Produced by Al Haines
[Illustration: Cover art]
[Frontispiece: E. Pauline Johnson]
Legends of
Vancouver
By
E. PAULINE JOHNSON
(Tekahionwake)
_Eighth Edition_
ILLUSTRATED
Published by
Saturday Sunset Presses
Vancouver, B. C.
1913
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY E. PAULINE JOHNSON
These legends are printed by courtesy of the "Vancouver Daily
Province," in which journal they first appeared.
Printed by
SATURDAY SUNSET PRESSES
Vancouver, B. C.
Preface
I have been asked to write a preface to these Legends of Vancouver,
which, in conjunction with the members of the Publication
Sub-committee--Mrs. Lefevre, Mr. L. W. Makovski and Mr. R. W.
Douglas--I have helped to put through the press. But scarcely any
prefatory remarks are necessary. This book may well stand on its own
merits. Still, it may be permissible to record one's glad satisfaction
that a poet has arisen to cast over the shoulders of our grey
mountains, our trail-threaded forests, our tide-swept waters, and the
streets and skyscrapers of our hurrying city, a gracious mantle of
romance. Pauline Johnson has linked the vivid present with the
immemorial past. Vancouver takes on a new aspect as we view it through
her eyes. In the imaginative power that she has brought to these
semi-historical sagas, and in the liquid flow of her rhythmical prose,
she has shown herself to be a literary worker of whom we may well be
proud: she has made a most estimable contribution to purely Canadian
literature.
BERNARD McEVOY
Author's Foreword
These legends (with two or three exceptions) were told to me personally
by my honored friend, the late Chief Joe Capilano, of Vancouver, whom I
had the privilege of first meeting in London in 1906, when he visited
England and was received at Buckingham Palace by their Majesties King
Edward VII and Queen Alexandra.
To the fact that I was able to greet Chief Capilano in the Chinook
tongue, while we were both many thousands of miles from home, I owe the
friendship and the confidence which he so freely gave me when I came to
reside on the Pacific Coast. These legends he told me from time to
time, just as the mood possessed him, and he frequently remarked that
they had never been revealed to any other English-speaking person save
myself.
E. PAULINE JOHNSON (Tekahionwake)
Biographical Notice
E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) is the youngest child of a family of
four born to the late G. H. M. Johnson (Onwanonsyshon), Head Chief of
the Six Nations Indians, and his wife Emily S. Howells. The latter was
of English parentage, her birthplace being Bristol, but the land of her
adoption Canada.
Chief Johnson was of the renowned Mohawk tribe, being a scion of one of
the fifty noble families which composed the historical confederation
founded by Hiawatha upwards of four hundred years ago, and known at
that period as the Brotherhood of the Five Nations, but which was
afterwards named the Iroquois by the early French missionaries and
explorers. For their loyalty to the British Crown they were granted
the magnificent lands bordering the Grand River, in the County of
Brant, Ontario, on which the tribes still live.
It was upon this Reserve, on her father's estate, "Chiefswood," that
Pauline Johnson was born. The loyalty of her ancestors breathes in her
prose, as well as in her poetic writings.
Her education was neither extensive nor elaborate. It embraced neither
high school nor college. A nursery governess for two years at home,
three years at an Indian day school half a mile from her home, and two
years in the Central School of the city of Brantford, was the extent of
her educational training. But, besides this, she acquired a wide
general knowledge, having been through childhood and early girlhood a
great reader, especially of poetry. Before she was twelve years old
she had read Scott, Longfellow, Byron, Shakespeare, and such books as
Addison's "Spectator," Foster's Essays and Owen Meredith's writings.
The first periodicals to accept her poems and place them before the
public were "Gems of Poetry," a small magazine published in New York,
and "The Week," established by the late Prof. Goldwin Smith, of
Toronto, the New York "Independent" and Toronto "Saturday Night."
Since then she has contributed to most of the high-grade magazines,
both on this continent and England.
Her writings having brought her into notice, the next step in Miss
Johnson's career was her appearance on the public platform as a reciter
of her own poems. For this she had natural talent, and in the exercise
of it she soon developed a marked ability, joined with a personal
magnetism, that was destined to make her a favorite with audiences from
the Atlantic to the Pacific. Her friend, Mr. Frank Yeigh, of Toronto,
provided for a series of recitals having that scope, with the object of
enabling her to go to England to arrange for the publication of her
poems. Within two years this aim was accomplished, her book of poems,
"The White Wampum," being published by John Lane, of the Bodley Head.
She took with her numerous letters of introduction, including one from
the Governor-General, the Earl of Aberdeen, and she soon gained both
social and literary standing. Her book was received with much favor,
both by reviewers and the public. After giving many recitals in
fashionable drawing-rooms, she returned to Canada, and made her first
tour to the Pacific Coast, giving recitals at all the cities and towns
en route. Since then she has crossed the Rocky Mountains no fewer than
nineteen times.
Miss Johnson's pen had not been idle, and in 1903 the Geo. N. Morang
Co., of Toronto, published her second book of poems, entitled "Canadian
Born," which was also well received.
