LEGEND OF THE CRUCIFIXION
The Siwash have a legendary theory and story of the crucifixion. Hezekial
Butterworth picked it up while on one of his vacation jaunts to the west,
and tells it very prettily, though it has been told by a score of writers
and is one of the first to come to the knowledge of the white man:
Long, long ago, say the Siwashes, in the splendid sunsets of the Whulge,
or Puget Sea, there came a canoe of copper sailing, sailing. The painted
forest lords and feathered maidens saw it from the bluffs—in the sunrise
at times, or in the moonsets, but ever in the red sunsets, sailing,
sailing. The gleam of copper in the red sunset is more beautiful than
gold; and ever and anon on the blue wave was seen the burnished gleam
of the copper canoe. On it came, and the solitary voyager in the copper
canoe landed at last on the Whulge, under the crystal dome of Mount
Rainier, and he shadowed among the cool firs of the headlands there the
boat that flashed out the rays of sunset light.
He called together the tribes. They came in canoes from everywhere.
He began to teach and preach. “I come among you as a preacher of
righteousness,” he said, or thoughts like these. “All that men can
possess in this world, or any other, is righteousness. If a man have
that, he is rich, though he be poor, and his soul shall rise, rise, rise,
and live forever.
“Oh Siwashes,” he preached, “the unseen power that thinks and causes you
to act is the soul. It does not die when the breath vanishes. It goes
away with the unseen life and inhabits the life unseen. You have never
seen the soul, or life, but death is only the beginning of a longer life,
and the soul with righteous longings shall be happy forever.
“But war is wrong—the spear, the arrow, and the spilling of human blood.
Man may not kill his brother. The soul was meant for peace.”
He preached these or like doctrines, a beautiful gospel, like the Sermon
on the Mount.
The warlike tribes rejected the word. They nailed the Saviour who came
gleaming over the violet sea in the copper canoe, to a tree, and he
died there. They took down his body, but, wonder of wonders! it rose
from the dead, and appeared to all the tribes, and the risen Saviour
preached the same doctrine of righteousness and immortality as before.
The legend may have been derived from the preaching of some forest priest
in some distant place, for the Catholic missionaries were on the coast of
California before 1700.
Picturesque and profoundly romantic and imaginative is the Siwash legend
of the two grand old mountains, Rainier and Hood, one in Washington, one
in Oregon, with the mighty Columbia rolling between. It is the legend
of a stupendous battle royal, between mighty monarchs, and is as well
the sequel to the cascades and rocks that break the broad current of the
noble stream. The foundation for the legend is probably due to the fact
that within the limits of the Indian tradition or history of the past,
Mt. Rainier was in active eruption.
Long ago, almost beyond the time when Indian tradition and legend extend
the spirits of the mountains fought a long and bloody battle. Rocks
were hurled from the summits at the heads of the rival sentinels of the
cascades and a great commotion was caused throughout all the land. The
Siwash of the Sound say their tradition teaches them that it was the evil
and unruly spirits on Mt. Hood that brought about the great battle. They
would not keep still but were bent on raising mischief, and they did it.
When the great spirits of Rainier could not stand it any longer and could
not sleep, they rose in rebellion with a mighty noise that shook the
mountains and the sea and began a war on the noisy demons of Mt. Hood.
Great rocks were picked up and hurled back and forth, some so heavy that
they could not be thrown the great distance and they fell short landing
in the mighty Columbia with a great splash and making the earth tremble
from their violence. This quieted the spirits of Mt. Hood, since which
they have had peace; but the waters were dammed up and the cascades were
formed.
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