buckskin belt into which he thrust his hunting-knife, he flung his
lithe young body into the sea. But at the end of four days he did not
return. Sometimes his people could see him swimming far out in
mid-channel, endeavoring to find the exact centre of the serpent, where
lay its evil, selfish heart; but on the fifth morning they saw him rise
out of the sea, climb to the summit of Brockton Point and greet the
rising sun with outstretched arms. Weeks and months went by, still the
Tenas Tyee would swim daily searching for that heart of greed; and each
morning the sunrise glinted on his slender young copper-colored body as
he stood with outstretched arms at the tip of Brockton Point, greeting
the coming day and then plunging from the summit into the sea.
"And at his home on the north shore his mother dressed his bed with
fresh furs each morning. The seasons drifted by, winter followed
summer, summer followed winter. But it was four years before the Tenas
Tyee found the centre of the great salt-chuck oluk and plunged his
hunting-knife into its evil heart. In its death-agony it writhed
through the Narrows, leaving a trail of blackness on the waters. Its
huge body began to shrink, to shrivel; it became dwarfed and withered,
until nothing but the bones of its back remained, and they,
sea-bleached and lifeless, soon sank to the bed of the ocean leagues
off from the rim of land. But as the Tenas Tyee swam homeward and his
clean, young body crossed through the black stain left by the serpent,
the waters became clear and blue and sparkling. He had overcome even
the trail of the salt-chuck oluk.
"When at last he stood in the doorway of his home he said, 'My mother,
I could not have killed the monster of greed amongst my people had you
not helped me by keeping one place for me at home fresh and clean for
my return.'
"She looked at him as only mothers look. 'Each day these four years,
fresh furs have I laid for your bed. Sleep now, and rest, oh! my Tenas
Tyee,' she said."
* * * * *
The Chief unfolded his arms, and his voice took another tone as he
said, "What do you call that story--a legend?"
"The white people would call it an allegory," I answered. He shook his
head.
"No savvy," he smiled.
I explained as simply as possible, and with his customary alertness he
immediately understood. "That's right," he said. "That's what we say
it means, we Squamish, that greed is evil and not clean, like the
salt-chuck oluk. That it must be stamped out amongst our people,
killed by cleanliness and generosity. The boy that overcame the
serpent was both these things."
"What became of this splendid boy?" I asked.
"The Tenas Tyee? Oh! some of our old, old people say they sometimes
see him now, standing on Brockton Point, his bare young arms
outstretched to the rising sun," he replied.
"Have you ever seen him, Chief?" I questioned.
"No," he answered simply. But I have never heard such poignant regret
as his wonderful voice crowded into that single word.
[1] Money.
The Lost Island
"Yes," said my old tillicum, "we Indians have lost many things. We
have lost our lands, our forests, our game, our fish; we have lost our
ancient religion, our ancient dress; some of the younger people have
even lost their fathers' language and the legends and traditions of
their ancestors. We cannot call those old things back to us; they will
never come again. We may travel many days up the mountain trails, and
look in the silent places for them. They are not there. We may paddle
many moons on the sea, but our canoes will never enter the channel that
leads to the yesterdays of the Indian people. These things are lost,
just like 'The Island of the North Arm.' They may be somewhere nearby,
but no one can ever find them."
"But there are many islands up the North Arm," I asserted.
"Not the island we Indian people have sought for many tens of summers,"
he replied sorrowfully.
"Was it ever there?" I questioned.
"Yes, it was there," he said. "My grand-sires and my great-grandsires
saw it; but that was long ago. My father never saw it, though he spent
many days in many years searching, always searching, for it. I am an
old man myself, and I have never seen it, though from my youth I, too,
have searched. Sometimes in the stillness of the nights I have paddled
up in my canoe." Then, lowering his voice: "Twice I have seen its
shadow: high rocky shores, reaching as high as the tree tops on the
mainland, then tall pines and firs on its summit like a king's crown.
As I paddled up the Arm one summer night, long ago, the shadow of these
rocks and firs fell across my canoe, across my face, and across the
waters beyond. I turned rapidly to look. There was no island there,
nothing but a wide stretch of waters on both sides of me, and the moon
almost directly overhead. Don't say it was the shore that shadowed
me," he hastened, catching my thought. "The moon was above me; my
canoe scarce made a shadow on the still waters. No, it was not the
shore."