After a number of recitals, which included Newfoundland and the
Maritime Provinces, she went to England again in 1906 and made her
first appearance in Steinway Hall, under the distinguished patronage of
Lord and Lady Strathcona. In the following year she again visited
London, returning by way of the United States, where she gave many
recitals. After another tour of Canada she decided to give up public
work, to make Vancouver, B. C., her home, and to devote herself to
literary work.
Only a woman of remarkable powers of endurance could have borne up
under the hardships necessarily encountered in travelling through
North-western Canada in pioneer days as Miss Johnson did; and shortly
after settling down in Vancouver the exposure and hardship she had
endured began to tell on her, and her health completely broke down.
For almost a year she has been an invalid, and as she is unable to
attend to the business herself, a trust has been formed by some of the
leading citizens of her adopted city for the purpose of collecting and
publishing for her benefit her later works. Among these are the
beautiful Indian Legends contained in this volume, which she has been
at great pains to collect, and a series of boys' stories, which have
been exceedingly well received by magazine readers.
During the sixteen years Miss Johnson was travelling, she had many
varied and interesting experiences. She travelled the old Battleford
trail before the railroad went through, and across the Boundary country
in British Columbia in the romantic days of the early pioneers. Once
she took an eight hundred and fifty mile drive up the Cariboo trail to
the gold fields. She has always been an ardent canoeist, and has run
many strange rivers, crossed many a lonely lake, and camped in many an
unfrequented place. These venturesome trips she made more from her
inherent love of Nature and adventure than from any necessity of her
profession.
* * * * *
Miss Pauline Johnson died in Vancouver on March 7, 1913. In accordance
with her last wish her ashes were buried in Stanley Park within sight
and sound of Siwash Rock, where the main driveway round the park,
coming from the English Bay entrance, divides east and west--the
western branch sloping down towards the rock and the eastern going to
the Big Tree. An editorial in the "Vancouver Daily Province" of March
8 said:
"The keynote of her whole disposition was a generous charity towards
everything and everybody with whom she came in contact. There was no
trouble too great for her to take, no detail too small for her to
neglect when it was a matter of giving happiness to others. She was
one of those great souls who would starve themselves on the trail, work
unwearingly [Transcriber's note: unwearyingly?] for her companions,
cheer them ever onwards through good times and bad, and rejoice with
them when the goal was achieved. She loved life with a passionate
devotion that was almost pathetic in its intensity. In spite of all
her travelling, all her experiences, which were by no means easy,
Pauline Johnson never lost her capacity for getting the best out of
life. She was absolutely natural and simple in her love of happiness.
She disliked artificiality of any kind. The seasons as they came and
went were in themselves a constant source of pleasure to her. She
loved the Pacific coast with its ever-changing colors, the sea and the
deeply gashed mountains. The wind in the great firs and the roaring of
the mountain torrents were music in her ears. With the passing of
winter passed also the soul of Pauline Johnson to the happy hunting
grounds, there to find eternal freedom untrammeled by mortality. To
all who knew her she was the 'best beloved vagabond.' It was always
fine weather and good going on the trail of life when Pauline Johnson
blazed the way."
Contents
Preface
Author's Foreword
Biographical Notice
The Two Sisters
The Siwash Rock
The Recluse
The Lost Salmon Run
The Deep Waters
The Sea-Serpent
The Lost Island
Point Grey
The Tulameen Trail
The Grey Archway
Deadman's Island
A Squamish Legend of Napoleon
The Lure in Stanley Park
Deer Lake
A Royal Mohawk Chief
List of Illustrations
Frontispiece--Portrait
The Lions (The Two Sisters)
The Siwash Rock
Capilano Canyon
The Capilano River
Entrance to the Narrows
Kitsilano Beach
The Seven Sisters, Stanley Park
The Two Sisters
THE LIONS
You can see them as you look towards the north and the west, where the
dream hills swim into the sky amid their ever-drifting clouds of pearl
and grey. They catch the earliest hint of sunrise, they hold the last
color of sunset. Twin mountains they are, lifting their twin peaks
above the fairest city in all Canada, and known throughout the British
Empire as "The Lions of Vancouver." Sometimes the smoke of forest
fires blurs them until they gleam like opals in a purple atmosphere,
too beautiful for words to paint. Sometimes the slanting rains festoon
scarfs of mist about their crests, and the peaks fade into shadowy
outlines, melting, melting, forever melting into the distances. But
for most days in the year the sun circles the twin glories with a sweep
of gold. The moon washes them with a torrent of silver. Often-times,
when the city is shrouded in rain, the sun yellows their snows to a
deep orange, but through sun and shadow they stand immovable, smiling
westward above the waters of the restless Pacific, eastward above the
superb beauty of the Capilano Canyon. But the Indian tribes do not
know these peaks as "The Lions." Even the Chief, whose feet have so
recently wandered to the Happy Hunting Grounds, never heard the name
given them until I mentioned it to him one dreamy August day, as
together we followed the trail leading to the canyon. He seemed so
surprised at the name that I mentioned the reason it had been applied
to them, asking him if he recalled the Landseer Lions in Trafalgar
Square. Yes, he remembered those splendid sculptures, and his quick
eye saw the resemblance instantly. It appeared to please him, and his
fine face expressed the haunting memories of the far-away roar of Old
London. But the "call of the blood" was stronger, and presently he
referred to the Indian legend of those peaks--a legend that I have
reason to believe is absolutely unknown to thousands of Palefaces who
look upon "The Lions" daily, without the love for them that is in the
Indian heart; without knowledge of the secret of "The Two Sisters."
