhere like\nsores on the surface of the earth.  But the great Tyee, after\nwarring for weeks, turned and laughed at the battle and the\nbloodshed, for he had been victor in every encounter, and he could\nwell afford to leave the strife for a brief week and feast in his\ndaughters' honor, nor permit any mere enemy to come between him and\nthe traditions of his race and household.  So he turned insultingly\ndeaf ears to their war-cries; he ignored with arrogant indifference\ntheir paddle-dips that encroached within his own coast waters, and\nhe prepared, as a great Tyee should, to royally entertain his\ntribesmen 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\nof June'\" (early spring and early summer would be the more accurate\nIndian phrasing).\n\n\"'Some day, oh! our father, we may mother a man-child, who may grow\nto be just such a powerful Tyee as you are, and for this honor that\nmay some day be ours we have come to crave a favor of you--you, Oh!\nour father.'\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\ntribe--the tribe you war upon--to this, our feast?' they asked\nfearlessly.\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\nday, and some time you may bear sons to bless this peace you have\nasked, and to bless their mother's sire for granting it.'  Then he\nturned to all the young men of the tribe and commanded: 'Build fires\nat sunset on all the coast headlands--fires of welcome.  Man your\ncanoes and face the north, greet the enemy, and tell them that I,\nthe Tyee of the Capilanos, ask--no, command--that they join me for a\ngreat feast in honor of my two daughters.'  And when the northern\ntribes got this invitation they flocked down the coast to this feast\nof a Great Peace.  They brought their women and their children;\nthey brought game and fish, gold and white stone beads, baskets and\ncarven ladles, and wonderful woven blankets to lay at the feet of\ntheir now acknowledged ruler, the great Tyee.  And he, in turn, gave\nsuch a potlatch that nothing but tradition can vie with it.  There\nwere long, glad days of joyousness, long, pleasurable nights of\ndancing and camp-fires, and vast quantities of food.  The war-canoes\nwere emptied of their deadly weapons and filled with the daily catch\nof salmon.  The hostile war-songs ceased, and in their place were\nheard the soft shuffle of dancing feet, the singing voices of women,\nthe play-games of the children of two powerful tribes which had been\nuntil now ancient enemies, for a great and lasting brotherhood was\nsealed between them--their war-songs were ended forever.\n\n\"Then the Sagalie Tyee smiled on His Indian children: 'I will\nmake these young-eyed maidens immortal,' He said.  In the cup of\nHis hands He lifted the chief's two daughters and set them forever\nin a high place, for they had borne two offspring--Peace and\nBrotherhood--each of which is now a great Tyee ruling this land.\n\n\"And on the mountain crest the chief's daughters can be seen wrapped\nin the suns, the snows, the stars of all seasons, for they have\nstood in this high place for thousands of years, and will stand for\nthousands of years to come, guarding the peace of the Pacific Coast\nand the quiet of the Capilano Canyon.\"\n\n  *     *     *     *     *\n\nThis is the Indian legend of \"The Lions of Vancouver\" as I had it\nfrom one who will tell me no more the traditions of his people.\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE SIWASH ROCK\n\n\nUnique, and so distinct from its surroundings as to suggest rather\nthe handicraft of man than a whim of Nature, it looms up at the\nentrance to the Narrows, a symmetrical column of solid grey stone.\nThere are no similar formations within the range of vision, or\nindeed within many a day's paddle up and down the coast.  Amongst\nall the wonders, the natural beauties that encircle Vancouver,\nthe marvels of mountains, shaped into crouching lions and brooding\nbeavers, the yawning canyons, the stupendous forest firs and cedars,\nSiwash Rock stands as distinct, as individual, as if dropped from\nanother sphere.\n\nI saw it first in the slanting light of a redly setting August sun;\nthe little tuft of green shrubbery that crests its summit was black\nagainst the crimson of sea and sky, and its colossal base of grey\nstone gleamed like flaming polished granite.\n\nMy old tillicum lifted his paddle-blade to point towards it.  \"You\nknow the story?\" he asked.  I shook my head (experience has taught\nme his love of silent replies, his moods of legend-telling).  For a\ntime we paddled slowly; the rock detached itself from its background\nof forest and shore, and it stood forth like a sentinel--erect,\nenduring, 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\nfor everything that was noble and upright.\"\n\n\"What do you regard as everything that is noble and upright, Chief?\"\nI asked, curious as to his ideas.  I shall not forget the reply; it\nwas but two words--astounding, amazing words.  He said simply:\n\n\"Clean fatherhood.\"\n\nThrough my mind raced tumultuous recollections of numberless\narticles in yet numberless magazines, all dealing with the recent\n\"fad\" of motherhood, but I had to hear from the lip of a Squamish\nIndian chief the only treatise on the nobility of \"clean fatherhood\"\nthat I have yet unearthed.  And this treatise has been an Indian\nlegend for centuries; and, lest they forget how all-important those\ntwo little words must ever be, Siwash Rock stands to remind them,\nset there by the Deity as a monument to one who kept his own life\nclean, that cleanliness might be the heritage of the generations\nto come.\n\nIt was \"thousands of years ago\" (all Indian legends begin in\nextremely remote times) that a handsome boy chief journeyed in his\ncanoe to the upper coast for the shy little northern girl whom he\nbrought home as his wife.  Boy though he was, the young chief had\nproved himself to be an excellent warrior, a fearless hunter, and an\nupright, courageous man among men.  His tribe loved him, his enemies\nrespected him, and the base and mean and cowardly feared him.\n\nThe customs and traditions of his ancestors were a positive religion\nto him, the sayings and the advices of the old people were his\ncreed.  He was conservative in every rite and ritual of his race.\nHe fought his tribal enemies like the savage that he was.  He sang\nhis war-songs, danced his war-dances, slew his foes, but the little\ngirl-wife from the north he treated with the deference that he gave\nhis own mother, for was 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\ncoming day: the promise of what it would bring him seemed breathing\nthrough all his forest world.  He took her very gently by the hand\nand led her through the tangle of wilderness down to the water's\nedge, where the beauty spot we moderns call Stanley Park bends\nabout Prospect Point.  \"I must swim,\" he told her.\n\n\"I must swim, too,\" she smiled, with the perfect understanding of\ntwo beings who are mated.  For, to them, the old Indian custom was\nlaw--the custom that the parents of a coming child must swim until\ntheir flesh is so clear and clean that a wild animal cannot scent\ntheir proximity.  If the wild creatures of the forests have no fear\nof them, then, and only then, are they fit to become parents, and\nto scent a human is in itself 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\na new, glad day.  Presently he took her ashore, and smilingly she\ncrept away under the giant trees.  \"I must be alone,\" she said, \"but\ncome to me at sunrise: you will not find me alone then.\"  He smiled\nalso, and plunged back into the sea.  He must swim, swim, swim\nthrough this hour when his fatherhood was coming upon him.  It was\nthe law that he must be clean, spotlessly clean, so that when his\nchild looked out upon the world it would have the chance to live its\nown life clean.  If he did not swim hour upon hour his child would\ncome to an unclean father.  He must give his child a chance in life;\nhe must not hamper it by his own uncleanliness at its birth.  It was\nthe tribal law--the law of vicarious purity.\n\nAs he swam joyously to and fro, a canoe bearing four men headed up\nthe Narrows.  These men were giants in stature, and the stroke of\ntheir paddles 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\nat their demand.\n\n\"But you shall cease!\" they commanded.  \"We are the men [agents] of\nthe Sagalie Tyee [God], and we command you ashore out of our way!\"\n(I find in all these Coast Indian legends that the Deity is\nrepresented by four men, usually paddling an immense canoe.)\n\nHe ceased swimming, and, lifting his head, defied them.  \"I shall\nnot stop, nor yet go ashore,\" he declared, striking out once more\nto the middle of the channel.\n\n\"Do you dare disobey us,\" they cried--\"we, the men of the Sagalie\nTyee?  We can turn you into a fish, or a tree, or a stone for this;\ndo you dare disobey the Great Tyee?\"\n\n\"I dare anything for the cleanliness and purity of my coming child.\nI dare 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\nTyee, been defied before.  Now, for the sake of a little unborn\nchild, they were ignored, disobeyed, almost despised.  The lithe\nyoung copper-colored body still disported itself in the cool\nwaters; superstition held that should their canoe, or even their\npaddle-blades, touch a human being, their marvellous power would be\nlost. The handsome young chief swam directly in their course.  They\ndared not run him down; if so, they would become as other men.\nWhile they yet counselled what to do, there floated from out the\nforest a faint, strange, compelling sound.  They listened, and\nthe young chief ceased his stroke as he listened also.  The faint\nsound drifted out across the waters once more.  It was the cry of\na little, little child.  Then one of the four men, he that steered\nthe canoe, the strongest and tallest of them all, arose, and,\nstanding erect, stretched out his arms towards the rising sun\nand chanted, not a curse on the young chief's disobedience, but\na promise of everlasting days and freedom from death.\n\n\"Because you have defied all things that come in your path we\npromise this to you,\" he chanted; \"you have defied what interferes\nwith your child's chance for a clean life, you have lived as you\nwish your son to live, you have defied us when we would have stopped\nyour swimming and hampered your child's future.  You have placed\nthat child's future before all things, and for this the Sagalie Tyee\ncommands us to make you forever a pattern for your tribe.  You shall\nnever die, but you shall stand through all the thousands of years to\ncome, where all eyes can see you.  You shall live, live, live as an\nindestructible monument to Clean Fatherhood.\"\n\nThe four men lifted their paddles and the handsome young chief\nswam inshore; as his feet touched the line where sea and land met\nhe was transformed into stone.\n\nThen the four men said, \"His wife and child must ever be near him;\nthey shall not die, but live also.\"  And they, too, were turned into\nstone.  If you penetrate the hollows in the woods near Siwash Rock\nyou will find a large rock and a smaller one beside it.  They are\nthe shy little bride-wife from the north, with her hour-old baby\nbeside her.  And from the uttermost parts of the world vessels come\ndaily throbbing and sailing up the Narrows.  From far trans-Pacific\nports, from the frozen North, from the lands of the Southern Cross,\nthey pass and repass the living rock that was there before their\nhulls were shaped, that will be there when their very names are\nforgotten, when their crews and their captains have taken their\nlong last voyage, when their merchandise has rotted, and their\nowners are known no more.  But the tall, grey column of stone will\nstill be there--a monument to one man's fidelity to a generation yet\nunborn--and will endure from everlasting to everlasting.\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE RECLUSE\n\n\nJourneying toward the upper course of the Capilano River, about\na mile citywards from the dam, you will pass a disused logger's\nshack.  Leave the trail at this point and strike through the\nundergrowth for a few hundred yards to the left and you will be\non the rocky borders of that purest, most restless river in all\nCanada.  The stream is haunted with tradition, teeming with a score\nof romances that vie with its grandeur and loveliness, and of which\nits waters are perpetually whispering.  But I learned this legend\nfrom one whose voice was as dulcet as the swirling rapids; but,\nunlike them, that voice is hushed to-day, while the river, the\nriver 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\nwife, and bright young daughter, all lounged amongst the boulders\nand watched the lazy clouds drift from peak to peak far above us.\nIt was one of his inspired days; legends crowded to his lips as a\nwhistle teases the mouth of a happy boy; his heart was brimming\nwith tales of the bygones, his eyes were dark with dreams and that\nstrange mournfulness that always haunted them when he spoke of\nlong-ago romances.  There was not a tree, a boulder, a dash of rapid\nupon which his glance fell which he could not link with some ancient\npoetic superstition.  Then abruptly, in the very midst of his verbal\nreveries, he turned and asked me if I were superstitious.  Of course\nI replied that 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,\nfor he plunged into the strange tale of the recluse of the canyon\nwith more vigor than dreaminess; but first he asked me the question:\n\n\"What do your own tribes, those east of the great mountains, think\nof twin children?\"\n\nI shook my head.\n\n\"That is enough,\" he said before I could reply.  \"I see, your\npeople do not 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\nthing, the coming tale might die on his lips before it was born\nto speech, but we understood each other so well that I finally\nventured the truth:\n\n\"We Iroquois say that twin children are as rabbits,\" I explained.\n\"The nation always nicknames the parents.  'Tow-wan-da-na-ga.'\nThat is the Mohawk for rabbit.\"\n\n\"Is that all?\" he asked curiously.\n\n\"That is all.  Is it not enough to render twin children unwelcome?\"\nI questioned.\n\nHe thought a while, 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\nsay they are very proud of having twins,\" I stammered.  Once again I\nwas hardly sure of my ground.  He looked most incredulous, and I was\nled to enquire what his own people of the Squamish thought of this\ndiscussed problem.\n\n\"It is no pride to us,\" he said decidedly, \"nor yet is it disgrace\nof rabbits; 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\ngave substance to the superstition.  \"Won't you tell it to me?\"\nI begged.\n\nHe leaned a little backward against a giant boulder, clasping his\nthin, brown hands about his knees; his eyes roved up the galloping\nriver, then swept down the singing waters to where they crowded past\nthe sudden bend, and during the entire recital of the strange legend\nhis eyes never left that spot where the stream disappeared in its\nhurrying journey 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,\nold in wisdom, old in the lore and learning of their nations.  Some\nof them wept, some chanted solemnly the dirge of their lost hopes\nand happiness, which would never return because of this calamity;\nothers discussed in hushed voices this awesome thing, and for hours\ntheir grave council was broken only by the infant cries of the two\nboy-babies in the bark lodge, the hopeless sobs of the young mother,\nthe agonized moans of the stricken chief--their father.\n\n\"'Something dire will happen to the tribe,' said the old men in\ncouncil.\n\n\"'Something dire will happen to him, my husband,' wept the young\nmother.\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\nthe Capilano mirror the mountain tops.  His words were masterful,\nhis gestures commanding, his shoulders erect and kindly.  His was\na personality and an inspiration that no one dared dispute, and\nhis judgment 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\ntribe, the sire of twin children must go afar and alone, into the\nmountain fastnesses, there by his isolation and his loneliness to\nprove himself stronger than the threatened evil, and thus to beat\nback the shadow that would otherwise follow him and all his people.