"Why do you search for it?" I lamented, thinking of the old dreams in
my own life whose realization I have never attained.
"There is something on that island that I want. I shall look for it
until I die, for it is there," he affirmed.
There was a long silence between us after that. I had learned to love
silences when with my old tillicum, for they always led to a legend.
After a time he began voluntarily:
"It was more than one hundred years ago. This great city of Vancouver
was but the dream of the Sagalie Tyee (God) at that time. The dream
had not yet come to the white man; only one great Indian medicine man
knew that some day a great camp for Palefaces would lie between False
Creek and the Inlet. This dream haunted him; it came to him night and
day--when he was amid his people laughing and feasting, or when he was
alone in the forest chanting his strange songs, beating his hollow
drum, or shaking his wooden witch-rattle to gain more power to cure the
sick and the dying of his tribe. For years this dream followed him.
He grew to be an old, old man, yet always he could hear voices, strong
and loud, as when they first spoke to him in his youth, and they would
say: 'Between the two narrow strips of salt water the white men will
camp--many hundreds of them, many thousands of them. The Indians will
learn their ways, will live as they do, will become as they are. There
will be no more great war dances, no more fights with other powerful
tribes; it will be as if the Indians had lost all bravery, all courage,
all confidence.' He hated the voices, he hated the dream; but all his
power, all his big medicine, could not drive them away. He was the
strongest man on all the North Pacific Coast. He was mighty and very
tall, and his muscles were as those of Leloo, the timber wolf, when he
is strongest to kill his prey. He could go for many days without food;
he could fight the largest mountain lion; he could overthrow the
fiercest grizzly bear; he could paddle against the wildest winds and
ride the highest waves. He could meet his enemies and kill whole
tribes single-handed. His strength, his courage, his power, his
bravery, were those of a giant. He knew no fear; nothing in the sea,
or in the forest, nothing in the earth or the sky, could conquer him.
He was fearless, fearless. Only this haunting dream of the coming
white man's camp he could not drive away; it was the one thing in life
he had tried to kill and failed. It drove him from the feasting, drove
him from the pleasant lodges, the fires, the dancing, the story-telling
of his people in their camp by the water's edge, where the salmon
thronged and the deer came down to drink of the mountain streams. He
left the Indian village, chanting his wild songs as he went. Up
through the mighty forests he climbed, through the trailless deep
mosses and matted vines, up to the summit of what the white men call
Grouse Mountain. For many days he camped there. He ate no food, he
drank no water, but sat and sang his medicine songs through the dark
hours and through the day. Before him--far beneath his feet--lay the
narrow strip of land between the two salt waters. Then the Sagalie
Tyee gave him the power to see far into the future. He looked across a
hundred years, just as he looked across what you call the Inlet, and he
saw mighty lodges built close together, hundreds and thousands of them;
lodges of stone and wood, and long straight trails to divide them. He
saw these trails thronging with Palefaces; he heard the sound of the
white man's paddle-dip on the waters, for it is not silent like the
Indian's; he saw the white man's trading posts, saw the fishing nets,
heard his speech. Then the vision faded as gradually as it came. The
narrow strip of land was his own forest once more.
"'I am old,' he called, in his sorrow and his trouble for his people.
'I am old, oh, Sagalie Tyee! Soon I shall die and go to the Happy
Hunting Grounds of my fathers. Let not my strength die with me. Keep
living for all time my courage, my bravery, my fearlessness. Keep them
for my people that they may be strong enough to endure the white man's
rule. Keep my strength living for them; hide it so that the Paleface
may never find or see it.'
"Then he came down from the summit of Grouse Mountain. Still chanting
his medicine songs he entered his canoe, and paddled through the colors
of the setting sun far up the North Arm. When night fell he came to an
island with misty shores of great grey rock; on its summit tall pines
and firs circled like a king's crown. As he neared it he felt all his
strength, his courage, his fearlessness, leaving him; he could see
these things drift from him on to the island. They were as the clouds
that rest on the mountains, grey-white and half transparent. Weak as a
woman he paddled back to the Indian village; he told them to go and
search for 'The Island,' where they would find all his courage, his
fearlessness and his strength, living, living forever. He slept then,
but--in the morning he did not awake. Since then our young men and our
old have searched for 'The Island.' It is there somewhere, up some
lost channel, but we cannot find it. When we do, we will get back all
the courage and bravery we had before the white man came, for the great
medicine man said those things never die--they live for one's children
and grandchildren."