The legend was intensely fascinating as it left his lips in the quaint
broken English that is never so dulcet as when it slips from an Indian
tongue. His inimitable gestures, strong, graceful, comprehensive, were
like a perfectly chosen frame embracing a delicate painting, and his
brooding eyes were as the light in which the picture hung. "Many
thousands of years ago," he began, "there were no twin peaks like
sentinels guarding the outposts of this sunset coast. They were placed
there long after the first creation, when the Sagalie Tyee moulded the
mountains, and patterned the mighty rivers where the salmon run,
because of His love for His Indian children, and His Wisdom for their
necessities. In those times there were many and mighty Indian tribes
along the Pacific--in the mountain ranges, at the shores and sources of
the great Fraser River. Indian law ruled the land. Indian customs
prevailed. Indian beliefs were regarded. Those were the legend-making
ages when great things occurred to make the traditions we repeat to our
children today. Perhaps the greatest of these traditions is the story
of 'The Two Sisters,' for they are known to us as 'The Chief's
Daughters,' and to them we owe the Great Peace in which we live, and
have lived for many countless moons. There is an ancient custom
amongst the Coast tribes that when our daughters step from childhood
into the great world of womanhood the occasion must be made one of
extreme rejoicing. The being who possesses the possibility of someday
mothering a man child, a warrior, a brave, receives much consideration
in most nations, but to us, the Sunset Tribes, she is honored above all
people. The parents usually give a great potlatch, and a feast that
lasts many days. The entire tribe and the surrounding tribes are
bidden to this festival. More than that, sometimes when a great Tyee
celebrates for his daughter, the tribes from far up the coast, from the
distant north, from inland, from the island, from the Cariboo country,
are gathered as guests to the feast. During these days of rejoicing,
the girl is placed in a high seat, an exalted position, for is she not
marriageable? And does not marriage mean motherhood? And does not
motherhood mean a vaster nation of brave sons and of gentle daughters,
who, in their turn, will give us sons and daughters of their own?
"But it was many thousands of years ago that a great Tyee had two
daughters that grew to womanhood at the same springtime, when the first
great run of salmon thronged the rivers, and the ollallie bushes were
heavy with blossoms. These two daughters were young, lovable, and oh!
very beautiful. Their father, the great Tyee, prepared to make a feast
such as the Coast had never seen. There were to be days and days of
rejoicing, the people were to come for many leagues, were to bring
gifts to the girls and to receive gifts of great value from the Chief,
and hospitality was to reign as long as pleasuring feet could dance,
and enjoying lips could laugh, and mouths partake of the excellence of
the Chief's fish, game and ollallies.
[Illustration: THE LIONS (THE TWO SISTERS)
Bishop & Christie, Photo.]
"The only shadow on the joy of it all was war, for the tribe of the
great Tyee was at war with the Upper Coast Indians, those who lived
north, near what is named by the Paleface as the port of Prince Rupert.
Giant war canoes slipped along the entire coast, war parties paddled up
and down, war songs broke the silences of the nights, hatred,
vengeance, strife, horror festered everywhere like sores on the surface
of the earth. But the great Tyee, after warring for weeks, turned and
laughed at the battle and the bloodshed, for he had been victor in
every encounter, and he could well afford to leave the strife for a
brief week and feast in his daughters' honor, nor permit any mere enemy
to come between him and the traditions of his race and household. So
he turned insultingly deaf ears to their war cries; he ignored with
arrogant indifference their paddle dips that encroached within his own
coast waters, and he prepared, as a great Tyee should, to royally
entertain his tribesmen in honor of his daughters.
"But seven suns before the great feast, these two maidens came before
him, hand clasped in hand.
"'Oh! our father,' they said, 'may we speak?'
"'Speak, my daughters, my girls with the eyes of April, the hearts of
June'" (early spring and early summer would be the more accurate Indian
phrasing).
"'Some day, Oh! our father, we may mother a man child, who may grow to
be just such a powerful Tyee as you are, and for this honor that may
some day be ours we have come to crave a favor of you--you, Oh! our
father.'
"'It is your privilege at this celebration to receive any favor your
hearts may wish,' he replied graciously, placing his fingers beneath
their girlish chins. 'The favor is yours before you ask it, my
daughters.'
"'Will you, for our sakes, invite the great northern hostile tribe--the
tribe you war upon--to this, our feast?' they asked fearlessly.
"'To a peaceful feast, a feast in the honor of women?' he exclaimed
incredulously.
"'So we would desire it,' they answered.
"'And so shall it be,' he declared. 'I can deny you nothing this day,
and some time you may bear sons to bless this peace you have asked, and
to bless their mother's sire for granting it.' Then he turned to all
the young men of the tribe and commanded, 'Build fires at sunset on all
the coast headlands--fires of welcome. Man your canoes and face the
north, greet the enemy, and tell them that I, the Tyee of the
Capilanos, ask--no, command that they join me for a great feast in
honor of my two daughters.' And when the northern tribes got this
invitation they flocked down the coast to this feast of a Great Peace.