\nI, therefore, name for him the length of days that he must spend\nalone fighting his invisible enemy.  He will know by some great sign\nin Nature the hour that the evil is conquered, the hour that his\nrace is saved.  He must leave before this sun sets, taking with him\nonly his strongest bow, his fleetest arrows, and, going up into the\nmountain wilderness, remain there ten days--alone, alone.'\n\n\"The masterful voice ceased, the tribe wailed their assent, the\nfather arose speechless, his drawn face revealing great agony over\nthis seemingly brief banishment.  He took leave of his sobbing wife,\nof the two tiny souls that were his sons, grasped his favorite bow\nand arrows, and faced the forest like a warrior.  But at the end\nof the ten days he did not return, nor yet ten weeks, nor yet ten\nmonths.\n\n\"'He is dead,' wept the mother into the baby ears of her two boys.\n'He could not battle against the evil that threatened; it was\nstronger than he--he, so strong, so proud, so brave.'\n\n\"'He is dead,' echoed the tribesmen and the tribeswomen.  'Our\nstrong, brave chief, he is dead.'  So they mourned the long year\nthrough, but their chants and their tears but renewed their grief;\nhe did not return to 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\ncurrent of air, what faltering note in the voice of the medicine-man\nhad deceived his alert Indian ears?  But some unhappy fate had led\nhim to understand that his solitude must be of ten years' duration,\nnot ten days, and he had accepted the mandate with the heroism of a\nstoic.  For if he had refused to do so his belief was that, although\nthe threatened disaster would be spared him, the evil would fall\nupon his tribe.  Thus was one more added to the long list of\nself-forgetting souls whose creed has been, 'It is fitting that\none should suffer for the people.'  It was the world-old heroism\nof vicarious sacrifice.\n\n\"With his hunting-knife the banished Squamish chief stripped the\nbark from the firs and cedars, building for himself a lodge beside\nthe Capilano River, where leaping trout and salmon could be speared\nby arrow-heads fastened to deftly shaped, long handles.  All through\nthe salmon-run he smoked and dried the fish with the care of a\nhousewife.  The mountain sheep and goats, and even huge black and\ncinnamon bears, fell before his unerring arrows; the fleet-footed\ndeer never returned to their haunts from their evening drinking at\nthe edge of the stream--their wild hearts, their agile bodies were\nstilled when he took aim.  Smoked hams and saddles hung in rows from\nthe cross-poles of his bark lodge, and the magnificent pelts of\nanimals carpeted his floors, padded his couch, and clothed his body.\nHe tanned the soft doe-hides, making leggings, moccasins and shirts,\nstitching them together with deer sinew as he had seen his mother do\nin the long-ago.  He gathered the juicy salmon-berries, their acid\na sylvan, healthful change from meat and fish.  Month by month\nand year by year he sat beside his lonely camp-fire, waiting for\nhis long term of solitude to end.  One comfort alone was his--he\nwas enduring the disaster, fighting the evil, that his tribe might\ngo unscathed, that his people be saved from calamity.  Slowly,\nlaboriously the tenth year dawned; day by day it dragged its long\nweeks across his waiting heart, for Nature had not yet given the\nsign 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\nstorm-cloud, and the Thunder-bird, with its eyes of flashing light,\nbeat its huge vibrating wings on crag and canyon.\n\n\"Up-stream, a tall shaft of granite rears its needle-like length.  It\nis named 'Thunder Rock,' and wise men of the Paleface people say it\nis rich in ore--copper, silver, and gold.  At the base of this shaft\nthe Squamish chief crouched when the storm-cloud broke and bellowed\nthrough the ranges, and on its summit the Thunder-bird perched, its\ngigantic wings threshing the air into booming sounds, into splitting\nterrors, like 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\nfears of evil were cowed and conquered.  In his brain, his blood,\nhis veins, his sinews, he felt that the poison of melancholy dwelt\nno more.  He had redeemed his fault of fathering twin children; he\nhad fulfilled the demands of the law of his tribe.\n\n\"As he heard the last beat of the Thunder-bird's wings dying slowly,\nfaintly, faintly, among the crags, he knew that the bird,\ntoo, was 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\nGrounds, for the soul of the Thunder-bird was a radiant half-circle\nof glorious color spanning from peak to peak.  He lifted his head\nthen, for he knew it was the sign the ancient medicine-man had told\nhim to wait for--the sign 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?\nWhy have we no father, like other boys?'  To be met only with the\noft-repeated reply, 'Your father is no more.  Your father, the\ngreat chief, is dead.'\n\n\"But some strange filial intuition told the boys that their sire\nwould some day return.  Often they voiced this feeling to their\nmother, but she would only weep and say that not even the witchcraft\nof the great medicine-man could bring him to them.  But when they\nwere ten years old the two children came to their mother, hand\nwithin hand.  They were armed with their little hunting-knives,\ntheir salmon-spears, their tiny bows 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\ninvisible eyes; perhaps the child-eyes see him.  The heart of a\nchild has invisible ears; perhaps the child-ears hear him call.\nLet them go.'  So the little children went forth into the forest;\ntheir young feet flew as though shod with wings, their young hearts\npointed to the north as does the white man's compass.  Day after day\nthey journeyed up-stream, until, rounding a sudden bend, they beheld\na bark lodge with a thin blue curl of smoke drifting from its roof.\n\n\"'It is our father's lodge,' they told each other, for their\nchildish hearts were unerring in response to the call of kinship.\nHand in hand they approached, and entering the lodge, said the\none 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\neach hand 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\nthe eyes 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,\nthat he built his lodge: here he dwelt those ten years alone,\nalone.\"\n\nI nodded silently.  The legend was too beautiful to mar with\ncomments, and, as the twilight fell, we threaded our way through\nthe underbrush, past the disused logger's camp, and into the trail\nthat leads citywards.\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE LOST SALMON-RUN\n\n\nGreat had been the \"run,\" and the sockeye season was almost over.\nFor that reason I wondered many times why my old friend, the\nklootchman, had failed to make one of the fishing fleet.  She was an\nindefatigable work-woman, rivalling her husband as an expert catcher,\nand all the year through she talked of little else but the coming\nrun.  But this especial season she had not appeared amongst her\nfellow-kind.  The fleet and the canneries knew nothing of her, and\nwhen I enquired of her tribes-people they would reply without\nexplanation, \"She not here this year.\"\n\nBut one russet September afternoon I found her.  I had idled down\nthe trail from the swans' basin in Stanley Park to the rim that\nskirts the Narrows, and I saw her graceful, high-bowed canoe heading\nfor the beach that is the favorite landing-place of the \"tillicums\"\nfrom the Mission.  Her canoe looked like a dream-craft, for the\nwater was very still, and everywhere a blue film hung like a fragrant\nveil, for the peat on Lulu Island had been smoldering for days and\nits pungent odors and blue-grey haze made a dream-world of sea and\nshore and sky.\n\nI hurried up-shore, 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\nher ashore, for the klootchman is getting to be an old woman; albeit\nshe paddles against tidewater like a boy in his teens.\n\n\"No,\" she said, as I begged her to come ashore.  \"I will wait--me.\nI just come to fetch Maarda; she been city; she soon come--now.\"\nBut she left her \"working\" attitude and curled like a school-girl in\nthe bow of the canoe, her elbows resting on her paddle which she\nhad flung across the gunwales.\n\n\"I have missed you, klootchman; you have not been to see me for\nthree moons, and you have not fished or been at the canneries,\"\nI remarked.\n\n\"No,\" she said.  \"I stay home this year.\"  Then, leaning towards me\nwith grave import in her manner, her eyes, her voice, she added,\n\"I have a grandchild, born first week July, so--I stay.\"\n\nSo this explained her absence.  I, of course, offered\ncongratulations and enquired all about the great event, for this\nwas her first grandchild, 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\nit so.\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\ngirl for first grandchild.  Our tribe not like yours; we want girl\nchildren first; we not always wish boy-child born just for fight.\nYour people, they care only for war-path; our tribe more peaceful.\nVery good sign first grandchild to be girl.  I tell you why:\ngirl-child may be some time mother herself; very grand thing to be\nmother.\"\n\nI felt I had caught the secret of her meaning.  She was rejoicing\nthat this little one should some time become one of the mothers\nof her race.  We chatted over it a little longer and she gave me\nseveral playful \"digs\" about my own tribe thinking so much less of\nmotherhood than hers, and so much more of battle and bloodshed.\nThen we drifted into talk of the sockeye and of the hyiu chickimin\nthe 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\ncome that 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\nback in her Land of Legends, and that soon I would be the richer in\nmy hoard of Indian lore.  She sat, still leaning on her paddle; her\neyes, half-closed, rested on the distant outline of the blurred\nheights across the Inlet.  I shall not further attempt her broken\nEnglish, for this is but the shadow of her story, and without her\nunique personality the legend is as a flower that lacks both color\nand fragrance.  She called 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 now; but the pink salmon crowded its throat just\nas they do now, and the tillicums caught and salted and smoked the fish\njust as they have done this year, just as they will always do. But it\nwas yet winter, and the rains were slanting and the fogs drifting,\nwhen 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?'\nThe Great Tyee loved the woman.  He was stern with his people, hard\nwith his tribe; he ruled his council-fires with a will of stone.\nHis medicine-men said he had no human heart in his body; his\nwarriors said he had no human blood in his veins.  But he clasped\nthis woman's hands, and his eyes, his lips, his voice, were gentle\nas her own, as he replied:\n\n\"'Give to me a girl-child--a little girl-child--that she may grow\nto be like 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\na slave 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\nbe our Great Tyee in years to come.  When you are old and weary of\ntribal affairs, when you sit wrapped in your blanket in the hot\nsummer sunshine, because your blood is old and thin, what can a\ngirl-child do to help either you or us?  Who, then, will be our\nGreat Tyee?'\n\n\"He stood in the centre of the menacing circle, his arms folded,\nhis chin raised, his eyes hard as flint.  His voice, cold as stone,\nreplied:\n\n\"'Perhaps she will give you such a man-child, and, if so, the child\nis yours; he will belong to you, not to me; he will become the\npossession of the people.  But if the child is a girl she will\nbelong to me--she will be mine.  You cannot take her from me as you\ntook me from my mother's side and forced me to forget my aged father\nin my service to the tribe; she will belong to me, will be the mother\nof my grandchildren, and her husband will be my son.'\n\n\"'You do not care for the good of your tribe.  You care only for\nyour own wishes and desires,' they rebelled.  'Suppose the salmon-run\nis small, we will have no food; suppose there is no man-child,\nwe will have no Great Tyee to show us how to get food from other\ntribes, and we shall 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\nwill some day be a mother herself, and give to your children and\ngrandchildren a Great Tyee?  Are the people to live, to thrive,\nto increase, to become more powerful with no mother-women to bear\nfuture sons and daughters?  Your minds are dead, your brains are\nchilled.  Still, even in your ignorance, you are my people: you\nand your wishes must be considered.  I call together the great\nmedicine-men, the men of witchcraft, the men of magic.  They shall\ndecide the laws which will follow the bearing of either boy or\ngirl-child.  What say you, oh! mighty 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\nfound.  Never were so many medicine-men in council before.  They\nbuilt fires and danced and chanted for many days.  They spoke with\nthe gods of the mountains, with the gods of the sea; then 'the\npower' of decision came to them.  They were inspired with a choice\nto lay before the tribes-people, and the most ancient medicine-man\nin all the coast region arose and spoke their resolution:\n\n\"'The people of the tribe cannot be allowed to have all things.\nThey want a boy-child and they want a great salmon-run also.  They\ncannot have both.  The Sagalie Tyee has revealed to us, the great\nmen of magic, that both these things will make the people arrogant\nand selfish.  They must choose between the two.'\n\n\"'Choose, oh! you ignorant tribes-people,' commanded the Great\nTyee.  'The wise men of our coast have said that the girl-child who\nwill some day bear children of her own will also bring abundance of\nsalmon at her birth; but the boy-child brings to you but himself.'\n\n\"'Let the salmon go,' shouted the people, 'but give us a future\nGreat Tyee.  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\ndespised a mother-woman.  You will suffer evil and starvation and\nhunger and poverty, oh! foolish tribes-people.  Did you not know\nhow great a girl-child is?'\n\n\"That spring, people from a score of tribes came up to the Fraser\nfor the salmon-run.  They came great distances--from the mountains,\nthe lakes, the far-off dry lands, but not one fish entered the vast\nrivers of the Pacific Coast.  The people had made their choice.\nThey had forgotten the honor that a mother-child would have brought\nthem.  They were bereft of their food.  They were stricken with\npoverty.  Through the long winter that followed they endured\nhunger and starvation.  Since then our tribe has always welcomed\ngirl-children--we want no more lost runs.\"\n\nThe klootchman lifted her arms from her paddle as she concluded;\nher eyes left the irregular outline of the violet mountains.  She\nhad come back to this year of grace--her Legend Land had vanished.\n\n\"So,\" she added, \"you see now, maybe, why I am glad my grandchild is\ngirl; it means big salmon-run next year.\"\n\n\"It is a beautiful story, klootchman,\" I said, \"and I feel a\ncruel delight that your men of magic punished the people for\ntheir ill 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\nfind Maarda almost at my elbow.  The rising tide was unbeaching the\ncanoe, and as Maarda stepped in and the klootchman slipped astern,\nit drifted afloat.\n\n\"Kla-how-ya,\" nodded the klootchman as she dipped her paddle-blade\nin exquisite 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\n\n\nTHE DEEP WATERS\n\n\nFar over your left shoulder as your boat leaves the Narrows to\nthread the beautiful waterways that lead to Vancouver Island,\nyou will see the summit of Mount Baker robed in its everlasting\nwhiteness and always reflecting some wonderful glory from the rising\nsun, the golden noontide, or the violet and amber sunset.  