His voice ceased. My whole heart went out to him in his longing for
the lost island. I thought of all the splendid courage I knew him to
possess, so made answer: "But you say that the shadow of this island
has fallen upon you; is it not so, tillicum?"
"Yes," he said half mournfully. "But only the shadow."
[Illustration: Native cradle?]
Point Grey
"Have you ever sailed around Point Grey?" asked a young Squamish
tillicum of mine who often comes to see me, to share a cup of tea and a
taste of muck-a-muck, that otherwise I should eat in solitude.
"No," I admitted, I had not had that pleasure, for I did not know the
uncertain waters of English Bay sufficiently well to venture about its
headlands in my frail canoe.
"Some day, perhaps next summer, I'll take you there in a sail-boat, and
show you the big rock at the southwest of the Point. It is a strange
rock; we Indian people call it Homolsom."
"What an odd name," I commented. "Is it a Squamish word?--it does not
sound to me like one."
"It is not altogether Squamish, but half Fraser River language. The
Point was the dividing line between the grounds and waters of the two
tribes, so they agreed to make the name 'Homolsom' from the two
languages."
I suggested more tea, and, as he sipped it, he told me the legend that
few of the younger Indians know. That he believes the story himself is
beyond question, for many times he admitted having tested the virtues
of this rock, and it had never once failed him. All people that have
to do with water craft are superstitious about some things, and I
freely acknowledge that times innumerable I have "whistled up" a wind
when dead calm threatened, or stuck a jack-knife in the mast, and
afterwards watched with great contentment the idle sail fill, and the
canoe pull out to a light breeze. So, perhaps, I am prejudiced in
favor of this legend of Homolsom Rock, for it strikes a very responsive
chord in that portion of my heart that has always throbbed for the sea.
"You know," began my young tillicum, "that only waters unspoiled by
human hands can be of any benefit. One gains no strength by swimming
in any waters heated or boiled by fires that men build. To grow strong
and wise one must swim in the natural rivers, the mountain torrents,
the sea, just as the Sagalie Tyee made them. Their virtues die when
human beings try to improve them by heating or distilling, or placing
even tea in them, and so--what makes Homolsom Rock so full of 'good
medicine' is that the waters that wash up about it are straight from
the sea, made by the hand of the Great Tyee, and unspoiled by the hand
of man.
"It was not always there, that great rock, drawing its strength and its
wonderful power from the seas, for it, too, was once a Great Tyee, who
ruled a mighty tract of waters. He was god of all the waters that wash
the coast, of the Gulf of Georgia, of Puget Sound, of the Straits of
Juan de Fuca, of the waters that beat against even the west coast of
Vancouver Island, and of all the channels that cut between the
Charlotte Islands. He was Tyee of the West Wind, and his storms and
tempests were so mighty that the Sagalie Tyee Himself could not control
the havoc that he created. He warred upon all fishing craft, he
demolished canoes and sent men to graves in the sea. He uprooted
forests and drove the surf on shore heavy with wreckage of despoiled
trees and with beaten and bruised fish. He did all this to reveal his
powers, for he was cruel and hard of heart, and he would laugh and defy
the Sagalie Tyee, and looking up to the sky he would call, 'See how
powerful I am, how mighty, how strong; I am as great as you.'
"It was at this time that the Sagalie Tyee in the persons of the Four
Men came in the great canoe up over the rim of the Pacific, in that age
thousands of years ago when they turned the evil into stone, and the
kindly into trees.