They brought their women and their children: they brought game and
fish, gold and white stone beads, baskets and carven ladles, and
wonderful woven blankets to lay at the feet of their now acknowledged
ruler, the great Tyee. And he, in turn, gave such a potlatch that
nothing but tradition can vie with it. There were long, glad days of
joyousness, long pleasurable nights of dancing and camp fires, and vast
quantities of food. The war canoes were emptied of their deadly
weapons and filled with the daily catch of salmon. The hostile war
songs ceased, and in their place were heard the soft shuffle of dancing
feet, the singing voices of women, the play-games of the children of
two powerful tribes which had been until now ancient enemies, for a
great and lasting brotherhood was sealed between them--their war songs
were ended forever.
"Then the Sagalie Tyee smiled on His Indian children: 'I will make
these young-eyed maidens immortal,' He said. In the cup of His hands
He lifted the Chief's two daughters and set them forever in a high
place, for they had borne two offspring--Peace and Brotherhood--each of
which is now a great Tyee ruling this land.
"And on the mountain crest the Chief's daughters can be seen wrapped in
the suns, the snows, the stars of all seasons, for they have stood in
this high place for thousands of years, and will stand for thousands of
years to come, guarding the peace of the Pacific Coast and the quiet of
the Capilano Canyon."
* * * * *
This is the Indian legend of "The Lions of Vancouver" as I had it from
one who will tell me no more the traditions of his people.
The Siwash Rock
Unique, and so distinct from its surroundings as to suggest rather the
handicraft of man than a whim of Nature, it looms up at the entrance to
the Narrows, a symmetrical column of solid grey stone. There are no
similar formations within the range of vision, or indeed within many a
day's paddle up and down the coast. Amongst all the wonders, the
natural beauties that encircle Vancouver, the marvels of mountains
shaped into crouching lions and brooding beavers, the yawning canyons,
the stupendous forest firs and cedars, Siwash Rock stands as distinct,
as individual, as if dropped from another sphere.
I saw it first in the slanting light of a redly setting August sun; the
little tuft of green shrubbery that crests its summit was black against
the crimson of sea and sky, and its colossal base of grey stone gleamed
like flaming polished granite.
My old tillicum lifted his paddle blade to point towards it. "You know
the story?" he asked. I shook my head (experience had taught me his
love of silent replies, his moods of legend-telling). For a time we
paddled slowly; the rock detached itself from its background of forest
and shore, and it stood forth like a sentinel--erect, enduring, eternal.
"Do you think it stands straight--like a man?" he asked.
"Yes, like some noble-spirited, upright warrior," I replied.
"It is a man," he said, "and a warrior man, too; a man who fought for
everything that was noble and upright."
"What do you regard as everything that is noble and upright, Chief?" I
asked, curious as to his ideas. I shall not forget the reply: it was
but two words--astounding, amazing words. He said simply:
"Clean fatherhood."
Through my mind raced tumultuous recollections of numberless articles
in yet numberless magazines, all dealing with the recent "fad" of
motherhood, but I had to hear from the lips of a Squamish Indian Chief
the only treatise on the nobility of "clean fatherhood" that I have yet
unearthed. And this treatise has been an Indian legend for centuries;
and lest they forget how all-important those two little words must ever
be, Siwash Rock stands to remind them, set there by the Deity as a
monument to one who kept his own life clean, that cleanliness might be
the heritage of the generations to come.
It was "thousands of years ago" (all Indian legends begin in extremely
remote times) that a handsome boy chief journeyed in his canoe to the
upper coast for the shy little northern girl whom he brought home as
his wife. Boy though he was, the young chief had proved himself to be
an excellent warrior, a fearless hunter, and an upright, courageous man
among men. His tribe loved him, his enemies respected him, and the
base and mean and cowardly feared him.
The customs and traditions of his ancestors were a positive religion to
him, the sayings and the advices of the old people were his creed. He
was conservative in every rite and ritual of his race. He fought his
tribal enemies like the savage that he was. He sang his war songs,
danced his war dances, slew his foes, but the little girl-wife from the
north he treated with the deference that he gave his own mother, for
was she not to be the mother of his warrior son?
The year rolled round, weeks merged into months, winter into spring,
and one glorious summer at daybreak he wakened to her voice calling
him. She stood beside him, smiling.
"It will be to-day," she said proudly.
He sprang from his couch of wolf skins and looked out upon the coming
day: the promise of what it would bring him seemed breathing through
all his forest world. He took her very gently by the hand and led her
through the tangle of wilderness down to the water's edge, where the
beauty spot we moderns call Stanley Park bends about Prospect Point.
"I must swim," he told her.
"I must swim, too," she smiled with the perfect understanding of two
beings who are mated. For to them the old Indian custom was law--the
custom that the parents of a coming child must swim until their flesh
is so clear and clean that a wild animal cannot scent their proximity.
If the wild creatures of the forests have no fear of them, then, and
only then, are they fit to become parents, and to scent a human is in
itself a fearsome thing to all wild creatures.