This is\nthe Mount Ararat of the Pacific Coast peoples; for those readers who\nare familiar with the ways and beliefs and faiths of primitive races\nwill agree that it is difficult to discover anywhere in the world\na race that has not some story of the Deluge, which they have\nchronicled and localized to fit the understanding and the conditions\nof the nation that composes their own immediate world.\n\nAmongst the red nations of America I doubt if any two tribes have\nthe same ideas regarding the Flood.  Some of the traditions\nconcerning this vast whim of Nature are grotesque in the extreme;\nsome are impressive; some even profound; but of all the stories of\nthe Deluge that I have been able to collect I know of not a single\none that can even begin to equal in beauty of conception, let alone\nrival in possible reality and truth, the Squamish legend of \"The\nDeep Waters.\"\n\nI here quote the legend of \"mine own people,\" the Iroquois tribes\nof Ontario, regarding the Deluge.  I do this to paint the color of\ncontrast in richer shades, for I am bound to admit that we who\npride ourselves on ancient intellectuality have but a childish tale\nof the Flood when compared with the jealously preserved annals of\nthe Squamish, which savour more of history than tradition.  With\n\"mine own people,\" animals always play a much more important part,\nand are endowed with a finer intelligence, than humans.  I do not\nfind amid my notes a single tradition of the Iroquois wherein\nanimals do not figure, and our story of the Deluge rests entirely\nwith the intelligence of sea-going and river-going creatures.  With\nus, animals in olden times were greater than man; but it is not so\nwith the Coast Indians, except in rare 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\nfishes, and 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\nhe regards them as equals, much less superiors.  But to revert to\n\"mine own people\": they hold the intelligence of wild animals far\nabove that of man, for perhaps the one reason that when an animal\nis sick it effects its own cure; it knows what grasses and herbs to\neat, what to avoid, while the sick human calls the medicine-man,\nwhose wisdom is not only the result of years of study, but also\nheredity; consequently any great natural event, such as the Deluge,\nhas much to do with the wisdom of the creatures of the forests and\nthe rivers.\n\nIroquois tradition tells us that once this earth was entirely\nsubmerged in water, and during this period for many days a busy\nlittle muskrat swam about vainly looking for a foothold of earth\nwherein to build his house.  In his search he encountered a turtle\nalso leisurely swimming; so they had speech together, and the\nmuskrat complained of weariness; he could find no foothold; he\nwas tired of incessant swimming, and longed for land such as his\nancestors enjoyed.  The turtle suggested that the muskrat should\ndive and endeavor to find earth at the bottom of the sea.  Acting on\nthis advice, the muskrat plunged down, then arose with his two little\nforepaws grasping some earth he had found beneath the waters.\n\n\"Place it on my shell and dive again for more,\" directed the\nturtle.  The muskrat did so; but when he returned with his paws\nfilled with earth he discovered the small quantity he had first\ndeposited on the turtle's shell had doubled in size.  The return\nfrom the third trip found the turtle's load again doubled.  So the\nbuilding went on at double compound increase, and the world grew\nits continents and its islands with great rapidity, and now rests\non the shell of a turtle.\n\nIf you ask an Iroquois, \"And did no men survive this flood?\" he\nwill reply, \"Why should men survive?  The animals are wiser than\nmen; let the wisest live.\"\n\nHow, then, was the earth repeopled?\n\nThe Iroquois will tell you that the otter was a medicine-man; that,\nin swimming and diving about, he found corpses of men and women;\nhe sang his medicine-songs and they came to life, and the otter\nbrought them fish for food until they were strong enough to provide\nfor themselves.  Then the Iroquois will conclude his tale with,\n\"You know well that the otter has greater wisdom than a man.\"\n\nSo much for \"mine own people\" and our profound respect for the\nsuperior intelligence of our little brothers of the animal world.\n\nBut the Squamish tribe hold other ideas.  It was on a February\nday that I first listened to this beautiful, humane story of the\nDeluge.  My royal old tillicum had come to see me through the rains\nand mists of late winter days.  The gateways of my wigwam always\nstood open--very widely open--for his feet to enter, and this\nespecial day he came with the worst downpour of the season.\n\nWoman-like, I protested with a thousand contradictions in my voice,\nthat he should venture out to see me on such a day.  It was \"Oh!\nChief, I am so glad to see you!\" and it was \"Oh! Chief, why didn't\nyou stay at home on such a wet day--your poor throat will suffer.\"\nBut I soon had quantities of hot tea for him, and the huge cup my\nown father always used was his--as long as the Sagalie Tyee allowed\nhis dear feet to wander my way.  The immense cup stands idle and\nempty now for the second time.\n\nHelping him off with his great-coat, I chatted on about the deluge\nof rain, and he remarked it was not so very bad, as one could yet\nwalk.\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\nof his that always brought a responsive smile from his listeners.\nThen he plunged 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\nyet it rained; for weeks and weeks it rained.\"  He ceased speaking,\nwhile the shadows of centuries gone crept into his eyes.  Tales of\nthe misty past 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\nsilently up.  The level lands were first to float in sea-water, then\nto disappear.  The slopes were next to slip into the sea.  The world\nwas slowly being flooded.  Hurriedly the Indian tribes gathered in\none spot, a place of safety far above the reach of the on-creeping\nsea.  The spot was the circling shore of Lake Beautiful, up the\nNorth Arm.  They held a Great Council and decided at once upon a\nplan of action.  A giant canoe should be built, and some means\ncontrived to anchor it in case the waters mounted to the heights.\nThe men undertook the canoe, the women the anchorage.\n\n\"A giant tree was felled, and day and night the men toiled over\nits construction into the most stupendous canoe the world has ever\nknown.  Not an hour, not a moment, but many worked, while the\ntoil-wearied ones slept, only to awake to renewed toil.  Meanwhile,\nthe women also worked at a cable--the largest, the longest, the\nstrongest that Indian hands and teeth had ever made.  Scores of\nthem gathered and prepared the cedar-fibre; scores of them plaited,\nrolled, and seasoned it; scores of them chewed upon it inch by inch\nto make it pliable; scores of them oiled and worked, oiled and\nworked, oiled and worked it into a sea-resisting fabric.  And still\nthe sea crept up, and up, and up.  It was the last day; hope of life\nfor the tribes, of land for the world, was doomed.  Strong hands,\nself-sacrificing hands, fastened the cable the women had made--one\nend to the giant canoe, the other about an enormous boulder, a vast\nimmovable rock as firm as the foundations of the world--for might\nnot the canoe, with its priceless freight drift out, far out, to sea,\nand when the water subsided might not this ship of safety be leagues\nand leagues beyond the sight of land on the storm-driven Pacific?\n\n\"Then, with the bravest hearts that ever beat, noble hands lifted\nevery child of the tribe into this vast canoe; not one single baby\nwas overlooked.  The canoe was stocked with food and fresh water,\nand lastly, the ancient men and women of the race selected as\nguardians to these children the bravest, most stalwart, handsomest\nyoung man of the tribes, and the mother of the youngest baby in the\ncamp--she was but a girl of sixteen, her child but two weeks old;\nbut she, too, was brave and very beautiful.  These two were placed,\nshe at the bow of the canoe to watch, he at the stern to guide,\nand all the little children crowded between.\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\ncrying out for safety.  'Let the little children, the young mother,\nand the bravest and best of our young men live,' was all the\nfarewell those in the canoe heard as the waters reached the summit,\nand--the canoe floated.  Last of all to be seen was the top of the\ntallest tree, then--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\nthat beat 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\ncut the cable, grasped his paddle in his strong, young hands, and\nsteered for the south.  When they landed, the waters were sunken\nhalf down the mountain-side.  The children were lifted out; the\nbeautiful young mother, the stalwart young brave, turned to each\nother, clasped hands, looked into each other's eyes--and smiled.\n\n\"And down in the vast country that lies between Mount Baker and\nthe Fraser River they made a new camp, built new lodges, where the\nlittle children grew and thrived, and lived and loved, and the\nearth was repeopled by them.\n\n\"The Squamish say that in a gigantic crevice half-way to the crest\nof Mount Baker may yet be seen the outlines of an enormous canoe,\nbut I have never seen it myself.\"\n\nHe ceased speaking with that far-off cadence in his voice with which\nhe always 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\n\n\nTHE SEA-SERPENT\n\n\nThere is one vice that is absolutely unknown to the red man; he\nwas born without it, and amongst all the deplorable things he\nhas learned from the white races, this, at least, he has never\nacquired.  That is the vice of avarice.  That the Indian looks\nupon greed of gain, miserliness, avariciousness, and wealth\naccumulated above the head of his poorer neighbor as one of the\nlowest degradations he can fall to is perhaps more aptly illustrated\nthan anything I could quote to demonstrate his horror of what\nhe calls \"the white man's unkindness.\"  In a very wide and\nvaried experience with many tribes, I have yet to find even one\ninstance of avarice, and I have encountered but one single case of a\n\"stingy Indian,\" and this man was so marked amongst his fellows that\nat mention of his name his tribes-people jeered and would remark\ncontemptuously that he was like a white man--hated to share his\nmoney and his possessions.  All red races are born Socialists,\nand most tribes carry out their communistic ideas to the letter.\nAmongst the Iroquois it is considered disgraceful to have food if\nyour neighbor has none.  To be a creditable member of the nation\nyou must divide your possessions with your less fortunate fellows.\nI find it much the same amongst the Coast Indians, though they are\nless bitter in their hatred of the extremes of wealth and poverty\nthan are the Eastern tribes.  Still, the very fact that they have\npreserved this legend, in which they liken avarice to a slimy\nsea-serpent, shows the trend of their ideas; shows, too, that an\nIndian is an Indian, no matter what his tribe; shows that he cannot,\nor will not, hoard money; shows that his native morals demand that\nthe spirit of greed must be strangled at all cost.\n\nThe chief and I had sat long over our luncheon.  He had been talking\nof his trip to England and of the many curious things he had seen.\nAt last, in an outburst of enthusiasm, he said: \"I saw everything\nin the world--everything but a sea-serpent!\"\n\n\"But there is no such thing as a sea-serpent,\" I laughed, \"so you\nmust have really seen everything in the world.\"\n\nHis face clouded; for a moment he sat in silence; then, looking\ndirectly at me, said, \"Maybe none now, but long ago there was one\nhere--in the Inlet.\"\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\nmen fought, murdered, starved, went mad with love of that gold far\nup the Fraser River.  Tillicums were tillicums no more, brothers\nwere foes, fathers and sons were enemies.  Their love of the gold\nwas 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\nis no such thing as a sea-serpent.\"\n\n\"I shall believe whatever you tell me, Chief,\" I answered. \"I am\nonly too ready to believe.  You know I come of a superstitious race,\nand all my association with the Palefaces has never yet robbed me\nof my birthright 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\nsmiles, he laughed.\n\n\"Yes, skookum tum-tum.\"  Then without further hesitation he told\nthe tradition, which, although not of ancient happening, is held in\ngreat reverence by his tribe.  During its recital he sat with folded\narms, leaning on the table, his head and shoulders bending eagerly\ntowards me as I sat at the opposite side.  It was the only time he\never talked to me when he did not use emphasising gesticulations,\nbut his hands never once lifted: his wonderful eyes alone gave\nexpression to what he called \"The Legend of the 'Salt-chuck Oluk'\"\n(sea-serpent).\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\nour old people and our women shook their heads and said evil would\ncome of it.  But all our young men, except one, returned as they\nwent--kind to the poor, kind to those who were foodless, sharing\nwhatever they had with their tillicums.  But one, by name Shak-shak\n(The Hawk), came back with hoards of gold nuggets, chickimin\n(money), everything; he was rich like the white men, and, like them,\nhe kept it.  He would count his chickimin, count his nuggets, gloat\nover them, toss them in his palms.  He rested his head on them as\nhe slept, he packed them about with him through the day.  He loved\nthem better than food, better than his tillicums, better than his\nlife.  The entire tribe arose.  They said Shak-shak had the disease\nof greed; that to cure it he must give a great potlatch, divide his\nriches with the poorer ones, share them with the old, the sick, the\nfoodless.  But he jeered and laughed and told them No, and went on\nloving and gloating over his gold.\n\n\"Then the Sagalie Tyee spoke out of the sky and said, 'Shak-shak,\nyou have made of yourself a loathsome thing; you will not listen to\nthe cry of the hungry, to the call of the old and sick; you will not\nshare your possessions; you have made of yourself an outcast from\nyour tribe and disobeyed the ancient laws of your people.  Now I\nwill make of you a thing loathed and hated by all men, both white\nand red.  You will have two heads, for your greed has two mouths to\nbite.  One bites the poor, and one bites your own evil heart; and\nthe fangs in these mouths are poison--poison that kills the hungry,\nand poison that kills your own manhood.  Your evil heart will\nbeat in the very centre of your foul body, and he that pierces it\nwill kill the disease of greed forever from amongst his people.'\nAnd when the sun arose above the North Arm the next morning the\ntribes-people saw a gigantic sea-serpent stretched across the\nsurface of the waters.  One hideous head rested on the bluffs at\nBrockton Point, the other rested on a group of rocks just below\nMission, at the western edge of North Vancouver.  If you care to go\nthere 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\nit lay there, its monstrous heads lifted out of the waters, its\nmile-long body blocking all entrance from the Narrows, all outlet\nfrom the North Arm.  The chiefs made council, the medicine-men\ndanced and chanted, but the salt-chuck oluk never moved.  It could\nnot move, for it was the hated totem of what now rules the white\nman's world--greed and love of chickimin.  No one can ever move the\nlove of chickimin from the white man's heart, no one can ever make\nhim divide all with the poor.  But after the chiefs and medicine-men\nhad done all in their power, and still the salt-chuck oluk lay\nacross the waters, a handsome boy of sixteen approached them and\nreminded them of the words of the Sagalie Tyee, 'that he that\npierced the monster's heart would kill the disease of greed forever\namongst 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\nof this 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\nof fish and furs, of game and hykwa (large shell-money) he gave to\nthe boys who had none; he hunted food for the old people; he tanned\nskins and furs for those whose feet were feeble, whose eyes were\nfading, whose blood ran thin with age.