"'Now,' said the god of the West Wind, 'I can show how great I am. I
shall blow a tempest that these men may not land on my coast. They
shall not ride my seas and sounds and channels in safety. I shall
wreck them and send their bodies into the great deeps, and I shall be
Sagalie Tyee in their place and ruler of all the world.' So the god of
the West Wind blew forth his tempests. The waves arose mountain high,
the seas lashed and thundered along the shores. The roar of his mighty
breath could be heard wrenching giant limbs from the forest trees,
whistling down the canyons and dealing death and destruction for
leagues and leagues along the coast. But the canoe containing the Four
Men rode upright through all the heights and hollows of the seething
ocean. No curling crest or sullen depth could wreck that magic craft,
for the hearts it bore were filled with kindness for the human race,
and kindness cannot die.
"It was all rock and dense forest, and unpeopled; only wild animals and
sea birds sought the shelter it provided from the terrors of the West
Wind; but he drove them out in sullen anger, and made on this strip of
land his last stand against the Four Men. The Paleface calls the place
Point Grey, but the Indians yet speak of it as 'The Battle Ground of
the West Wind.' All his mighty forces he now brought to bear against
the oncoming canoe; he swept great hurricanes about the stony ledges;
he caused the sea to beat and swirl in tempestuous fury along its
narrow fastnesses, but the canoe came nearer and nearer, invincible as
those shores, and stronger than death itself. As the bow touched the
land the Four Men arose and commanded the West Wind to cease his war
cry, and, mighty though he had been, his voice trembled and sobbed
itself into a gentle breeze, then fell to a whispering note, then faded
into exquisite silence.
"'Oh, you evil one with the unkind heart,' cried the Four Men, 'you
have been too great a god for even the Sagalie Tyee to obliterate you
forever, but you shall live on, live now to serve, not to hinder
mankind. You shall turn into stone where you now stand, and you shall
rise only as men wish you to. Your life from this day shall be for the
good of man, for when the fisherman's sails are idle and his lodge is
leagues away you shall fill those sails and blow his craft free, in
whatever direction he desires. You shall stand where you are through
all the thousands upon thousands of years to come, and he who touches
you with his paddle-blade shall have his desire of a breeze to carry
him home.'"
My young tillicum had finished his tradition, and his great solemn eyes
regarded me half-wistfully.
"I wish you could see Homolsom Rock," he said. "For that is he who was
once the Tyee of the West Wind."
"Were you ever becalmed around Point Grey?" I asked irrelevantly.
"Often," he replied. "But I paddle up to the rock and touch it with
the tip of my paddle-blade, and no matter which way I want to go the
wind will blow free for me, if I wait a little while."
"I suppose your people all do this?" I replied.
"Yes, all of them," he answered. "They have done it for hundreds of
years. You see the power in it is just as great now as at first, for
the rock feeds every day on the unspoiled sea that the Sagalie Tyee
made."
The Tulameen Trail
Did you ever "holiday" through the valley lands of the Dry Belt? Ever
spend days and days in a swinging, swaying coach, behind a
four-in-hand, when "Curly" or "Nicola Ned" held the ribbons, and tooled
his knowing little leaders and wheelers down those horrifying mountain
trails that wind like russet skeins of cobweb through the heights and
depths of the Okanagan, the Nicola and the Similkameen countries? If
so, you have listened to the call of the Skookum Chuck, as the Chinook
speakers call the rollicking, tumbling streams that sing their way
through the canyons with a music so dulcet, so insistent, that for many
moons the echo of it lingers in your listening ears, and you will,
through all the years to come, hear the voices of those mountain rivers
calling you to return.
But the most haunting of all the melodies is the warbling laughter of
the Tulameen; its delicate note is far more powerful, more far-reaching
than the throaty thunders of Niagara. That is why the Indians of the
Nicola country still cling to their old-time story that the Tulameen
carries the spirit of a young girl enmeshed in the wonders of its
winding course; a spirit that can never free itself from the canyons,
to rise above the heights and follow its fellows to the Happy Hunting
Grounds, but which is contented to entwine its laughter, its sobs, its
lonely whispers, its still lonelier call for companionship, with the
wild music of the waters that sing forever beneath the western stars.
As your horses plod up and up the almost perpendicular trail that leads
out of the Nicola Valley to the summit, a paradise of beauty outspreads
at your feet; the color is indescribable in words, the atmosphere
thrills you. Youth and the pulse of rioting blood are yours again,
until, as you near the heights, you become strangely calmed by the
voiceless silence of it all, a silence so holy that it seems the whole
world about you is swinging its censer before an altar in some dim
remote cathedral! The choir voices of the Tulameen are yet very far
away across the summit, but the heights of the Nicola are the silent
prayer that holds the human soul before the first great chords swell
down from the organ loft. In this first long climb up miles and miles
of trail, even the staccato of the drivers' long black-snake whip is
hushed. He lets his animals pick their own sure-footed way, but once
across the summit he gathers the reins in his steely fingers, gives a
low, quick whistle, the whiplash curls about the ears of the leaders
and the plunge down the dip of the mountain begins. Every foot of the
way is done at a gallop. The coach rocks and swings as it dashes
through a trail rough-hewn from the heart of the forest; at times the
angles are so abrupt that you cannot see the heads of the leaders as
they swing around the grey crags that almost scrape the tires on the
left, while within a foot of the rim of the trail the right wheels
whirl along the edge of a yawning canyon. The rhythm of the
hoof-beats, the recurrent low whistle and crack of the whiplash, the
occasional rattle of pebbles showering down to the depths, loosened by
rioting wheels, have broken the sacred silence. Yet above all those
nearby sounds there seems to be an indistinct murmur, which grows
sweeter, more musical, as you gain the base of the mountains, where it
rises above all harsher notes. It is the voice of the restless
Tulameen as it dances and laughs through the rocky throat of the
canyon, three hundred feet below. Then, following the song, comes a
glimpse of the river itself--white garmented in the film of its
countless rapids, its showers of waterfalls. It is as beautiful to
look at as to listen to, and it is here, where the trail winds about
and above it for leagues, that the Indians say it caught the spirit of
the maiden that is still interlaced in its loveliness.
It was in one of the terrible battles that raged between the valley
tribes before the white man's footprints were seen along these trails.
None can now tell the cause of this warfare, but the supposition is
that it was merely for tribal supremacy--that primeval instinct that
assails the savage in both man and beast, that drives the hill men to
bloodshed and the leaders of buffalo herds to conflict. It is the
greed to rule; the one barbarous instinct that civilization has never
yet been able to eradicate from armed nations. This war of the tribes
of the valley lands was of years in duration; men fought and women
mourned, and children wept, as all have done since time began. It
seemed an unequal battle, for the old experienced war-tried chief and
his two astute sons were pitted against a single young Tulameen brave.
Both factors had their loyal followers, both were indomitable as to
courage and bravery, both were determined and ambitious, both were
skilled fighters.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE NARROWS, VANCOUVER, B.C.
Bishop & Christie, Photo.]
But on the older man's side were experience and two other wary,
strategic brains to help him, while on the younger was but the
advantage of splendid youth and unconquerable persistence. But at
every pitched battle, at every skirmish, at every single-handed
conflict the younger man gained little by little, the older man lost
step by step. The experience of age was gradually but inevitably
giving way to the strength and enthusiasm of youth. Then one day they
met face to face and alone--the old war-scarred chief, the young
battle-inspired brave. It was an unequal combat, and at the close of a
brief but violent struggle the younger had brought the older to his
knees. Standing over him with up-poised knife the Tulameen brave
laughed sneeringly, and said:
"Would you, my enemy, have this victory as your own? If so, I give it
to you; but in return for my submission I demand of you--your daughter."
For an instant the old chief looked in wonderment at his conqueror; he
thought of his daughter only as a child who played about the forest
trails or sat obediently beside her mother in the lodge, stitching her
little moccasins or weaving her little baskets.
"My daughter!" he answered sternly. "My daughter--who is barely out of
her own cradle basket--give her to you, whose hands, are blood-dyed
with the killing of a score of my tribe? You ask for this thing?"
"I do not ask it," replied the young brave. "I demand it; I have seen
the girl and I shall have her."
The old chief sprang to his feet and spat out his refusal. "Keep your
victory, and I keep my girl-child," though he knew he was not only
defying his enemy, but defying death as well.
The Tulameen laughed lightly, easily. "I shall not kill the sire of my
wife," he taunted. "One more battle must we have, but your girl-child
will come to me."
Then he took his victorious way up the trail, while the old chief
walked with slow and springless step down into the canyon.