So those two plunged into the waters of the Narrows as the grey dawn
slipped up the eastern skies and all the forest awoke to the life of a
new, glad day. Presently he took her ashore, and smilingly she crept
away under the giant trees. "I must be alone," she said, "but come to
me at sunrise: you will not find me alone then." He smiled also, and
plunged back into the sea. He must swim, swim, swim through this hour
when his fatherhood was coming upon him. It was the law that he must
be clean, spotlessly clean, so that when his child looked out upon the
world it would have the chance to live its own life clean. If he did
not swim hour upon hour his child would come to an unclean father. He
must give his child a chance in life; he must not hamper it by his own
uncleanliness at its birth. It was the tribal law--the law of
vicarious purity.
As he swam joyously to and fro, a canoe bearing four men headed up the
Narrows. These men were giants in stature, and the stroke of their
paddles made huge eddies that boiled like the seething tides.
"Out from our course!" they cried as his lithe, copper-colored body
arose and fell with his splendid stroke. He laughed at them, giants
though they were, and answered that he could not cease his swimming at
their demand.
"But you shall cease!" they commanded. "We are the men (agents) of the
Sagalie Tyee (God), and we command you ashore out of our way!" (I find
in all these Coast Indian legends that the Deity is represented by four
men, usually paddling an immense canoe.)
He ceased swimming, and, lifting his head, defied them. "I shall not
stop, nor yet go ashore," he declared, striking out once more to the
middle of the channel.
"Do you dare disobey us," they cried--"we, the men of the Sagalie Tyee?
We can turn you into a fish, or a tree, or a stone for this; do you
dare disobey the Great Tyee?"
"I dare anything for the cleanliness and purity of my coming child. I
dare even the Sagalie Tyee Himself, but my child must be born to a
spotless life."
The four men were astounded. They consulted together, lighted their
pipes and sat in council. Never had they, the men of the Sagalie Tyee,
been defied before. Now, for the sake of a little unborn child, they
were ignored, disobeyed, almost despised. The lithe young
copper-colored body still disported itself in the cool waters;
superstition held that should their canoe, or even their paddle blades,
touch a human being their marvellous power would be lost. The handsome
young chief swam directly in their course. They dared not run him
down; if so, they would become as other men. While they yet counselled
what to do, there floated from out the forest a faint, strange,
compelling sound. They listened, and the young chief ceased his stroke
as he listened also. The faint sound drifted out across the waters
once more. It was the cry of a little, little child. Then one of the
four men, he that steered the canoe, the strongest and tallest of them
all, arose and, standing erect, stretched out his arms towards the
rising sun and chanted, not a curse on the young chief's disobedience,
but a promise of everlasting days and freedom from death.
"Because you have defied all things that came in your path we promise
this to you," he chanted; "you have defied what interferes with your
child's chance for a clean life, you have lived as you wish your son to
live, you have defied us when we would have stopped your swimming and
hampered your child's future. You have placed that child's future
before all things, and for this the Sagalie Tyee commands us to make
you forever a pattern for your tribe. You shall never die, but you
shall stand through all the thousands of years to come, where all eyes
can see you. You shall live, live, live as an indestructible monument
to Clean Fatherhood."
The four men lifted their paddles and the handsome young chief swam
inshore; as his feet touched the line where sea and land met, he was
transformed into stone.
Then the four men said, "His wife and child must ever be near him; they
shall not die, but live also." And they, too, were turned into stone.
If you penetrate the hollows in the woods near Siwash Rock you will
find a large rock and a smaller one beside it. They are the shy little
bride-wife from the north, with her hour-old baby beside her. And from
the uttermost parts of the world vessels come daily throbbing and
sailing up the Narrows. From far trans-Pacific ports, from the frozen
North, from the lands of the Southern Cross, they pass and repass the
living rock that was there before their hulls were shaped, that will be
there when their very names are forgotten, when their crews and their
captains have taken their long last voyage, when their merchandise has
rotted, and their owners are known no more. But the tall, grey column
of stone will still be there--a monument to one man's fidelity to a
generation yet unborn--and will endure from everlasting to everlasting.
[Illustration: Native cradle]
[Illustration: THE SIWASH ROCK
Bishop & Christie, Photo.]
The Recluse
Journeying toward the upper course of the Capilano River, about a mile
citywards from the dam, you will pass a disused logger's shack. Leave
the trail at this point and strike through the undergrowth for a few
hundred yards to the left, and you will be on the rocky borders of that
purest, most restless river in all Canada. The stream is haunted with
tradition, teeming with a score of romances that vie with its grandeur
and loveliness, and of which its waters are perpetually whispering.
But I learned this legend from one whose voice was as dulcet as the
swirling rapids; but, unlike them, that voice is hushed today, while
the river still sings on--sings on.
It was singing in very melodious tones through the long August
afternoon two summers ago, while we, the chief, his happy-hearted wife
and bright, young daughter, all lounged amongst the boulders and
watched the lazy clouds drift from peak to peak far above us. It was
one of his inspired days; legends crowded to his lips as a whistle
teases the mouth of a happy boy, his heart was brimming with tales of
the bygones, his eyes were dark with dreams and that strange
mournfulness that always haunted them when he spoke of long-ago
romances. There was not a tree, a boulder, a dash of rapid upon which
his glance fell which he could not link with some ancient poetic
superstition. Then abruptly, in the very midst of his verbal reveries,
he turned and asked me if I were superstitious. Of course I replied
that I was.