\n\n\"'Let him go!' cried the tribes-people.  'This unclean monster can\nonly be overcome by cleanliness, this creature of greed can only\nbe overthrown by generosity.  Let him go!'  The chiefs and the\nmedicine-men listened, then consented.  'Go,' they commanded, 'and\nfight this thing with your strongest weapons--cleanliness and\ngenerosity.'\n\n\"The Tenas Tyee turned to his mother.  'I shall be gone four days,'\nhe told her, 'and I shall swim all that time.  I have tried all my\nlife to be generous, but the people say I must be clean also to\nfight this unclean thing.  While I am gone put fresh furs on my bed\nevery day, even if I am not here to lie on them; if I know my bed,\nmy body and my heart are all clean I can overcome this serpent.'\n\n\"'Your bed shall have fresh furs every morning,' his mother\nsaid 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\nnot return.  Sometimes his people could see him swimming far out in\nmid-channel, endeavoring to find the exact centre of the serpent,\nwhere lay its evil, selfish heart; but on the fifth morning they saw\nhim rise out of the sea, climb to the summit of Brockton Point, and\ngreet the rising sun with outstretched arms.  Weeks and months went\nby, still the Tenas Tyee would swim daily searching for that heart\nof greed; and each morning the sunrise glinted on his slender young\ncopper-colored body as he stood with outstretched arms at the tip\nof Brockton Point, greeting the coming day and then plunging from\nthe 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\nTenas Tyee found the centre of the great salt-chuck oluk and plunged\nhis hunting-knife into its evil heart.  In its death-agony it\nwrithed through the Narrows, leaving a trail of blackness on the\nwaters.  Its huge body began to shrink, to shrivel; it became\ndwarfed and withered, until nothing but the bones of its back\nremained, and they, sea-bleached and lifeless, soon sank to the bed\nof the ocean leagues off from the rim of land.  But as the Tenas\nTyee swam homeward and his clean, young body crossed through the\nblack stain left by the serpent, the waters became clear and blue\nand sparkling.  He had overcome even the trail of the salt-chuck\noluk.\n\n\"When at last he stood in the doorway of his home he said, 'My\nmother, I could not have killed the monster of greed amongst my\npeople had you not helped me by keeping one place for me at home\nfresh and clean for my return.'\n\n\"She looked at him as only mothers look.  'Each day, these four\nyears, fresh furs have I laid for your bed.  Sleep now, and rest,\noh! my Tenas Tyee,' 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\nhis head.\n\n\"No savvy,\" he smiled.\n\nI explained as simply as possible, and with his customary alertness\nhe immediately understood.  \"That's right,\" he said.  \"That's what\nwe say it means, we Squamish, that greed is evil and not clean,\nlike the salt-chuck oluk.  That it must be stamped out amongst our\npeople, killed by cleanliness and generosity.  The boy that overcame\nthe serpent 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\nsometimes see him now, standing on Brockton Point, his bare young\narms outstretched 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\nregret as his wonderful voice crowded into that single word.\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE LOST ISLAND\n\n\n\"Yes,\" said my old tillicum, \"we Indians have lost many things.\nWe have lost our lands, our forests, our game, our fish; we have\nlost our ancient religion, our ancient dress; some of the younger\npeople have even lost their fathers' language and the legends and\ntraditions of their ancestors.  We cannot call those old things back\nto us; they will never come again.  We may travel many days up the\nmountain-trails, and look in the silent places for them.  They are\nnot there.  We may paddle many moons on the sea, but our canoes will\nnever enter the channel that leads to the yesterdays of the Indian\npeople.  These things are lost, just like 'The Island of the North\nArm.'  They may be somewhere nearby, but 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\nsummers,\" he replied sorrowfully.\n\n\"Was it ever there?\" I questioned.\n\n\"Yes, it was there,\" he said.  \"My grandsires and my\ngreat-grandsires saw it; but that was long ago.  My father never\nsaw it, though he spent many days in many years searching, always\nsearching for it.  I am an old man myself, and I have never seen\nit, though from my youth, I, too, have searched.  Sometimes in the\nstillness of the nights I have paddled up in my canoe.\"  Then,\nlowering his voice: \"Twice I have seen its shadow: high rocky\nshores, reaching as high as the tree-tops on the mainland, then tall\npines and firs on its summit like a king's crown.  As I paddled up\nthe Arm one summer night, long ago, the shadow of these rocks and\nfirs fell across my canoe, across my face, and across the waters\nbeyond.  I turned rapidly to look.  There was no island there,\nnothing but a wide stretch of waters on both sides of me, and the\nmoon almost directly overhead.  Don't say it was the shore that\nshadowed me,\" he hastened, catching my thought.  \"The moon was above\nme; my canoe scarce made a shadow on the still waters.  No, it was\nnot the shore.\"\n\n\"Why do you search for it?\" I lamented, thinking of the old dreams\nin my own life whose realization I have never attained.\n\n\"There is something on that island that I want.  I shall look for\nit until I die, for it is there,\" he affirmed.\n\nThere was a long silence between us after that.  I had learned to\nlove silences when with my old tillicum, for they always led to a\nlegend.  After a time he began voluntarily:\n\n\"It was more than one hundred years ago.  This great city of\nVancouver was but the dream of the Sagalie Tyee [God] at that time.\nThe dream had not yet come to the white man; only one great Indian\nmedicine-man knew that some day a great camp for Palefaces would lie\nbetween False Creek and the Inlet.  This dream haunted him; it came\nto him night and day--when he was amid his people laughing and\nfeasting, or when he was alone in the forest chanting his strange\nsongs, beating his hollow drum, or shaking his wooden witch-rattle\nto gain more power to cure the sick and the dying of his tribe.  For\nyears this dream followed him.  He grew to be an old, old man, yet\nalways he could hear voices, strong and loud, as when they first\nspoke to him in his youth, and they would say: 'Between the two\nnarrow strips of salt water the white men will camp, many hundreds\nof them, many thousands of them.  The Indians will learn their ways,\nwill live as they do, will become as they are.  There will be no\nmore great war-dances, no more fights with other powerful tribes;\nit will be as if the Indians had lost all bravery, all courage, all\nconfidence.'  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\nvery tall, and his muscles were as those of Leloo, the timber-wolf,\nwhen he is strongest to kill his prey.  He could go for many days\nwithout food; he could fight the largest mountain-lion; he could\noverthrow the fiercest grizzly bear; he could paddle against the\nwildest winds and ride the highest waves.  He could meet his enemies\nand kill whole tribes single-handed.  His strength, his courage, his\npower, his bravery, were those of a giant.  He knew no fear; nothing\nin the sea, or in the forest, nothing in the earth or the sky, could\nconquer him.  He was fearless, fearless.  Only this haunting dream\nof the coming white man's camp he could not drive away; it was the\nonly thing in life he had tried to kill and failed.  It drove him\nfrom the feasting, drove him from the pleasant lodges, the fires,\nthe dancing, the story-telling of his people in their camp by the\nwater's edge, where the salmon thronged and the deer came down to\ndrink of the mountain-streams.  He left the Indian village, chanting\nhis wild songs as he went.  Up through the mighty forests he\nclimbed, through the trailless deep mosses and matted vines, up to\nthe summit of what the white men call Grouse Mountain.  For many\ndays he camped there.  He ate no food, he drank no water, but sat\nand sang his medicine-songs through the dark hours and through the\nday.  Before him--far beneath his feet--lay the narrow strip of land\nbetween the two salt waters.  Then the Sagalie Tyee gave him the\npower to see far into the future.  He looked across a hundred years,\njust as he looked across what you call the Inlet, and he saw mighty\nlodges built close together, hundreds and thousands of them--lodges\nof stone and wood, and long straight trails to divide them.  He saw\nthese 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\ncame.  The narrow strip of land was his own forest once more.\n\n\"'I am old,' he called, in his sorrow and his trouble for his\npeople.  'I am old, O Sagalie Tyee!  Soon I shall die and go to\nthe Happy Hunting Grounds of my fathers.  Let not my strength die\nwith me.  Keep living for all time my courage, my bravery, my\nfearlessness.  Keep them for my people that they may be strong\nenough to endure the white man's rule.  Keep my strength living\nfor them; hide it so that the Paleface may never find or see it.'\n\n\"Then he came down from the summit of Grouse Mountain.  Still\nchanting his medicine-songs, he entered his canoe and paddled\nthrough the colors of the setting sun far up the North Arm.  When\nnight fell he came to an island with misty shores of great grey\nrock; on its summit tall pines and firs encircled like a king's\ncrown.  As he neared it he felt all his strength, his courage, his\nfearlessness, leaving him; he could see these things drift from\nhim on to the island.  They were as the clouds that rest on the\nmountains, grey-white and half transparent.  Weak as a woman, he\npaddled back to the Indian village; he told them to go and search\nfor 'The Island,' where they would find all his courage, his\nfearlessness and his strength, living, living forever.  He slept\nthen, but--in the morning he did not awake.  Since then our young\nmen and our old have searched for 'The Island.'  It is there\nsomewhere, up some lost channel, but we cannot find it.  When we\ndo, we will get back all the courage and bravery we had before the\nwhite man came, for the great medicine-man said those things never\ndie--they live for one's children and grandchildren.\"\n\nHis voice ceased.  My whole heart went out to him in his longing\nfor the lost island.  I thought of all the splendid courage I knew\nhim to possess, so made answer: \"But you say that the shadow of\nthis island has fallen upon you; is it not so, tillicum?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he said half mournfully.  \"But only the shadow.\"\n\n\n\n\n\nPOINT GREY\n\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\ntea and a taste of muck-a-muck that otherwise I should eat in\nsolitude.\n\n\"No,\" I admitted, I had not had that pleasure, for I did not know\nthe uncertain waters of English Bay sufficiently well to venture\nabout its headlands in my frail canoe.\n\n\"Some day, perhaps next summer, I'll take you there in a sail-boat,\nand show you the big rock at the south-west of the Point.  It is a\nstrange rock; we Indian people call it Homolsom.\"\n\n\"What an odd name!\" I commented.  \"Is it a Squamish word?--it does\nnot sound 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\ntwo tribes; 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\nthat few of the younger Indians know.  That he believes the story\nhimself is beyond question, for many times he admitted having tested\nthe virtues of this rock, and it had never once failed him.  All\npeople that have to do with water-craft are superstitious about\nsome things, and I freely acknowledge that times innumerable I\nhave \"whistled up\" a wind when dead calm threatened, or stuck\na jack-knife in the mast, and afterwards watched with great\ncontentment the idle sail fill, and the canoe pull out to a light\nbreeze.  So, perhaps, I am prejudiced in favor of this legend of\nHomolsom Rock, for it strikes a very responsive chord in that\nportion of my heart that has always throbbed for the sea.\n\n\"You know,\" began my young tillicum, \"that only waters unspoiled\nby human hands can be of any benefit.  One gains no strength by\nswimming in any waters heated or boiled by fires that men build.\nTo grow strong and wise one must swim in the natural rivers, the\nmountain torrents, the sea, just as the Sagalie Tyee made them.\nTheir virtues die when human beings try to improve them by heating\nor distilling, or placing even tea in them, and so--what makes\nHomolsom Rock so full of 'good medicine' is that the waters that\nwash up about it are straight from the sea, made by the hand of\nthe Great Tyee, and unspoiled by the hand of man.\n\n\"It was not always there, that great rock, drawing its strength and\nits wonderful power from the seas, for it, too, was once a Great\nTyee, who ruled a mighty tract of waters.  He was god of all the\nwaters that wash the coast, of the Gulf of Georgia, of Puget Sound,\nof the Straits of Juan de Fuca, of the waters that beat against even\nthe west coast of Vancouver Island, and of all the channels that cut\nbetween the Charlotte Islands.  He was Tyee of the West Wind, and\nhis storms and tempests were so mighty that the Sagalie Tyee Himself\ncould not control the havoc that he created.  He warred upon all\nfishing craft, he demolished canoes, and sent men to graves in the\nsea.  He uprooted forests and drove the surf on shore heavy with\nwreckage of despoiled trees and with beaten and bruised fish.  He\ndid all this to reveal his powers, for he was cruel and hard of\nheart, and he would laugh and defy the Sagalie Tyee, and, looking up\nto the sky, he would call, 'See how powerful I am, how mighty, how\nstrong; I am as great as you.'\n\n\"It was at this time that the Sagalie Tyee in the persons of the\nFour Men came in the great canoe up over the rim of the Pacific,\nin that age thousands of years ago when they turned the evil into\nstone, and the kindly into trees.\n\n\"'Now,' said the god of the West Wind, 'I can show how great I am.\nI shall blow a tempest that these men may not land on my coast.\nThey shall not ride my seas and sounds and channels in safety.  I\nshall wreck them and send their bodies into the great deeps, and I\nshall be Sagalie Tyee in their place and ruler of all the world.'\nSo the god of the West Wind blew forth his tempests.  The waves\narose mountain high, the seas lashed and thundered along the shores.\nThe roar of his mighty breath could be heard wrenching giant limbs\nfrom the forest trees, whistling down the canyons and dealing death\nand destruction for leagues and leagues along the coast.  But the\ncanoe containing the Four Men rode upright through all the heights\nand hollows of the seething ocean.  No curling crest or sullen depth\ncould wreck that magic craft, for the hearts it bore were filled\nwith kindness for the human race, and kindness cannot die.\n\n\"It was all rock and dense forest, and unpeopled; only wild animals\nand sea-birds sought the shelter it provided from the terrors of the\nWest Wind; but he drove them out in sullen anger, and made on this\nstrip of land his last stand against the Four Men.  The Paleface\ncalls the place Point Grey, but the Indians yet speak of it as\n'The Battle Ground of the West Wind.'  All his mighty forces he\nnow brought to bear against the oncoming canoe; he swept great\nhurricanes about the stony ledges; he caused the sea to beat and\nswirl in tempestuous fury along its narrow fastnesses; but the canoe\ncame nearer and nearer, invincible as those shores, and stronger\nthan death itself.  As the bow touched the land the Four Men arose\nand commanded the West Wind to cease his war-cry, and, mighty though\nhe had been, his voice trembled and sobbed itself into a gentle\nbreeze, then fell to a whispering note, then faded into exquisite\nsilence.\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\nyou forever, but you shall live on, live now to serve, not to hinder\nmankind.  You shall turn into stone where you now stand, and you\nshall rise only as men wish you to.  Your life from this day shall\nbe for the good of man, for when the fisherman's sails are idle and\nhis lodge is leagues away you shall fill those sails and blow his\ncraft free, in whatever direction he desires.  You shall stand where\nyou are through all the thousands upon thousands of years to come,\nand he who touches you with his paddle-blade shall have his desire\nof a breeze to carry him home.'\"\n\nMy young tillicum had finished his tradition, and his great, solemn\neyes regarded me half-wistfully.\n\n\"I wish you could see Homolsom Rock,\" he said.  \"For that is he who\nwas once 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,\nfor the rock feeds every day on the unspoiled sea that the Sagalie\nTyee made.\"\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE TULAMEEN TRAIL\n\n\nDid you ever \"holiday\" through the valley lands of the Dry Belt?\nEver spend days and days in a swinging, swaying coach, behind a\nfour-in-hand, when \"Curly\" or \"Nicola Ned\" held the ribbons, and\ntooled his knowing little leaders and wheelers down those horrifying\nmountain-trails that wind like russet skeins of cobweb through the\nheights and depths of the Okanagan, the Nicola, and the Similkameen\ncountries?  If so, you have listened to the call of the Skookum\nChuck, as the Chinook speakers call the rollicking, tumbling streams\nthat sing their way through the canyons with a music so dulcet,\nso insistent, that for many moons the echo of it lingers in your\nlistening ears, and you will, through all the years to come, hear\nthe voices of those mountain-rivers calling you to return.\n\nBut the most haunting of all the melodies is the warbling laughter\nof the Tulameen; its delicate note is far more powerful, more\nfar-reaching than the throaty thunders of Niagara.  That is why the\nIndians of the Nicola country still cling to their old-time story\nthat the Tulameen carries the spirit of a young girl enmeshed in the\nwonders of its winding course; a spirit that can never free itself\nfrom the canyons, to rise above the heights and follow its fellows\nto the Happy Hunting Grounds, but which is contented to entwine its\nlaughter, its sobs, its lonely whispers, its still lonelier call for\ncompanionship, with the wild music of the waters that sing forever\nbeneath the western stars.\n\nAs your horses plod up and up the almost perpendicular trail that\nleads out of the Nicola Valley to the summit, a paradise of beauty\noutspreads at your feet; the color is indescribable in words, the\natmosphere thrills you.  Youth and the pulse of rioting blood are\nyours again, until, as you near the heights, you become strangely\ncalmed by the voiceless silence of it all--a silence so holy that\nit seems the whole world about you is swinging its censer before\nan altar in some dim remote cathedral!  The choir-voices of the\nTulameen are yet very far away across the summit, but the heights of\nthe Nicola are the silent prayer that holds the human soul before\nthe first great chords swell down from the organ-loft.  In this\nfirst long climb up miles and miles of trail, even the staccato of\nthe drivers' long black-snake whip is hushed.  He lets his animals\npick their own sure-footed way, but once across the summit he\ngathers the reins in his steely fingers, gives a low, quick whistle,\nthe whiplash curls about the ears of the leaders and the plunge down\nthe dip of the mountain begins.  Every foot of the way is done at\na gallop.  The coach rocks and swings as it dashes through a trail\nrough-hewn from the heart of the forest; at times the angles are so\nabrupt that you cannot see the heads of the leaders as they swing\naround the grey crags that almost scrape the tires on the left,\nwhile within a foot of the rim of the trail the right wheels whirl\nalong the edge of a yawning canyon.  The rhythm of the hoof-beats,\nthe recurrent low whistle and crack of the whiplash, the occasional\nrattle of pebbles showering down to the depths, loosened by rioting\nwheels, have broken the sacred silence.  Yet, above all those nearby\nsounds, there seems to be an indistinct murmur, which grows sweeter,\nmore musical, as you gain the base of the mountains, where it rises\nabove all harsher notes.  It is the voice of the restless Tulameen\nas it dances and laughs through the rocky throat of the canyon,\nthree hundred feet below.  Then, following the song, comes a glimpse\nof the river itself--white-garmented in the film of its countless\nrapids, its showers of waterfalls.  It is as beautiful to look at as\nto listen to, and it is here, where the trail winds about and above\nit for leagues, that the Indians say it caught the spirit of the\nmaiden 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\ntrails.  None can now tell the cause of this warfare, but the\nsupposition is that it was merely for tribal supremacy--that\nprimeval instinct that assails the savage in both man and beast,\nthat drives the hill-men to bloodshed and the leaders of buffalo\nherds to conflict.  It is the greed to rule; the one barbarous\ninstinct that civilization has never yet been able to eradicate from\narmed nations.  This war of the tribes of the valley lands was of\nyears in duration; men fought, and women mourned, and children wept,\nas all have done since time began.  It seemed an unequal battle,\nfor the old, experienced, war-tried chief and his two astute sons\nwere pitted against a single young Tulameen brave.  Both factors\nhad their loyal followers, both were indomitable as to courage and\nbravery, both were determined and ambitious, both were skilled\nfighters.\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,\nthey met face to face and alone--the old, war-scarred chief, the\nyoung battle-inspired brave.  It was an unequal combat, and at the\nclose of a brief but violent struggle the younger had brought the\nolder to his knees.  Standing over him with up-poised knife the\nTulameen brave laughed sneeringly, and said:\n\n\"Would you, my enemy, have this victory as your own?  If so, I give\nit to you; but in return for my submission I demand of you--your\ndaughter.\"\n\nFor an instant the old chief looked in wonderment at his conqueror;\nhe thought of his daughter only as a child who played about the\nforest-trails or sat obediently beside her mother in the lodge,\nstitching her little moccasins or weaving her little baskets.\n\n\"My daughter!\" he answered sternly.  \"My daughter--who is barely\nout of her own cradle-basket--give her to you, whose hands are\nblood-dyed with the killing of a score of my tribe?  You ask for\nthis thing?\"\n\n\"I do not ask it,\" replied the young brave.  \"I demand it; I have\nseen the girl and I shall have her.\"\n\nThe old chief sprang to his feet and spat out his refusal.  \"Keep\nyour victory, and I keep my girl-child,\" though he knew he was not\nonly defying his enemy, but defying death as well.\n\nThe Tulameen laughed lightly, easily.  \"I shall not kill the sire\nof my wife,\" he taunted.  \"One more battle must we have, but your\ngirl-child will 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\nheights, listening to the singing river, and sometimes leaning over\nthe precipice to watch its curling eddies and dancing waterfalls.\nSuddenly she heard a slight rustle, as though some passing bird's\nwing had clipt the air.  Then at her feet there fell a slender,\ndelicately shaped arrow.  It fell with spent force, and her Indian\nwoodcraft told her it had been shot to her, not at her.  She started\nlike a wild animal.  Then her quick eye caught the outline of a\nhandsome, erect figure that stood on the heights across the river.\nShe did not know him as her father's enemy.  She only saw him to be\nyoung, stalwart, and of extraordinary manly beauty.  The spirit of\nyouth and of a certain savage coquetry awoke within her.  Quickly\nshe fitted one of her own dainty arrows to the bow-string and sent\nit winging across the narrow canyon; it fell, spent, at his feet,\nand he knew she had shot it to him, 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\nspeed another arrow to her?  She had not yet emerged from the tangle\nof forest before it fell, its faint-winged flight heralding its\ncoming.  Near the feathered end was tied a tassel of beautiful\nermine-tails.  She took from her wrist a string of shell beads,\nfastened it to one of her little arrows, and winged it across the\ncanyon, as yesterday.\n\nThe following morning, before leaving the lodge, she fastened the\ntassel of ermine-tails in her straight black hair.  Would he see\nthem?  But no arrow fell at her feet that day, but a dearer message\nwas there on the brink of the precipice.  He himself awaited her\ncoming--he who had never left her thoughts since that first arrow\ncame to her from his bow-string.  His eyes burned with warm fires,\nas she approached, but his lips said simply: \"I have crossed the\nTulameen River.\"  Together they stood, side by side, and looked down\nat the depths before them, watching in silence the little torrent\nrollicking and roystering over its boulders and crags.\n\n\"That is my country,\" he said, looking across the river.  \"This\nis the country of your father, and of your brothers; they are my\nenemies.  I return to my own shore to-night.  Will you come with me?\"\n\nShe looked up into his handsome young face.  So this was her\nfather's foe--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\nher far up the rocky shores to the narrow belt of quiet waters,\nwhere they crossed in silence into his own country.  A week, a\nmonth, a long golden summer, slipped by, but the insulted old\nchief and his enraged sons failed to find her.\n\nThen, one morning, as the lovers walked together on the heights above\nthe far upper reaches of the river, even the ever-watchful eyes\nof the Tulameen failed to detect the lurking enemy.  Across the\nnarrow canyon crouched and crept the two outwitted brothers of the\ngirl-wife at his side; their arrows were on their bow-strings, their\nhearts on fire with hatred and vengeance.  Like two evil-winged\nbirds of prey those arrows sped across the laughing river, but\nbefore they found their mark in the breast of the victorious\nTulameen the girl had unconsciously stepped before him.  With a\nlittle sigh, she slipped into his arms, her brothers' arrows\nburied into her soft, brown flesh.\n\nIt was many a moon before his avenging hand succeeded in slaying\nthe old chief and those two hated sons of his.  But when this was\nfinally done the handsome young Tulameen left his people, his tribe,\nhis country, and went into the far north.  \"For,\" he said, as he\nsang his farewell war-song, \"my heart lies dead in the Tulameen\nRiver.\"\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\nthe great valleys of the Dry Belt.  That is why this laughter, the\nsobbing murmur of the beautiful Tulameen, will haunt for evermore\nthe ear that has once listened to its song.\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE GREY ARCHWAY\n\n\nThe steamer, like a huge shuttle, wove in and out among the\ncountless small islands; its long trailing scarf of grey smoke\nhung heavily along the uncertain shores, casting a shadow over the\npearly waters of the Pacific, which swung lazily from rock to rock\nin indescribable beauty.\n\nAfter dinner I wandered astern with the traveller's ever-present\nhope of seeing the beauties of a typical Northern sunset, and by\nsome happy chance I placed my deck-stool near an old tillicum, who\nwas leaning on the rail, his pipe between his thin, curved lips, his\nbrown hands clasped idly, his sombre eyes looking far out to sea,\nas though they searched the future--or was it that they were seeing\nthe 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\nI have always met with among the Pacific tribes.\n\nI drew my deck-stool nearer to him, and he acknowledged the action\nwith another half smile, but did not stir from his entrenchment,\nremaining as if hedged about with an inviolable fortress of\nexclusiveness.  Yet I knew that my Chinook salutation would be a\ndrawbridge by which I might hope to cross the moat into his castle\nof silence.\n\nIndian-like, he took his time before continuing the acquaintance.\nThen he 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\nthe deck, up the channels and narrows we were threading, to a\nbroad strip of waters off the port bow.  Then he pointed with\nthat peculiar, thoroughly Indian gesture of the palm uppermost.\n\n\"Do you see it--over there?  The small island?  It rests on the\nedge of the 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\none of us,\" he said, with evidently no thought of a possible\ncontradiction.  \"And you will understand, or I should not tell\nyou.  You will not smile at 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\nus spoke during that time; then, as the \"grey gull\" shaped itself\ninto rock and tree and crag, I noticed in the very centre a\nstupendous pile of stone lifting itself skyward, without fissure or\ncleft; but a peculiar haziness about the base made me peer narrowly\nto catch the perfect outline.\n\n\"It is the 'Grey Archway,'\" he explained, simply.\n\nOnly then did I grasp the singular formation before us: the rock\nwas a perfect archway, through which we could see the placid\nPacific shimmering in the growing colors of the coming sunset at\nthe opposite rim of the island.\n\n\"What a remarkable whim of Nature!\" I exclaimed, but his brown hand\nwas laid in a contradictory grasp on my arm, and he snatched up my\ncomment almost with impatience.\n\n\"No, it was not Nature,\" he said.  \"That is the reason I say you\nwill understand--you are one of us--you will know what I tell you is\ntrue.  The Great Tyee did not make that archway, it was--\" here his\nvoice lowered--\"it was magic, red man's medicine and magic--you\nsavvy?\"\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\nhear, to remember.  Women are the future mothers of the tribe,\nand we of the Pacific Coast hold such in high regard, in great\nreverence.  The women who are mothers--o-ho!--they are the important\nones, we say.  Warriors, fighters, brave men, fearless daughters, owe\ntheir qualities to these mothers--eh, is it not always so?\"\n\nI nodded silently.  The island was swinging nearer to us, the\n\"Grey Archway\" loomed almost above us, the mysticism crowded close,\nit enveloped me, caressed me, appealed to me.\n\n\"And?\" I hinted.\n\n\"And,\" he proceeded, \"this 'Grey Archway' is a story of mothers,\nof magic, 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\nexceptional story I was to hear.\n\nI did not answer, only looked across the pulsing waters toward\nthe \"Grey Archway,\" which the sinking sun was touching with soft\npastels, tints one could give no name to, beauties impossible to\ndescribe.\n\n\"You have not heard of Yaada?\" he questioned.  Then, fortunately,\nhe continued without waiting for a reply.  He well knew that I\nhad never heard of Yaada, so why not begin without preliminary to\ntell me of her?--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\ncountry, came, hoping to carry her to their far-off lodges, but they\nalways returned alone.  She was the most desired of all the island\nmaidens, beautiful, brave, modest, the daughter of her own mother.\n\n\"But there was a great man, a very great man--a medicine-man,\nskilful, powerful, influential, old, deplorably old, and very, very\nrich; he said, 'Yaada shall be my wife.'  And there was a young\nfisherman, handsome, loyal, boyish, poor, oh! very poor, and\ngloriously young, and he, too, said, 'Yaada shall be my wife.'\n\n\"But Yaada's mother sat apart and thought and dreamed, as mothers\nwill.  She said to herself, 'The great medicine-man has power, has\nvast riches, and wonderful magic, why not give her to him?  But\nUlka has the boy's heart, the boy's beauty; he is very brave, very\nstrong; why not give her to him?'\n\n\"But the laws of the great Haida tribe prevailed.  Its wise men\nsaid, 'Give the girl to the greatest man, give her to the most\npowerful, the richest.  The man of magic must have his choice.'\n\n\"But at this the mother's heart grew as wax in the summer\nsunshine--it is a strange quality that mothers' hearts are made of!\n'Give her to the best man--the man her heart holds highest,' said\nthis Haida mother.\n\n\"Then Yaada spoke: 'I am the daughter of my tribe; I would judge of\nmen by their excellence.  He who proves most worthy I shall marry;\nit is not riches that make a good husband; it is not beauty that\nmakes a good father for one's children.  Let me and my tribe see\nsome proof of the excellence of these two men--then, only, shall I\nchoose who is to be the father of my children.  Let us have a trial\nof their skill; let them show me how evil or how beautiful is the\ninside of their hearts.  Let each of them throw a stone with some\nintent, some purpose in their hearts.  He who makes the noblest mark\nmay call me wife.'\n\n\"'Alas!  Alas!' wailed the Haida mother. 'This casting of stones\ndoes not show worth.  It but shows prowess.'\n\n\"'But I have implored the Sagalie Tyee of my father, and of his\nfathers before him, to help me to judge between them by this means,'\nsaid the girl.  'So they must cast the stones.  In this way only\nshall I see their innermost hearts.'\n\n\"The medicine-man never looked so old as at that moment; so\nhopelessly old, so wrinkled, so palsied: he was no mate for Yaada.\nUlka never looked so god-like in his young beauty, so gloriously\nyoung, so courageous.  The girl, looking at him, loved him--almost\nwas she placing her hand in his, but the spirit of her forefathers\nhalted her.  She had spoken the word--she must abide by it.\n'Throw!' she commanded.\n\n\"Into his shrivelled fingers the great medicine-man took a small,\nround stone, chanting strange words of magic all the while; his\ngreedy eyes were 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\nthe 'Grey Archway' opened and has remained open to this day.\n\n\"'Oh, wonderful power and magic!' clamored the entire tribe.\n'The very rocks 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\nthe evil voice of the old medicine-man began a still more evil\nincantation.  He fixed his poisonous eyes on the younger man, eyes\nwith hideous magic in their depths--ill-omened and enchanted with\n'bad medicine.'  The stone left Ulka's fingers; for a second it flew\nforth in a straight line, then, as the evil voice of the old man grew\nlouder in its incantations, the stone curved.  Magic had waylaid the\nstrong arm of the young brave.  The stone poised an instant above\nthe forehead of Yaada's mother, then dropped with the weight of many\nmountains, and the last long sleep fell upon her.\n\n\"'Slayer of my mother!' stormed the girl, her suffering eyes fixed\nupon the medicine-man.  'Oh, I now see your black heart through your\nblack magic.  Through good magic you cut the \"Grey Archway,\" but\nyour evil magic you used upon young Ulka.  I saw your wicked eyes\nupon him; I heard your wicked incantations; I know your wicked\nheart.  You used your heartless magic in hope of winning me--in\nhope of making him an outcast of the tribe.  You cared not for my\nsorrowing heart, my motherless life to come.'  Then, turning to the\ntribe, she demanded: 'Who of you saw his evil eyes fixed on Ulka?\nWho of you heard his evil song?'\n\n\"'I,' and 'I,' and 'I,' came voice after voice.\n\n\"'The very air is poisoned that we breathe about him,' they\nshouted.  'The young man is blameless, his heart is as the sun;\nbut the man who has used his evil magic has a heart black and cold\nas the hours before the dawn.'\n\n\"Then Yaada's voice arose in a strange, sweet, sorrowful chant:\n\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\nthe edge of the cliff.  On its brink she hovered a moment with\noutstretched arms, as a sea gull poises on its weight--then she\ncalled:\n\n\"'Ulka, my Ulka!  Your hand is innocent of wrong; it was the evil\nmagic of your rival that slew my mother.  I must go to her; even you\ncannot keep 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\nof the rocks, radiant as stars; then together they plunged into\nthe sea.\"\n\n  *     *     *     *     *\n\nThe legend was ended.  Long ago we had passed the island with its\n\"Grey Archway\"; it was melting into the twilight, far astern.\n\nAs I brooded over this strange tale of a daughter's devotion, I\nwatched the sea and sky for something that would give me a clue\nto the inevitable sequel that the tillicum, like all his race,\nwas surely withholding until the opportune moment.\n\nSomething flashed through the darkening waters not a stone's-throw\nfrom the steamer.  I leaned forward, watching it intently.  Two\nsilvery fish were making a succession of little leaps and plunges\nalong the surface of the sea, their bodies catching the last tints\nof sunset, like flashing jewels.  I looked at the tillicum quickly.\nHe was watching me--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\ndo know us and our ways, for you are one of us.  Yes, those fish are\nseen only in these waters; there are never but two of them.  They\nare Yaada and her mate, seeking for the soul of the Haida woman--her\nmother.\"\n\n\n\n\n\nDEADMAN'S ISLAND\n\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 to-night 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\nFor many minutes we stood silently, leaning on the western rail of\nthe bridge as we watched the sunset across that beautiful little\nbasin of water known as Coal Harbor.  I have always resented that\njarring, unattractive name, for years ago, when I first plied paddle\nacross the gunwale of a light little canoe, and idled about its\nmargin, I named the sheltered little cove the Lost Lagoon.  This\nwas just to please my own fancy, for, as that perfect summer month\ndrifted on, the ever-restless tides left the harbor devoid of water\nat my favorite canoeing hour, and my pet idling-place was lost for\nmany days--hence my fancy to call it the Lost Lagoon.  But the\nchief, Indian-like, immediately adopted the name, at least when he\nspoke of the place to me, and, as we watched the sun slip behind the\nrim of firs, he expressed the wish that his dug-out were here instead\nof lying beached at the farther side of the park.\n\n\"If canoe was here, you and I we paddle close to shores all 'round\nyour Lost Lagoon: we make track just like half-moon.  Then we paddle\nunder this bridge, and go channel between Deadman's Island and\npark.  Then 'round where cannon speak time at nine o'clock.  Then\n'cross Inlet to Indian side of Narrows.\"\n\nI turned to look eastward, following in fancy the course he had\nsketched. The waters were still as the footsteps 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\non the irregular outline of the island pines.\n\n\"I have prowled the length and depth of it,\" I told him, \"climbed\nover every rock on its shores, crept under every tangled growth of\nits interior, explored its overgrown trails, and more than once\nnearly got lost in its very heart.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he half laughed, \"it pretty wild; not much good for\nanything.\"\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\nago they fight about it; Indian people; they say hundreds of years\nto come everybody will still fight--never be settled what that\nplace is, who it belong to, who has right to it.  No, never settle.\nDeadman's Island always 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\nI knew was 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,\nmy people say, that the scarlet fire-flower was first seen growing\nalong this 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\nof fine 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\nhave seldom 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;\nyou understand it then.  Now all peace; to-night all good tillicums;\neven dead man's spirit does not fight now, but long time after it\nhappen those spirits fought.\"\n\n\"And the legend?\" I ventured.\n\n\"Oh! yes,\" he replied, as if suddenly returning to the present from\nout a far country in the realm of time.  \"Indian people, they call\nit the '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\nfrom His 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\nto it.  Each wanted it as the stronghold of their witchcraft, their\nmagic.  Great bands of these medicine-men met on the small space,\nusing every sorcery in their power to drive their opponents away.\nThe witch-doctors of the North made their camp on the northern rim\nof the island; those from the South settled along the southern edge,\nlooking towards what is now the great city of Vancouver.  Both\nfactions danced, chanted, burned their magic powders, built their\nmagic fires, beat their magic rattles, but neither would give way,\nyet neither conquered.  About them, on the waters, on the mainlands,\nraged the warfare of their respective tribes--the Sagalie Tyee had\nforgotten His Indian children.\n\n\"After many months, the warriors on both sides weakened.  They said\nthe incantations of the rival medicine-men were bewitching them,\nwere making their hearts like children's, and their arms nerveless\nas women's.  So friend and foe arose as one man and drove the\nmedicine-men from the island, hounded them down the Inlet, herded\nthem through the Narrows, and banished them out to sea, where they\ntook refuge on one of the outer islands of the gulf.  Then the\ntribes once more fell upon each other in battle.\n\n\"The warrior blood of the North will always conquer.  They are\nthe stronger, bolder, more alert, more keen.  The snows and the\nice of their country make swifter pulse than the sleepy suns of\nthe South can awake in a man; their muscles are of sterner stuff,\ntheir endurance greater.  Yes, the northern tribes will always be\nvictors.*  But the craft and the strategy of the southern tribes\nare hard things to battle against.  While those of the North\nfollowed the medicine-men farther out to sea to make sure of their\nbanishment, those from the South returned under cover of night and\nseized the women and children and the old, enfeebled men in their\nenemy's camp, transported them all to the Island of Dead Men, and\nthere held them as captives.  Their war-canoes circled the island\nlike a fortification, through which drifted the sobs of the\nimprisoned women, the mutterings of the aged men, the wail of\nlittle children.\n\n* 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\"Again and again the men of the North assailed that circle of\ncanoes, and again and again were repulsed.  The air was thick with\npoisoned arrows, the water stained with blood.  But day by day the\ncircle of southern canoes grew thinner and thinner; the northern\narrows were telling, and truer of aim.  Canoes drifted everywhere,\nempty, or, worse still, manned only by dead men.  The pick of the\nsouthern warriors had already fallen, when their greatest Tyee\nmounted a large rock on the eastern shore.  Brave and unmindful of\na thousand weapons aimed at his heart, he uplifted his hand, palm\noutward--the signal for conference.  Instantly every northern arrow\nwas lowered, and every northern ear listened for his words.\n\n\"'Oh! men of the upper coast,' he said, 'you are more numerous\nthan we are; your tribe is larger, your endurance greater.  We are\ngrowing hungry, we are growing less in numbers.  Our captives--your\nwomen and children and old men--have lessened, too, our stores of\nfood.  If you refuse our terms we will yet fight to the finish.\nTo-morrow we will kill all our captives before your eyes, for we can\nfeed them no longer, or you can have your wives, your mothers, your\nfathers, your children, by giving us for each and every one of them\none of your best and bravest young warriors, who will consent to\nsuffer death in their stead.  Speak!  You have your choice.'\n\n\"In the northern canoes scores and scores of young warriors leapt\nto their feet.  The air was filled with glad cries, with exultant\nshouts.  The whole world seemed to ring with the voices of those\nyoung men who called 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\ncanoes, and stepped ashore.  They flaunted their eagle plumes with\nthe spirit and boldness of young gods.  Their shoulders were erect,\ntheir step was firm, their hearts strong.  Into their canoes they\ncrowded the two hundred captives.  Once more their women sobbed,\ntheir old men muttered, their children wailed, but those young\ncopper-colored gods never flinched, never faltered.  Their weak and\ntheir feeble were saved.  What mattered to them such a little thing\nas death?\n\n\"The released captives were quickly surrounded by their own people,\nbut the flower of their splendid nation was in the hands of their\nenemies, those valorous young men who thought so little of life that\nthey willingly, gladly laid it down to serve and to save those they\nloved and cared for.  Amongst them were war-tried warriors who had\nfought fifty battles, and boys not yet full grown, who were drawing\na bow-string for the first time; but their hearts, their courage,\ntheir self-sacrifice were as one.\n\n\"Out before a long file of southern warriors they stood.  Their\nchins uplifted, their eyes defiant, their breasts bared.  Each\nleaned forward and laid his weapons at his feet, then stood erect,\nwith empty hands, and laughed forth his challenge to death.\nA thousand arrows ripped the air, two hundred gallant northern\nthroats flung forth a death cry exultant, triumphant as conquering\nkings--then two hundred fearless northern hearts ceased to beat.\n\n\"But in the morning the southern tribes found the spot where they\nfell peopled with flaming fire-flowers.  Dread terror seized upon\nthem.  They abandoned the island, and when night again shrouded\nthem they manned their canoes and noiselessly slipped through the\nNarrows, turned their bows southward, and this coast-line knew\nthem 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\nDead Men.\"\n\nThe clustering pines and the outlines of the island's margin were\nnow dusky and indistinct.  Peace, peace lay over the waters, and the\npurple of the summer twilight had turned to grey, but I knew that in\nthe depths of the undergrowth on Deadman's Island there blossomed\na flower of flaming beauty; its colors were veiled in the coming\nnightfall, but somewhere down in the sanctuary of its petals pulsed\nthe heart's blood of many and valiant men.\n\n\n\n\n\nA SQUAMISH LEGEND OF NAPOLEON\n\n\nHolding an important place among the majority of curious tales held\nin veneration 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\ndrama that held the stage of Europe, and incidentally all the world\nduring the stormy days of the first Napoleon.\n\nThroughout Canada I have never failed to find an amazing knowledge\nof Napoleon Bonaparte amongst the very old and \"uncivilized\"\nIndians.  Perhaps they may be unfamiliar with every other historical\ncharacter from Adam down, but they will all tell you they have heard\nof the \"Great French Fighter,\" as they call the wonderful little\nCorsican.\n\nWhether this knowledge was obtained through the fact that our\nearliest settlers and pioneers were French, or whether Napoleon's\nalmost magical fighting career attracted the Indian mind to the\nexclusion of lesser warriors, I have never yet decided.  But the\nfact remains that the Indians of our generation are not as familiar\nwith Bonaparte's name as were their fathers and grandfathers,\nso either the predominance of English-speaking settlers or the\nthinning of their ancient war-loving blood by modern civilization\nand peaceful times must, one or the other, account for the younger\nIndian's ignorance of the Emperor of the French.\n\nIn telling me the legend of \"The Lost Talisman,\" my good tillicum,\nthe late Chief Capilano, began the story with the almost amazing\nquestion, Had I ever heard of Napoleon Bonaparte?  It was some\nmoments before I just caught the name, for his English, always\nquaint and beautiful, was at times a little halting; but when he\nsaid, by way of explanation, \"You know big fighter, Frenchman.\nThe English they beat him in big battle,\" I grasped immediately\nof 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\nhow it 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\nfrom the vertebra of a sea-serpent.\n\nIn telling me the story of Brockton Point and the valiant boy\nwho killed the monster, he dwelt lightly on the fact that all\npeople who approach the vicinity of the creature are palsied,\nboth mentally and physically--bewitched, in fact--so that their\nbones become disjointed and their brains incapable; but to-day he\nelaborated upon this peculiarity until I harked back to the boy\nof Brockton Point and asked how it was that his body and brain\nescaped this affliction.\n\n\"He was all good, and had no greed,\" he replied.  \"He was proof\nagainst all bad things.\"\n\nI nodded understandingly, and he proceeded to tell me that all\nsuccessful Indian fighters and warriors carried somewhere about\ntheir person a joint of a sea-serpent's vertebra; that the\nmedicine-men threw \"the power\" about them so that they were not\npersonally affected by this little \"charm,\" but that immediately\nthey approached an enemy the \"charm\" worked disaster, and victory\nwas assured to the fortunate possessor of the talisman.  There was\none particularly effective joint that had been treasured and\ncarried by the warriors of a great Squamish family for a century.\nThese warriors had conquered every foe they encountered, until\nthe talisman had become so renowned that the totem-pole of their\nentire \"clan\" was remodelled, and the new one crested by the\nfigure of a single joint of a sea-serpent's vertebra.\n\nAbout this time stories of Napoleon's first great achievements\ndrifted across the seas; not across the land--and just here may\nbe a clue to buried Coast-Indian history, which those who are\ncleverer at research than I can puzzle over.  The chief was most\nemphatic about the source of Indian knowledge of Napoleon.\n\n\"I suppose you heard of him from Quebec, through, perhaps, some\nof the French priests,\" I remarked.\n\n\"No, no,\" he contradicted hurriedly.  \"Not from East; we hear it\nfrom over the Pacific from the place they call Russia.\"  But who\nconveyed the news or by what means it came he could not further\nenlighten me.  But a strange thing happened to the Squamish family\nabout this time.  There was a large blood connection, but the only\nmale member living was a very old warrior, the hero of many battles\nand the possessor of the talisman.  On his death-bed his women of\nthree generations gathered about him; his wife, his sisters, his\ndaughters, his granddaughters, but not one man, nor yet a boy of\nhis own blood, stood by to speed his departing warrior spirit to\nthe land of peace and plenty.\n\n\"The charm cannot rest in the hands of women,\" he murmured almost\nwith his last breath.  \"Women may not war and fight other nations or\nother tribes; women are for the peaceful lodge and for the leading\nof little children.  They are for holding baby hands, teaching baby\nfeet to walk.  No, the charm cannot rest with you, women.  I have\nno brother, no cousin, no son, no grandson, and the charm must not\ngo to a lesser warrior than I.  None of our tribe, nor of any tribe\non the coast, ever conquered me.  The charm must go to one as\nunconquerable as I have been.  When I am dead send it across the\ngreat salt chuck, to the victorious 'Frenchman'; they call him\nNapoleon Bonaparte.\"  They were his 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\nto send it over-seas.  \"In the grave it will be dead,\" they argued.\n\"Let it still live on.  Let it help some other fighter to greatness\nand victory.\"\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\ntwo thin, dark, agile sailors, who kept aloof from the crew and\nconversed in another language.  These two came ashore with part of\nthe crew and talked in French with a wandering Hudson's Bay trapper,\nwho often lodged with the Squamish people.  Thus the women, who yet\nmourned over their dead warrior, knew these two strangers to be\nfrom the land where the great \"Frenchman\" was fighting against\nthe 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,\nas the 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\nand give it to the great 'Frenchman' who was as courageous and as\nbrave as their 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\nthey would not have the sagacity to plan an escape to their own\ncountry; might disjoint their bodies, so that their feet and hands\nwould be useless, and they would become as weak as children.  But\nthe women assured them that the charm only worked its magical powers\nover a man's enemies, that the ancient medicine-men had 'bewitched'\nit with this quality.  So the Frenchmen took it and promised that if\nit were in the power 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\nthe deck; some crouched, shaking as with palsy; some writhed for\na moment, then fell limp and seemingly boneless; only the two\nFrenchmen stood erect and strong and vital--the Squamish talisman\nhad already overcome their foes.  As the little sealer set sail\nup the gulf she was commanded by a crew of two Frenchmen--men who\nhad entered these waters as captives, who were leaving them as\nconquerors.  The palsied Russians were worse than useless, and\nwhat became of them the chief could not state; presumably they\nwere flung overboard, and by some trick of a kindly fate the\nFrenchmen at last reached the coast of France.\n\n\"Tradition is so indefinite about their movements subsequent to\nsailing out of the Inlet that even the ever-romantic and vividly\ncolored imaginations of the Squamish people have never supplied\nthe details of this beautifully childish, yet strangely historical\nfairy-tale.  But the voices of the trumpets of war, the beat of drums\nthroughout Europe heralded back to the wilds of the Pacific Coast\nforests the intelligence that the great Squamish 'charm' eventually\nreached the person of Napoleon; that from this time onward his\ncareer was one vast victory, that he won battle after battle,\nconquered nation after nation, and, but for the direst calamity\nthat could befall a warrior, would eventually have been master of\nthe world.\"\n\n\"What was this calamity, Chief?\" I asked, amazed at his knowledge\nof the great historical soldier and strategist.\n\nThe chief's voice again lowered to a whisper--his face was almost\nrigid with intentness as he replied:\n\n\"He lost the Squamish charm--lost it just before one great fight\nwith the English people.\"\n\nI looked at him curiously; he had been telling me the oddest mixture\nof history and superstition, of intelligence and ignorance, the\nmost whimsically absurd, yet impressive, tale I ever heard from\nIndian lips.\n\n\"What was the name of the great fight--did you ever hear it?\"\nI asked, wondering how much he knew of events which took place\nat the other side of the world a century agone.\n\n\"Yes,\" he said, carefully, thoughtfully; \"I hear the name sometime\nin London 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,\"\nhe replied.  \"That's it, Waterloo.\"\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE LURE IN STANLEY PARK\n\n\nThere is a well-known trail in Stanley Park that leads to what I\nalways love to call the \"Cathedral Trees\"--that group of some\nhalf-dozen forest giants that arch overhead with such superb\nloftiness.  But in all the world there is no cathedral whose marble\nor onyx columns can vie with those straight, clean, brown tree-boles\nthat teem with the sap and blood of life.  There is no fresco that\ncan rival the delicacy of lace-work they have festooned between\nyou and the far skies.  No tiles, no mosaic or inlaid marbles, are\nas fascinating as the bare, russet, fragrant floor outspreading\nabout their feet.  They are the acme of Nature's architecture, and\nin building them she has outrivalled all her erstwhile conceptions.\nShe will never originate a more faultless design, never erect a more\nperfect edifice.  But the divinely moulded trees and the man-made\ncathedral have one exquisite characteristic in common.  It is the\natmosphere of holiness.  Most of us have better impulses after\nviewing a stately cathedral, and none of us can stand amid that\nmajestic 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\ntrees without thinking of the glorious souls they contain, for\naccording to the Coast Indians they do harbor human souls, and the\nworld is better because they once had the speech and the hearts of\nmighty 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\"\nas best fitting what he wished to convey.  Some few yards beyond\nthe cathedral 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\n\"lure\" they all believe in.  There is not a tribe in the entire\ndistrict that does not know of this strange legend.  You will hear\nthe tale from those that gather at Eagle Harbor for the fishing,\nfrom the Fraser River tribes, from the Squamish at the Narrows, from\nthe Mission, from up the Inlet, even from the tribes at North Bend,\nbut no one will volunteer to be your guide, for having once come\nwithin the \"aura\" of the lure it is a human impossibility to leave\nit.  Your will-power is dwarfed, your intelligence blighted, your\nfeet will refuse to lead you out by a straight trail, you will\ncircle, circle for evermore about this magnet, for if death kindly\ncomes to your aid your immortal spirit will go on in that endless\ncircling that will bar it from entering the Happy Hunting Grounds.\n\nAnd, like the cathedral trees, the lure once lived, a human soul,\nbut in this instance it was a soul depraved, not sanctified.  The\nIndian belief is very beautiful concerning the results of good and\nevil in the human body.  The Sagalie Tyee [God] has His own way\nof immortalizing each.  People who are wilfully evil, who have no\nkindness in their hearts, who are bloodthirsty, cruel, vengeful,\nunsympathetic, the Sagalie Tyee turns to solid stone that will\nharbor no growth, even that of moss or lichen, for these stones\ncontain no moisture, just as their wicked hearts lacked the milk of\nhuman kindness.  The one famed exception, wherein a good man was\ntransformed into stone, was in the instance of Siwash Rock, but as\nthe Indian tells you of it he smiles with gratification as he calls\nyour attention to the tiny tree cresting that imperial monument.\nHe says the tree was always there to show the nations that the good\nin this man's heart kept on growing even when his body had ceased\nto be.  On the other hand, the Sagalie Tyee transforms the kindly\npeople, the humane, sympathetic, charitable, loving people into\ntrees, so that after death they may go on forever benefiting all\nmankind; they may yield fruit, give shade and shelter, afford\nunending service to the living by their usefulness as building\nmaterial and as firewood.  Their saps and gums, their fibres, their\nleaves, their blossoms, enrich, nourish, and sustain the human form;\nno evil is produced by trees--all, all is goodness, is hearty, is\nhelpfulness and growth.  They give refuge to the birds, they give\nmusic to the winds, and from them are carved the bows and arrows,\nthe canoes and paddles, bowls, spoons, and baskets.  Their service\nto mankind is priceless; the Indian that tells you this tale will\nenumerate all these attributes and virtues of the trees.  No\nwonder the Sagalie Tyee chose them to be the abode of souls good\nand 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\nby moss 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\nwent up and down the coast, over seas and far inland, casting her\nevil eye on innocent people, and bringing them untold evils and\ndiseases.  About her person she carried the renowned \"Bad Medicine\"\nthat every Indian believes in--medicine that weakened the arm of\nthe warrior in battle, that caused deformities, that poisoned minds\nand characters, that engendered madness, that bred plagues and\nepidemics; in short, that was the seed of every evil that could\nbefall mankind.  This witch-woman herself was immune from death;\ngenerations were born and grew to old age, and died, and other\ngenerations arose in their stead, but the witch-woman went about,\nher heart set against her kind. Her acts were evil, her purposes\nwicked. She broke hearts and bodies and souls; she gloried in tears,\nand revelled in unhappiness, and sent them broadcast wherever she\nwandered.  And in His high heaven the Sagalie Tyee wept with sorrow\nfor His afflicted human children.  He dared not let her die, for\nher spirit would still go on with its evil doing.  In mighty anger\nHe gave command to His Four Men (always representing the Deity)\nthat they should turn this witch-woman into a stone and enchain\nher spirit in its centre, that the curse of her might be lifted\nfrom the unhappy race.\n\nSo the Four Men entered their giant canoe, and headed, as was\ntheir custom, up the Narrows.  As they neared what is now known\nas Prospect Point they heard from the heights above them a laugh,\nand, looking up, they beheld the witch-woman jeering defiantly at\nthem.  They landed, and, scaling the rocks, pursued her as she\ndanced away, eluding them like a will-o'-the-wisp as she called\nout 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.\"\nOn and on she danced through the thickest of the wilderness, on and\non they followed until they reached the very heart of the sea-girt\nneck of land we know as Stanley Park.  Then the tallest, the\nmightiest of the Four Men, lifted his hand and cried out: \"Oh!\nwoman of the stony heart, be stone for evermore, and bear forever\na black stain for each one of your evil deeds.\"  And as he spoke\nthe witch-woman was transformed into this stone that tradition says\nis in the centre of the park.\n\nSuch is the \"Legend of the Lure.\"  Whether or not this stone is really\nin existence who knows?  One thing is positive, however: no Indian\nwill ever help to discover it.\n\nThree different Indians have told me that fifteen or eighteen years\nago, two tourists--a man and a woman--were lost in Stanley Park.\nWhen found a week later the man was dead, the woman mad, and each\nof my informants firmly believed they had, in their wanderings,\nencountered \"the stone\" and were compelled to circle around it,\nbecause of its powerful lure.\n\nBut this wild tale, fortunately, had a most beautiful conclusion.\nThe Four Men, fearing that the evil heart imprisoned in the stone\nwould still work destruction, said: \"At the end of the trail we\nmust place so good and great a thing that it will be mightier,\nstronger, more powerful than this evil.\"  So they chose from the\nnations the kindliest, most benevolent men, men whose hearts were\nfilled with the love of their fellow-beings, and transformed these\nmerciful souls into the stately group of \"Cathedral Trees.\"\n\nHow well the purpose of the Sagalie Tyee has wrought its effect\nthrough time!  The good has predominated, as He planned it to, for\nis not the stone hidden in some unknown part of the park where eyes\ndo not see it and feet do not follow--and do not the thousands\nwho come to us from the uttermost parts of the world seek that\nwondrous beauty spot, and stand awed by the majestic silence, the\nalmost holiness of that group of giants?\n\nMore than any other legend that the Indians about Vancouver have\ntold me does this tale reveal the love of the coast native for\nkindness and his hatred of cruelty.  If these tribes really have\never been a warlike race I cannot think they pride themselves much\non the occupation.  If you talk with any of them, and they mention\nsome man they particularly like or admire, their first qualification\nof him is: \"He's a kind man.\"  They never say he is brave, or rich,\nor successful, or even strong, that characteristic so loved by\nthe red man.  To these coast tribes if a man is \"kind\" he is\neverything.  And almost without exception their legends deal with\nrewards for tenderness and self-abnegation, and personal and mental\ncleanliness.\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\nworst.\n\nIn talking with my many good tillicums, I find this witch-woman\nlegend is the most universally known and thoroughly believed in\nof all traditions they have honored me by revealing to me.\n\n\n\n\n\nDEER LAKE\n\n\nFew white men ventured inland, a century ago, in the days of the\nfirst Chief Capilano, when the spoils of the mighty Fraser River\npoured into copper-colored hands, but did not find their way to the\nremotest corners of the earth, as in our times, when the gold from\nits sources, the salmon from its mouth, the timber from its shores\nare world-known riches.\n\nThe fisherman's craft, the hunter's cunning, were plied where now\ncities and industries, trade and commerce, buying and selling, hold\nsway.  In those days the moccasined foot awoke no echo in the forest\ntrails.  Primitive weapons, arms, implements, and utensils were the\nonly means of the Indians' food-getting.  His livelihood depended\nupon his own personal prowess, his skill in woodcraft and water\nlore.  And, as this is a story of an elk-bone spear, the reader must\nfirst be in sympathy with the fact that this rude instrument, most\ndeftly fashioned, was of priceless value to the first Capilano, to\nwhom it had come through three generations of ancestors, all of whom\nhad been experienced hunters and dexterous fishermen.\n\nCapilano himself was without a rival as a spearman.  He knew the\nmoods of the Fraser River, the habits of its thronging tenants, as\nno other man has ever known them before or since.  He knew every\nisle and inlet along the coast, every boulder, the sand-bars, the\nstill pools, the temper of the tides.  He knew the spawning-grounds,\nthe secret streams that fed the larger rivers, the outlets of\nrock-bound lakes, the turns and tricks of swirling rapids.  He\nknew the haunts of bird and beast and fish and fowl, and was\nmaster of the arts and artifice that man must use when matching\nhis brain against the eluding wiles of the untamed creatures of\nthe wilderness.\n\nOnce only did his cunning fail him, once only did Nature baffle\nhim with her mysterious fabric of waterways and land-lures.  It\nwas when he was led to the mouth of the unknown river, which has\nevaded discovery through all the centuries, but which--so say the\nIndians--still sings on its way through some buried channel that\nleads from the lake to the sea.\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\nto the mouth of False Creek.  Here he encountered a very king of\nseals, a colossal creature that gladdened the hunter's eyes as\ngame worthy of his skill.  For this particular prize he would cast\nthe elk-bone spear.  It had never failed his sire, his grandsire,\nhis great-grandsire.  He knew it would not fail him now.  A long,\npliable, cedar-fibre rope lay in his canoe.  Many expert fingers had\nwoven and plaited the rope, had beaten and oiled it until it was\nsoft and flexible as a serpent.  This he attached to the spearhead,\nand with deft, unerring aim cast it at the king seal.  The weapon\nstruck home.  The gigantic creature shuddered, and, with a cry like\na hurt child, it plunged down into the sea.  With the rapidity and\nstrength of a giant fish it scudded inland with the rising tide,\nwhile Capilano paid out the rope its entire length, and, as it\nstretched taut, felt the canoe leap forward, propelled by the mighty\nstrength of the creature which lashed the waters into whirlpools, as\nthough it was possessed with the power and properties of a whale.\n\nUp the stretch of False Creek the man and monster drove their\ncourse, where a century hence great city bridges were to over-arch\nthe waters.  They strove and struggled each for the mastery; neither\nof them weakened, neither of them faltered--the one dragging, the\nother driving.  In the end it was to be a matching of brute and\nhuman wits, not forces.  As they neared the point where now Main\nStreet bridge flings its shadow across the waters, the brute\nleaped high into the air, then plunged headlong into the depths.\nThe impact ripped the rope from Capilano's hands.  It rattled\nacross the gunwale.  He stood staring at the spot where it had\ndisappeared--the brute had been victorious.  At low tide the Indian\nmade search.  No trace of his game, of his precious elk-bone spear,\nof his cedar-fibre rope, could be found.  With the loss of the\nlatter he firmly believed his luck as a hunter would be gone.  So he\npatrolled the mouth of False Creek for many moons.  His graceful,\nhigh-bowed canoe rarely touched other waters, but the seal king had\ndisappeared.  Often he thought long strands of drifting sea grasses\nwere his lost cedar-fibre rope.  With other spears, with other\ncedar-fibres, with paddle-blade and cunning traps he dislodged the\nweeds from their moorings, but they slipped their slimy lengths\nthrough his eager hands: his best spear with its attendant coil\nwas 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\ninto the night dashes of flaming scarlet pulsed far beyond the head\nof False Creek.  The color rose and fell like a beckoning hand, and,\nIndian-like, he immediately attached some portentous meaning to\nthe unusual sight.  That it was some omen he never doubted, so he\npaddled inland, beached his canoe, and took the trail towards the\nlittle group of lakes that crowd themselves into the area that lies\nbetween the present cities of Vancouver and New Westminster.  But\nlong before he reached the shores of Deer Lake he discovered that\nthe beckoning hand was in reality flame.  The little body of water\nwas surrounded by forest fires.  One avenue alone stood open.  It\nwas a group of giant trees that as yet the flames had not reached.\nAs he neared the point he saw a great moving mass of living things\nleaving the lake and hurrying northward through this one egress.  He\nstood, listening, intently watching with alert eyes; the zwirr of\nmyriads of little travelling feet caught his quick ear--the moving\nmass was an immense colony of beaver.  Thousands upon thousands\nof them.  Scores of baby beavers staggered along, following their\nmothers; scores of older beavers that had felled trees and built\ndams through many seasons; a countless army of trekking fur-bearers,\nall under the generalship of a wise old leader, who, as king of the\ncolony, advanced some few yards ahead of his battalions.  Out of\nthe waters through the forest towards the country to the north they\njourneyed.  Wandering hunters said they saw them cross Burrard Inlet\nat the Second Narrows, heading inland as they reached the farther\nshore.  But where that mighty army of royal little Canadians set\nup their new colony no man knows.  Not even the astuteness of the\nfirst Capilano ever discovered their destination.  Only one thing\nwas 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\nfirst thought was some dead and dethroned king beaver on the shore.\nA huge carcass lay half in, half out, of the lake.  Approaching\nit, he saw the wasted body of a giant seal.  There could never be\ntwo seals of that marvellous size.  His intuition now grasped the\nmeaning of the omen of the beckoning flame that had called him from\nthe far coasts of Point Grey.  He stooped above his dead conqueror\nand found, embedded in its decaying flesh, the elk-bone spear of\nhis forefathers, and, trailing away at the water's rim, was a long,\nflexible, cedar-fibre rope.\n\nAs he extracted this treasured heirloom he felt the \"power,\" that\nmen of magic possess, creep up his sinewy arms.  It entered his\nheart, his blood, his brain.  For a long time he sat and chanted\nsongs that only great medicine-men may sing, and, as the hours\ndrifted by, the heat of the forest fires subsided, the flames\ndiminished into smouldering blackness.  At daybreak the forest\nfire was dead, but its beckoning fingers had served their purpose.\nThe magic elk-bone spear had come back to its own.\n\nUntil the day of his death the first Capilano searched for the\nunknown river up which the seal travelled from False Creek to\nDeer Lake; but its channel is a secret that even Indian eyes have\nnot 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\nto the sea, its course is as unknown, its channel is as hopelessly\nlost as the brave little army of beavers that a century ago\nmarshalled their forces and travelled up into the great lone north.\n\n\n\n\n\nA ROYAL MOHAWK CHIEF\n\n\nHow many Canadians are aware that in Prince Arthur, Duke of\nConnaught, and only surviving son of Queen Victoria, who has been\nappointed to represent King George V. in Canada, they undoubtedly\nhave what many wish for--one bearing an ancient Canadian title as\nGovernor-General of all the Dominion?  It would be difficult to find\na man more Canadian than any one of the fifty chiefs who compose\nthe parliament of the ancient Iroquois nation, that loyal race of\nRedskins that has fought for the British crown against all of the\nenemies thereof, adhering to the British flag through the wars\nagainst both the French and the colonists.\n\nArthur, Duke of Connaught, is the only living white man who to-day\nhas an undisputed right to the title of \"Chief of the Six Nations\nIndians\" (known collectively as the Iroquois).  He possesses the\nprivilege of sitting in their councils, of casting his vote on all\nmatters relative to the governing of the tribes, the disposal of\nreservation lands, the appropriation of both the principal and\ninterest of the more than half a million dollars these tribes hold\nin Government bonds at Ottawa, accumulated from the sales of their\nlands.  In short, were every drop of blood in his royal veins red,\ninstead of blue, he could not be more fully qualified as an Indian\nchief than he now is, not even were his title one of the fifty\nhereditary ones whose illustrious names composed the Iroquois\nconfederacy before the Paleface ever set foot in America.\n\nIt was on the occasion of his first visit to Canada in 1869, when\nhe was little more than a boy, that Prince Arthur received, upon\nhis arrival at Quebec, an address of welcome from his royal mother's\n\"Indian Children\" on the Grand River Reserve, in Brant county,\nOntario.  In addition to this welcome they had a request to make of\nhim: would he accept the title of Chief and visit their reserve to\ngive them the opportunity of conferring?\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\nand kings to be honored, so she freely accords like honor to her\nsubjects, it matters not whether they be white, black, or red.\n\nYoung Arthur was delighted--royal lads are pretty much like all\nother boys; the unique ceremony would be a break in the endless\nround of state receptions, banquets, and addresses.  So he accepted\nthe Red Indians' compliment, knowing well that it was the loftiest\nhonor these people could confer upon a white man.\n\nIt was the morning of October first when the royal train steamed\ninto the little city of Brantford, where carriages awaited to\ntake the Prince and his suite to the \"Old Mohawk Church,\" in the\nvicinity of which the ceremony was to take place.  As the Prince's\nespecial escort, Onwanonsyshon, head chief of the Mohawks, rode on a\njet-black pony beside the carriage.  The chief was garmented in full\nnative costume--a buckskin suit, beaded moccasins, headband of owl's\nand eagle's feathers, and ornaments hammered from coin silver that\nliterally covered his coat and leggings.  About his shoulders was\nflung a scarlet blanket, consisting of the identical broadcloth from\nwhich the British army tunics are made; this he \"hunched\" with his\nshoulders from time to time in true Indian fashion.  As they drove\nalong the Prince chatted boyishly with his Mohawk escort, and once\nleaned forward to pat the black pony on its shining neck and speak\nadmiringly of it.  It was a warm autumn day: the roads were dry and\ndusty, and, after a mile or so, the boy-prince brought from beneath\nthe carriage seat a basket of grapes.  With his handkerchief he\nflicked the dust from them, handed a bunch to the chief, and took\none himself.  An odd spectacle to be traversing a country road: an\nEnglish prince and an Indian chief, riding amicably side by side,\nenjoying a banquet of grapes like two school-boys.\n\nOn reaching the church, Arthur leapt lightly to the greensward.\nFor a moment he stood, rigid, gazing before him at his future\nbrother-chiefs.  His escort had given him a faint idea of what\nhe was to see, but he certainly never expected to be completely\nsurrounded by three hundred full-blooded Iroquois braves and\nwarriors, such as now encircled him on every side.  Every Indian\nwas in war-paint and feathers, some stripped to the waist, their\ncopper-colored skins brilliant with paints, dyes, and \"patterns\";\nall carried tomahawks, scalping-knives, and bows and arrows.  Every\nred throat gave a tremendous war-whoop as he alighted, which was\nrepeated again and again, as for that half moment he stood silent, a\nslim, boyish figure, clad in light grey tweeds--a singular contrast\nto the stalwarts in gorgeous costumes who crowded about him.  His\nyoung face paled to ashy whiteness, then with true British grit he\nextended his right hand and raised his black \"billy-cock\" hat with\nhis left.  At the same time he took one step forward.  Then the\nwar-cries broke forth anew, deafening, savage, terrible cries, as\none by one the entire three hundred filed past, the Prince shaking\nhands with each one, and removing his glove to do so.  This strange\nreception over, Onwanonsyshon rode up, and, flinging his scarlet\nblanket on the grass, dismounted and asked the Prince to stand\non it.\n\nThen stepped forward an ancient chief, father of Onwanonsyshon,\nand Speaker of the Council.  He was old in inherited and personal\nloyalty to the British crown.  He had fought under Sir Isaac Brock\nat Queenston Heights in 1812, while yet a mere boy, and upon him was\nlaid the honor of making his Queen's son a chief.  Taking Arthur\nby the hand, this venerable warrior walked slowly to and fro across\nthe blanket, chanting as he went the strange, wild formula of\ninduction.  From time to time he was interrupted by loud expressions\nof approval and assent from the vast throng of encircling braves,\nbut apart from this no sound was heard but the low, weird monotone\nof a ritual older than the white man's foot-prints 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\nthe formula, was of the Bear clan.  His son, Onwanonsyshon, was of\nthe Wolf (the clanship descends through the mother's side of the\nfamily).  Then one other chief, of the Turtle clan, and in whose\nveins coursed the blood of the historic Brant, now stepped to the\nedge of the scarlet blanket.  The chant ended, these two young\nchiefs received the Prince into the Mohawk tribe, conferring upon\nhim the name of \"Kavakoudge,\" which means \"the sun flying from\nEast to West under the guidance of the Great Spirit.\"\n\nOnwanonsyshon then took from his waist a brilliant deep-red sash,\nheavily embroidered with beads, porcupine quills, and dyed\nmoose-hair, placing it over the Prince's left shoulder and knotting\nit beneath his right arm.  The ceremony was ended.  The constitution\nthat Hiawatha had founded centuries ago, a constitution wherein\nfifty chiefs, no more, no less, should form the parliament of the\n\"Six Nations,\" had been shattered and broken, because this race of\nloyal red men desired to do honor to a slender young boy-prince,\nwho now bears the fifty-first title 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\nby Arthur of Connaught.\n\nAfter the ceremony the Prince entered the church to autograph his\nname in the ancient Bible, which, with a silver Holy Communion\nservice, a bell, two tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments,\nand a bronze British coat of arms, had been presented to the\nMohawks by Queen Anne.  He inscribed \"Arthur\" just below the\n\"Albert Edward,\" which, as Prince of Wales, the late King wrote\nwhen 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\nbe placed in the Council House of the \"Six Nations,\" where they\ndecorate the walls to-day.\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\nwas not here to wear it when Arthur of Connaught again set foot on\nCanadian shores.\n\nMany of these facts I have culled from a paper that lies on my desk;\nit is yellowing with age, and bears the date, \"Toronto, October 2,\n1869,\" and on the margin is written, in a clear, half-boyish hand,\n\"Onwanonsyshon, with kind regards from your brother-chief, Arthur.\"","title":"Legends of Vancouver","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":28237}