"Do you think some happenings will bring trouble later on--will
foretell evil?" he asked.
I made some evasive answer, which, however, seemed to satisfy him, for
he plunged into the strange tale of the recluse of the canyon with more
vigor than dreaminess; but first he asked me the question:
"What do your own tribes, those east of the great mountains, think of
twin children?"
I shook my head.
"That is enough," he said before I could reply. "I see, your people do
not like them."
"Twin children are almost unknown with us," I hastened. "They are
rare, very rare; but it is true we do not welcome them."
"Why?" he asked abruptly.
I was a little uncertain about telling him. If I said the wrong thing,
the coming tale might die on his lips before it was born to speech, but
we understood each other so well that I finally ventured the truth:
"We Iroquois say that twin children are as rabbits," I explained. "The
nation always nicknames the parents 'Tow-wan-da-na-ga.' That is the
Mohawk for rabbit."
"Is that all?" he asked curiously.
"That is all. Is it not enough to render twin children unwelcome?" I
questioned.
He thought awhile, then with evident desire to learn how all races
regarded this occurrence, he said, "You have been much among the
Palefaces, what do they say of twins?"
"Oh! the Palefaces like them. They are--they are--oh! well, they say
they are very proud of having twins," I stammered. Once again I was
hardly sure of my ground. He looked most incredulous, and I was led to
enquire what his own people of the Squamish thought of this discussed
problem.
"It is no pride to us," he said decidedly; "nor yet is it disgrace of
rabbits, but it is a fearsome thing--a sign of coming evil to the
father, and, worse than that, of coming disaster to the tribe."
Then I knew he held in his heart some strange incident that gave
substance to the superstition. "Won't you tell it to me?" I begged.
He leaned a little backward against a giant boulder, clasping his thin,
brown hands about his knees; his eyes roved up the galloping river,
then swept down the singing waters to where they crowded past the
sudden bend, and during the entire recital of the strange legend his
eyes never left that spot where the stream disappeared in its hurrying
journey to the sea. Without preamble he began:
"It was a grey morning when they told him of this disaster that had
befallen him. He was a great chief, and he ruled many tribes on the
North Pacific Coast; but what was his greatness now? His young wife
had borne him twins, and was sobbing out her anguish in the little
fir-bark lodge near the tidewater.
"Beyond the doorway gathered many old men and women--old in years, old
in wisdom, old in the lore and learning of their nations. Some of them
wept, some chanted solemnly the dirge of their lost hopes and
happiness, which would never return because of this calamity; others
discussed in hushed voices this awesome thing, and for hours their
grave council was broken only by the infant cries of the two boy-babies
in the bark lodge, the hopeless sobs of the young mother, the agonized
moans of the stricken chief--their father.
"'Something dire will happen to the tribe,' said the old men in council.
"'Something dire will happen to him, my husband,' wept the afflicted
young mother.
"'Something dire will happen to us all,' echoed the unhappy father.
"Then an ancient medicine man arose, lifting his arms, outstretching
his palms to hush the lamenting throng. His voice shook with the
weight of many winters, but his eyes were yet keen and mirrored the
clear thought and brain behind them, as the still trout pools in the
Capilano mirror the mountain tops. His words were masterful, his
gestures commanding, his shoulders erect and kindly. His was a
personality and an inspiration that no one dared dispute, and his
judgment was accepted as the words fell slowly, like a doom.
"'It is the olden law of the Squamish that lest evil befall the tribe
the sire of twin children must go afar and alone into the mountain
fastnesses, there by his isolation and his loneliness to prove himself
stronger than the threatened evil, and thus to beat back the shadow
that would otherwise follow him and all his people. I, therefore, name
for him the length of days that he must spend alone fighting his
invisible enemy. He will know by some great sign in Nature the hour
that the evil is conquered, the hour that his race is saved. He must
leave before this sun sets, taking with him only his strongest bow, his
fleetest arrows, and going up into the mountain wilderness remain there
ten days--alone, alone.'
"The masterful voice ceased, the tribe wailed their assent, the father
arose speechless, his drawn face revealing great agony over this
seemingly brief banishment. He took leave of his sobbing wife, of the
two tiny souls that were his sons, grasped his favorite bow and arrows,
and faced the forest like a warrior. But at the end of the ten days he
did not return, nor yet ten weeks, nor yet ten months.
"'He is dead,' wept the mother into the baby ears of her two boys. 'He
could not battle against the evil that threatened; it was stronger than
he--he so strong, so proud, so brave.'
"'He is dead,' echoed the tribesmen and the tribeswomen. 'Our strong,
brave chief, he is dead.' So they mourned the long year through, but
their chants and their tears but renewed their grief; he did not return
to them.
"Meanwhile, far up the Capilano the banished chief had built his
solitary home; for who can tell what fatal trick of sound, what current
of air, what faltering note in the voice of the Medicine Man had
deceived his alert Indian ears? But some unhappy fate had led him to
understand that his solitude must be of ten years' duration, not ten
days, and he had accepted the mandate with the heroism of a stoic. For
if he had refused to do so his belief was that although the threatened
disaster would be spared him, the evil would fall upon his tribe. Thus
was one more added to the long list of self-forgetting souls whose
creed has been, 'It is fitting that one should suffer for the people.'
It was the world-old heroism of vicarious sacrifice.
"With his hunting-knife the banished Squamish chief stripped the bark
from the firs and cedars, building for himself a lodge beside the
Capilano River, where leaping trout and salmon could be speared by
arrow-heads fastened to deftly shaped, long handles. All through the
salmon run he smoked and dried the fish with the care of a housewife.
The mountain sheep and goats, and even huge black and cinnamon bears,
fell before his unerring arrows; the fleet-footed deer never returned
to their haunts from their evening drinking at the edge of the
stream--their wild hearts, their agile bodies were stilled when he took
aim. Smoked hams and saddles hung in rows from the cross poles of his
bark lodge, and the magnificent pelts of animals carpeted his floors,
padded his couch and clothed his body. He tanned the soft doe hides,
making leggings, moccasins and shirts, stitching them together with
deer sinew as he had seen his mother do in the long-ago. He gathered
the juicy salmonberries, their acid a sylvan, healthful change from
meat and fish. Month by month and year by year he sat beside his
lonely camp-fire, waiting for his long term of solitude to end. One
comfort alone was his--he was enduring the disaster, fighting the evil,
that his tribe might go unscathed, that his people be saved from
calamity. Slowly, laboriously the tenth year dawned; day by day it
dragged its long weeks across his waiting heart, for Nature had not yet
given the sign that his long probation was over.
"Then one hot summer day the Thunder Bird came crashing through the
mountains about him. Up from the arms of the Pacific rolled the storm
cloud, and the Thunder Bird, with its eyes of flashing light, beat its
huge vibrating wings on crag and canyon.
"Upstream, a tall shaft of granite rears its needle-like length. It is
named 'Thunder Rock,' and wise men of the Paleface people say it is
rich in ore--copper, silver and gold. At the base of this shaft the
Squamish chief crouched when the storm cloud broke and bellowed through
the ranges, and on its summit the Thunder Bird perched, its gigantic
wings threshing the air into booming sounds, into splitting terrors,
like the crash of a giant cedar hurtling down the mountain side.
"But when the beating of those black pinions ceased and the echo of
their thunder waves died down the depths of the canyon, the Squamish
chief arose as a new man. The shadow on his soul had lifted, the fears
of evil were cowed and conquered. In his brain, his blood, his veins,
his sinews, he felt that the poison of melancholy dwelt no more. He
had redeemed his fault of fathering twin children; he had fulfilled the
demands of the law of his tribe.
"As he heard the last beat of the Thunder Bird's wings dying slowly,
slowly, faintly, faintly, among the crags, he knew that the bird, too,
was dying, for its soul was leaving its monster black body, and
presently that soul appeared in the sky. He could see it arching
overhead, before it took its long journey to the Happy Hunting Grounds,
for the soul of the Thunder Bird was a radiant half-circle of glorious
color spanning from peak to peak. He lifted his head then, for he knew
it was the sign the ancient Medicine Man had told him to wait for--the
sign that his long banishment was ended.
"And all these years, down in the tidewater country, the little
brown-faced twins were asking childwise, 'Where is our father? Why
have we no father, like other boys?' To be met only with the
oft-repeated reply, 'Your father is no more. Your father, the great
chief, is dead.'
"But some strange filial intuition told the boys that their sire would
some day return. Often they voiced this feeling to their mother, but
she would only weep and say that not even the witchcraft of the great
Medicine Man could bring him to them. But when they were ten years old
the two children came to their mother, hand within hand. They were
armed with their little hunting-knives, their salmon spears, their tiny
bows and arrows.
"'We go to find our father,' they said.
"'Oh! useless quest,' wailed the mother.
"'Oh! useless quest,' echoed the tribes-people.
"But the great Medicine Man said, 'The heart of a child has invisible
eyes, perhaps the child-eyes see him. The heart of a child has
invisible ears, perhaps the child-ears hear him call. Let them go.'
So the little children went forth into the forest; their young feet
flew as though shod with wings, their young hearts pointed to the north
as does the white man's compass. Day after day they journeyed
up-stream, until rounding a sudden bend they beheld a bark lodge with a
thin blue curl of smoke drifting from its roof.
"'It is our father's lodge,' they told each other, for their childish
hearts were unerring in response to the call of kinship. Hand-in-hand
they approached, and entering the lodge, said the one word, 'Come.'
"The great Squamish chief outstretched his arms towards them, then
towards the laughing river, then towards the mountains.
"'Welcome, my sons!' he said. 'And good-bye, my mountains, my
brothers, my crags and my canyons!' And with a child clinging to each
hand he faced once more the country of the tidewater."
* * * * *
The legend was ended.
For a long time he sat in silence. He had removed his gaze from the
bend in the river, around which the two children had come and where the
eyes of the recluse had first rested on them after ten years of
solitude.
The chief spoke again, "It was here, on this spot we are sitting, that
he built his lodge: here he dwelt those ten years alone, alone."
I nodded silently. The legend was too beautiful to mar with comments,
and as the twilight fell, we threaded our way through the underbrush,
past the disused logger's camp and into the trail that leads citywards.
[Illustration: Decoration]
[Illustration: Capilano Canyon.
Bishop & Christie, Photo.]
The Lost Salmon Run
Great had been the "run," and the sockeye season was almost over. For
that reason I wondered many times why my old friend, the klootchman,
had failed to make one of the fishing fleet. She was an indefatigable
workwoman, rivalling her husband as an expert catcher, and all the year
through she talked of little else but the coming run. But this
especial season she had not appeared amongst her fellow-kind. The
fleet and the canneries knew nothing of her, and when I enquired of her
tribes-people they would reply without explanation, "She not here this
year."
But one russet September afternoon I found her. I had idled down the
trail from the swans' basin in Stanley Park to the rim that skirts the
Narrows, and I saw her graceful, high-bowed canoe heading for the beach
that is the favorite landing place of the "tillicums" from the Mission.
Her canoe looked like a dream-craft, for the water was very still, and
everywhere a blue film hung like a fragrant veil, for the peat on Lulu
Island had been smoldering for days and its pungent odors and blue-grey
haze made a dream-world of sea and shore and sky.
I hurried upshore, hailing her in the Chinook, and as she caught my
voice she lifted her paddle directly above her head in the Indian
signal of greeting.
As she beached, I greeted her with extended eager hands to assist her
ashore, for the klootchman is getting to be an old woman; albeit she
paddles against tidewater like a boy in his teens.
"No," she said, as I begged her to come ashore. "I not wait--me. I
just come to fetch Maarda; she been city; she come soon--now." But she
left her "working" attitude and curled like a schoolgirl in the bow of
the canoe, her elbows resting on her paddle which she had flung across
the gunwales.
"I have missed you, klootchman; you have not been to see me for three
moons, and you have not fished or been at the canneries," I remarked.
"No," she said. "I stay home this year." Then leaning towards me with
grave import in her manner, her eyes, her voice, she added, "I have a
grandchild, born first week July, so--I stay."
So this explained her absence. I, of course, offered congratulations
and enquired all about the great event, for this was her first
grandchild, and the little person was of importance.
"And are you going to make a fisherman of him?" I asked.
"No, no, not boy-child, it is girl-child," she answered with some
indescribable trick of expression that led me to know she preferred it
so.
"You are pleased it is a girl?" I questioned in surprise.
"Very pleased," she replied emphatically. "Very good luck to have girl
for first grandchild. Our tribe not like yours; we want girl children
first; we not always wish boy-child born just for fight. Your people,
they care only for war-path; our tribe more peaceful. Very good sign
first grandchild to be girl. I tell you why: girl-child maybe some
time mother herself; very grand thing to be mother."
I felt I had caught the secret of her meaning. She was rejoicing that
this little one should some time become one of the mothers of her race.
We chatted over it a little longer and she gave me several playful
"digs" about my own tribe thinking so much less of motherhood than
hers, and so much more of battle and bloodshed. Then we drifted into
talk of the sockeye run and of the hyiu chickimin the Indians would get.
"Yes, hyiu chickimin," she repeated with a sigh of satisfaction.
"Always; and hyiu muck-a-muck when big salmon run. No more ever come
that bad year when not any fish."
"When was that?" I asked.
"Before you born, or I, or"--pointing across the park to the distant
city of Vancouver, that breathed its wealth and beauty across the
September afternoon--"before that place born, before white man came
here--oh! long before."
Dear old klootchman! I knew by the dusk in her eyes that she was back
in her Land of Legends, and that soon I would be the richer in my hoard
of Indian lore. She sat, still leaning on her paddle; her eyes,
half-closed, rested on the distant outline of the blurred heights
across the Inlet. I shall not further attempt her broken English, for
this is but the shadow of her story, and without her unique personality
the legend is as a flower that lacks both color and fragrance. She
called it "The Lost Salmon Run."
"The wife of the Great Tyee was but a wisp of a girl, but all the world
was young in those days; even the Fraser River was young and small, not
the mighty water it is today; but the pink salmon crowded its throat
just as they do now, and the tillicums caught and salted and smoked the
fish just as they have done this year, just as they will always do.
But it was yet winter, and the rains were slanting and the fogs
drifting, when the wife of the Great Tyee stood before him and said:
"'Before the salmon run I shall give to you a great gift. Will you
honor me most if it is the gift of a boy-child or a girl-child?' The
Great Tyee loved the woman. He was stern with his people, hard with
his tribe; he ruled his council fires with a will of stone. His
medicine men said he had no human heart in his body; his warriors said
he had no human blood in his veins. But he clasped this woman's hands,
and his eyes, his lips, his voice, were gentle as her own, as he
replied:
"'Give to me a girl-child--a little girl-child--that she may grow to be
like you, and, in her turn, give to her husband children.'
"But when the tribes-people heard of his choice they arose in great
anger. They surrounded him in a deep, indignant circle. 'You are a
slave to the woman,' they declared, 'and now you desire to make
yourself a slave to a woman-baby. We want an heir--a man-child to be
our Great Tyee in years to come. When you are old and weary of tribal
affairs, when you sit wrapped in your blanket in the hot summer
sunshine, because your blood is old and thin, what can a girl-child do
to help either you or us? Who, then, will be our Great Tyee?'
"He stood in the centre of the menacing circle, his arms folded, his
chin raised, his eyes hard as flint. His voice, cold as stone, replied: