"The God Mountain of Puget Sound"
Less than fifty years ago what is now Seattle numbered scarce a thousand
inhabitants, and the present city of Tacoma was a cluster of shacks
about a sawmill. Puget Sound, to-day a highway of commerce, was an
almost unknown inland sea, its waters furrowed only by the prows of
Indian canoes.
But for centuries beyond number the great mountain of Puget Sound has
been as it is to-day, the mountain beautiful, dominating all the Sound
country. In Seattle its name is Rainier, and Tacoma insists the city's
title is the mountain's as well. Call it what you will to-day,
yesterday, in the talk of the Indian fishers of Whulge, it was known as
Tacoma, a word generically applied to snow mountains.
No truly great mountain in America is as readily accessible and as
widely enjoyed as Tacoma-Rainier. To Seattle and Tacoma it is an
ever-present companion, and all the Puget Sound country basks in its
shadow. A most excellent automobile road winds through its forests up to
the snow fields, the only highway on this continent which actually
reaches a living glacier. Railroads go close to the mountain, and a
delightful hotel and several camps supply every inducement and comfort
for luxurious stays in close proximity to the final peak. From these
places as headquarters one may make countless excursions round about the
mountain, over magnificently beautiful trails, seeing its glaciers, its
forests, its flowers, and its surpassing views, and there are always
guides ready to lead the way to the top, an ascent which offers all the
thrills and most of the experiences of the most arduous mountaineering
in the Alps. In short, there is an almost limitless field of recreation
round about Tacoma-Rainier, and it is but for you to choose the mode of
your enjoyment.
Seeing this "Mountain that was God," and climbing it, are matters of
almost normal routine to the residents of the Puget Sound country and
the visitors to its sister cities. It is the accepted thing to do--and
one supremely worth while--but to add another account of an ascent of
Tacoma-Rainier, or detailed description of its wonders, to the many
already in print, would be indeed carrying coals to Newcastle.
So, recommending you to the several excellent books on the subject,
instead of essaying further description of the mountain to-day I'll
venture to repeat what appeals to me as the best of the many Indian
legends relating to it. The wording of the story is that of Theodore
Winthrop, in his book _The Canoe and Saddle_, from which in a previous
chapter I borrowed the delightful legend of the Dalles.
[Illustration: The "God Mountain" of Puget Sound
Copyright 1910 by L. G. Linkletter]
The story, says Winthrop, was told to him by Hamitchou at Nisqually,
presumably about 1860, and here is his interpretation:
"Avarice, O Boston Tyee," quoth Hamitchou, studying me with dusky
eyes, "is a mighty passion. Now, be it known unto thee that we
Indians anciently used not metals nor the money of you blanketeers.
Our circulating medium was shells,--wampum you would name it. Of
all wampum, the most precious is Hiaqua. Hiaqua comes from the far
north. It is a small, perforated shell, not unlike a very opaque
quill toothpick, tapering from the middle, and cut square at both
ends. We string it in many strands, and hang it around the neck
of one we love--namely, each man his own neck. We also buy with it
what our hearts desire. He who has most hiaqua is best and wisest
and happiest of all the northern Hiada and of all the people of
Whulge. The mountain horsemen value it; the braves of the terrible
Blackfeet have been known, in the good old days, to come over and
offer a horse or a wife for a bunch of fifty hiaqua.
"Now, once upon a time there dwelt where this fort of Nisqually now
stands a wise old man of the Squallyamish. He was a great fisherman
and a great hunter; and the wiser he grew, much the wiser he
thought himself. When he had grown very wise, he used to stay apart
from every other Siwash. Companionable salmon-boilings round a
common pot had no charms for him. 'Feasting was wasteful,' he said,
'and revelers would come to want,' and when they verified his
prophecy, and were full of hunger and empty of salmon, he came out
of his hermitage and had salmon to sell.
"Hiaqua was the pay he always demanded; and as he was a very wise
old man, and knew all the tideways of Whulge, and all the enticing
ripples and placid spots of repose in every river where fish might
dash or delay, he was sure to have salmon when others wanted, and
thus bagged largely of its precious equivalent, hiaqua.
"Not only a mighty fisher was the sage, but a mighty hunter, and
elk, the greatest animal of the woods, was the game he loved. Well
had he studied every trail where elk leave the print of their
hoofs, and where, tossing their heads, they bend the tender twigs.
Well had he searched through the broad forest, and found the
long-haired prairies where elk feed luxuriously; and there, from
behind palisade fir-trees, he had launched the fatal arrow.
Sometimes, also, he lay beside a pool of sweetest water, revealed
to him by gemmy reflections of sunshine gleaming through the woods,
until at noon the elk came down, to find death awaiting him as he
stooped and drank. Or beside the same fountain the old man watched
at night, drowsily starting at every crackling branch, until, when
the moon was high, and her illumination declared the pearly water,
elk dashed forth incautious into the glade, and met their midnight
destiny.
"Elk-meat, too, he sold to his tribe. This brought him pelf, but,
alas, for his greed, the pelf came slowly. Waters and woods were
rich in game. All the Squallyamish were hunters and fishers,
though none so skilled as he. They were rarely absolutely in want,
and, when they came to him for supplies, they were far too poor in
hiaqua.
"So the old man thought deeply, and communed with his wisdom, and,
while he waited for fish or beast, he took advice within himself
from his demon--he talked with Tamanous. And always the question
was, 'How may I put hiaqua in my purse?'
"Tamanous never revealed to him that far to the north, beyond the
waters of Whulge, are tribes with their under lip pierced with a
fish-bone, among whom hiaqua is plenty as salmonberries are in the
woods that time in midsummer salmon fin it along the reaches of
Whulge.
"But the more Tamanous did not reveal to him these mysteries of
nature, the more he kept dreamily prying into his own mind,
endeavoring to devise some scheme by which he might discover a
treasure-trove of the beloved shell. His life seemed wasted in the
patient, frugal industry, which only brought slow, meager gains. He
wanted the splendid elation of vast wealth and the excitement of
sudden wealth. His own peculiar tamanous was the elk. Elk was also
his totem, the cognizance of his freemasonry with those of his own
family, and their family friends in other tribes. Elk, therefore,
were every way identified with his life; and he hunted them farther
and farther up through the forests on the flanks of Tacoma, hoping
that some day his tamanous would speak in the dying groan of one of
them, and gasp out the secret of the mines of hiaqua, his heart's
desire.
"Tacoma was so white and glittering, that it seemed to stare at him
very terribly and mockingly, and to know his shameful avarice, and
how it led him to take from starving women their cherished lip and
nose jewels of hiaqua, and to give them in return only tough scraps
of dried elk-meat and salmon. When men are shabby, mean, and
grasping, they feel reproached for their groveling lives by the
unearthliness of nature's beautiful objects, and they hate flowers
and sunsets, mountains and the quiet stars of heaven.
"Nevertheless," continued Hamitchou, "this wise old fool of my
legend went on stalking elk along the sides of Tacoma, ever
dreaming of wealth. And at last, as he was hunting near the snows
one day, one very clear and beautiful day of late summer, when
sunlight was magically disclosing far distances, and making all
nature supernaturally visible and proximate, Tamanous began to work
in the soul of the miser.
"'Are you brave?' whispered Tamanous in the strange, ringing, dull,
silent thunder-tones of a demon voice. 'Dare you go to the caves
where my treasures are hid?'
"'I dare,' said the miser.
"He did not know that his lips had syllabled a reply. He did not
even hear his own words. But all the place had become suddenly
vocal with echoes. The great rock against which he leaned crashed
forth, 'I dare.' Then all along through the forest, dashing from
tree to tree and lost at last among the murmuring of breeze-shaken
leaves, went careering his answer, taken up and repeated
scornfully, 'I dare.' And after a silence, while the daring one
trembled and would gladly have ventured to shout, for the
companionship of his own voice, there came across from the vast
snow wall of Tacoma a tone like the muffled threatening plunge of
an avalanche into a chasm, 'I dare.'
"'You dare!' said Tamanous, enveloping him with a dread sense of an
unseen, supernatural presence; 'you pray for wealth of hiaqua.
Listen!'
"This injunction was hardly needed; the miser was listening with
dull eyes kindled and starting. He was listening with every rusty
hair separating from its unkempt mattedness, and outstanding
upright, a caricature of an aureole.
"'Listen,' said Tamanous, in the noonday hush. And then Tamanous
vouchsafed at last the great secret of the hiaqua mines, while in
terror near to death the miser heard, and every word of guidance
toward the hidden treasure of the mountains seared itself into his
soul ineffaceably.
"Silence came again more terrible now than the voice of
Tamanous,--silence under the shadow of the great cliff,--silence
deepening down the forest vistas,--silence filling the void up to
the snows of Tacoma. All life and motion seemed paralyzed. At last
Skai-ki, the Blue-Jay, the wise bird, foe to magic, sang cheerily
overhead. Her song seemed to refresh again the honest laws of
nature. The buzz of life stirred everywhere again, and the inspired
miser rose and hastened home to prepare for his work.
"When Tamanous has put a great thought in a man's brain, has
whispered him a great discovery within his power, or hinted at a
great crime, that spiteful demon does not likewise suggest the
means of accomplishment.
"The miser, therefore, must call upon his own skill to devise
proper tools, and upon his own judgment to fix upon the most
fitting time for carrying out his quest. Sending his squaw out to
the kamas prairie, under pretense that now was the season for her
to gather their store of that sickish-sweet esculent root, and that
she might not have her squaw's curiosity aroused by seeing him at
strange work, he began his preparations. He took a pair of enormous
elk-horns, and fashioned from each horn a two-pronged pick or
spade, by removing all the antlers except the two topmost. He
packed a good supply of kippered salmon, and filled his pouch with
kinnikinnick for smoking in his black stone pipe. With his bows and
arrows and his two elk-horn picks wrapped in buckskin hung at his
back, he started just before sunset, as if for a long hunt. His
old, faithful, maltreated, blanketless, vermilionless squaw,
returning with baskets full of kamas, saw him disappearing moodily
down the trail.
"All that night, all the day following, he moved on noiselessly, by
paths he knew. He hastened on, unnoticing outward objects, as one
with controlling purpose hastens. Elk and deer, bounding through
the trees, passed him, but he tarried not. At night he camped just
below the snows of Tacoma. He was weary, and chill night-airs
blowing down from the summit almost froze him. He dared not take
his fire-sticks, and, placing one perpendicular upon a little
hollow on the flat side of the other, twirl the upright stick
rapidly between his palms until the charred spot kindled and
lighted his 'tipsoo,' his dry, tindery wool of inner bark. A fire,
gleaming high upon the mountainside, might be a beacon to draw
thither any night-wandering savage to watch in ambush, and learn
the path toward the mines of hiaqua. So he drowsed chilly and
fireless, awakened often by dread sounds of crashing and rumbling
among the chasms of Tacoma. He desponded bitterly, almost ready to
abandon his quest, almost doubting whether he had in truth received
a revelation, whether his interview with Tamanous had not been a
dream, and finally whether all the hiaqua in the world was worth
this toil and anxiety. Fortunate is the sage who at such a point
turns back and buys his experience without worse befalling him.
"Past midnight he suddenly was startled from his drowse and sat
bolt upright in terror. A light! Was there another searcher in the
forest, and a bolder than he? That flame just glimmering over the
treetops, was it a camp-fire of friend or foe? Had Tamanous been
revealing to another the great secret? No, smiled the miser, his
eyes fairly open, and discovering that the new light was the moon.
He had been waiting for her illumination on paths heretofore
untrodden by mortal. She did not show her full, round, jolly face,
but turned it askance as if she hardly liked to be implicated in
this night's transactions.
"However, it was light he wanted, not sympathy, and he started up
at once to climb over the dim snows. The surface was packed by the
night's frost, and his moccasins gave him firm hold; yet he
traveled but slowly, and could not always save himself from a
glissade backwards, and a bruise upon some projecting knob or crag.
Sometimes, upright fronts of ice diverted him for long circuits, or
a broken wall of cold cliff arose, which he must surmount
painfully. Once or twice he stuck fast in a crevice and hardly drew
himself out by placing his bundle of picks across the crack. As he
plodded and floundered thus deviously and toilsomely upward, at
last the wasted moon paled overhead, and under foot the snow grew
rosy with coming dawn. The dim world about the mountain's base
displayed something of its vast detail. He could see, more
positively than by moonlight, the far-reaching arteries of mist
marking the organism of Whulge beneath; and what had been but a
black chaos now resolved itself into the Alpine forest whence he
had come.
"But he troubled himself little with staring about; up he looked,
for the summit was at hand. To win that summit was well-nigh the
attainment of his hopes, if Tamanous were true; and that, with the
flush of morning ardor upon him, he could not doubt. There, in a
spot Tamanous had revealed to him, was hiaqua--hiaqua that should
make him the richest and greatest of all the Squallyamish.
"The chill before sunrise was upon him as he reached the last curve
of the dome. Sunrise and he struck the summit together. Together
sunrise and he looked over the glacis. They saw within a great
hollow all covered with the whitest of snow, save at the center,
where a black lake lay deep in a well of purple rock.
"At the eastern end of this lake was a small irregular plain of
snow, marked by three stones like mountains. Toward these the miser
sprang rapidly, with full sunshine streaming after him over the
snows.
"The first monument he examined with keen looks. It was tall as a
giant man, and its top was fashioned into the grotesque likeness of
a salmon's head. He turned from this to inspect the second. It was
of similar height, but bore at its apex an object in shape like the
regular flame of a torch. As he approached, he presently discovered
that this was an image of the kamas-bulb in stone. These two
semblances of prime necessities of Indian life delayed him but an
instant, and he hastened on to the third monument, which stood
apart on a perfect level. The third stone was capped by something
he almost feared to behold, lest it should prove other than his
hopes. Every word of Tamanous had thus far proved veritable; but
might there not be a bitter deceit at the last? The miser trembled.
"Yes, Tamanous was trustworthy. The third monument was as the old
man anticipated. It was a stone elk-head, such as it appears in
earliest summer, when the antlers are sprouting lustily under their
rough jacket of velvet.
"You remember, Boston tyee," continued Hamitchou, "that elk was the
old man's tamanous, the incarnation for him of the universal
Tamanous. He therefore was right joyous at this good omen of
protection; and his heart grew big and swollen with hope, as the
black salmonberry swells in a swamp in June. He threw down his
'ikta'; every impediment he laid down upon the snow; and unwrapping
his two picks of elk-horn, he took the stoutest, and began to dig
in the frozen snow at the foot of the elk-head monument.
"No sooner had he struck the first blow than he heard behind him a
sudden puff, such as a seal makes when it comes to the surface to
breathe. Turning round much startled, he saw a huge otter just
clambering up over the edge of the lake. The otter paused, and
struck on the snow with his tail, whereupon another otter and
another appeared, until, following their leader in slow solemn
file, were twelve other otters, marching toward the miser. The
twelve approached and drew up in a circle around him. Each was
twice as large as any otter ever seen. Their chief was four times
as large as the most gigantic otter ever seen in the regions of
Whulge, and certainly was as great as a seal. When the twelve were
arranged, their leader skipped to the top of the elk-head stone,
and sat there between the horns. Then the whole thirteen gave a
mighty puff in chorus.
"The hunter of hiaqua was for a moment abashed at his uninvited
ring of spectators. But he had seen otter before, and bagged them.
These he could not waste time to shoot, even if a phalanx so
numerous were not formidable. Besides, they might be tamanous. He
took to his pick, and began digging stoutly.
"He soon made way in the snow, and came to solid rock beneath. At
every thirteenth stroke of his pick, the fugleman otter tapped with
his tail on the monument. Then the choir of lesser otters tapped
together with theirs on the snow. This caudal action produced a
dull muffled sound, as if there were a vast hollow below.
"Digging with all his force, by and by the seeker for treasure
began to tire, and laid down his elk-horn spade to wipe the sweat
from his brow. Straightway the fugleman otter turned, and swinging
his tail, gave the weary man a mighty thump on the shoulder; and
the whole band, imitating, turned, and, backing inward, smote him
with centripetal tails, until he resumed his labors, much bruised.
"The rock lay first in plates, then in scales. These it was easy to
remove. Presently, however, as the miser pried carelessly at a
larger mass, he broke his elk-horn tool. Fugleman otter leaped
down, and, seizing the supplemental pick between his teeth, mouthed
it over to the digger. Then the amphibious monster took in the same
manner the broken pick, and bore it round the circle of his suite,
who inspected it with puffs.
"These strange magical proceedings disconcerted and somewhat
baffled the miser; but he plucked up heart, for the prize was
priceless, and worked on more cautiously with his second pick. At
last its bows and the regular thumps of the otters' tails called
forth a sound hollower and hollower. His circle of spectators
narrowed so that he could feel their panting breath as they bent
curiously over the little pit he had dug.
"The crisis was evidently at hand.
"He lifted each scale of rock more delicately. Finally he raised a
scale so thin that it cracked into flakes as he turned it over.
Beneath was a large square cavity.
"It was filled to the brim with hiaqua.
"He was a millionaire.
"The otters recognized him as the favorite of Tamanous, and retired
to a respectful distance.
"For some moments he gazed on his treasure, taking thought of his
future grandeur among the dwellers by Whulge. He plunged his arm
deep as he could go; there was still nothing but the precious
shells. He smiled to himself in triumph; he had wrung the secret
from Tamanous. Then, as he withdrew his arm, the rattle of the
hiaqua recalled him to the present. He saw that noon was long past,
and he must proceed to reduce his property to possession.
"The hiaqua was strung upon long, stout sinews of elk in bunches of
fifty shells on each side. Four of these he wound about his waist;
three he hung across each shoulder; five he took in each
hand;--twenty strings of pure white hiaqua, every shell large,
smooth, unbroken, beautiful. He could carry no more; hardly even
with this could he stagger along. He put down his burden for a
moment, while he covered up the seemingly untouched wealth of the
deposit carefully with the scale stones, and brushed snow over the
whole.
"The miser never dreamed of gratitude, never thought to hang a
string of the buried treasure about the salmon and kamas tamanous
stones, and two strings around the elk-head; no, all must be his
own, all he could carry now, and the rest for the future.
"He turned, and began his climb toward the crater's edge. At once
the otters, with a mighty puff in concert, took up their line of
procession, and, plunging into the black lake, began to beat the
water with their tails.
"The miser could hear the sound of splashing water as he struggled
upward through the snow, now melted and yielding. It was a long
hour of harsh toil and much back-sliding before he reached the rim,
and turned to take one more view of this valley of good fortune.
"As he looked, a thick mist began to rise from the lake center,
where the otters were splashing. Under the mist grew a cylinder of
black cloud, utterly hiding the water.
"Terrible are storms in the mountains; but in this looming mass was
a terror more dread than any hurricane of ruin ever bore within its
wild vortexes. Tamanous was in that black cylinder, and as it
strode forward, chasing in the very path of the miser, he
shuddered, for his wealth and his life were in danger.
"However, it might be but a common storm. Sunlight was bright as
ever overhead in heaven, and all the lovely world below lay
dreamily fair, in that afternoon of summer, at the feet of the rich
man, who now was hastening to be its king. He stepped from the
crater edge and began his descent.
"Instantly the storm overtook him. He was thrown down by its first
assault, flung over a rough bank of iciness, and lay at the foot
torn and bleeding, but clinging still to his precious burden. Each
hand still held its five strings of hiaqua. In each hand he bore a
nation's ransom. He staggered to his feet against the blast. Utter
night was around him--night as if daylight had forever perished,
had never come into being from chaos. The roaring of the storm had
also deafened and bewildered him with its wild uproar.
"Present in every crash and thunder of the gale was a growing
undertone, which the miser well knew to be the voice of Tamanous. A
deadly shuddering shook him. Heretofore that potent Unseen had been
his friend and guide; there had been awe, but no terror, in his
words. Now the voice of Tamanous was inarticulate, but the miser
could divine in that sound an unspeakable threat of wrath and
vengeance. Floating upon this undertone were sharper tamanous
voices, shouting and screaming always sneeringly, 'Haha,
hiaqua,--ha, ha, ha!'
"Whenever the miser essayed to move and continue his descent, a
whirlwind caught him and with much ado tossed him hither and
thither, leaving him at last flung and imprisoned in a pinching
crevice, or buried to the eyes in a snowdrift, or gnawed by
lacerating lava jaws. Sharp torture the old man was encountering,
but he held fast to his hiaqua.
"The blackness grew ever deeper and more crowded with perdition,
the din more impish, demoniac, and devilish; the laughter more
appalling; the miser more and more exhausted with vain buffeting.
He determined to propitiate exasperated Tamanous with a sacrifice.
He threw into the black cylinder storm his left-handful, five
strings of precious hiaqua."
"Somewhat long-winded is thy legend, Hamitchou, Great Medicine-Man
of the Squallyamish," quoth I. "Why didn't the old fool drop his
wampum--shell out, as one might say,--and make tracks?"
"Well, well!" continued Hamitchou, "when the miser had thrown away
his first handful of hiaqua, there was a momentary lull in
elemental war, and he heard the otters puffing around him
invisible. Then the storm, renewed, blacker, louder, harsher,
crueller than before, and over the dread undertone of the voice of
Tamanous, tamanous voices again screamed, 'Ha, ha, ha, hiaqua!'
and it seemed as if tamanous hands, or the paws of the demon
otters, clutched at the miser's right-handful and tore at his
shoulder and waist belts.
"So, while darkness and tempest still buffeted the hapless old man,
and thrust him away from his path, and while the roaring was
wickeder than the roars of tens and tens of bears when a-hungered
they pounce upon a plain of kamas, gradually wounded and terrified,
he flung away string after string of hiaqua, gaining never any
notice of such sacrifice, except an instant's lull of the cyclone
and a puff from the invisible otters.
"The last string he clung to long, and before he threw it to be
caught and whirled after its fellows, he tore off a single bunch of
fifty shells. But upon this, too, the storm laid its clutches. In
the final desperate struggle, the old man was wounded so sternly
that, when he had thrown into the formless chaos, instinct with
Tamanous, his last propitiatory offering, he sank and became
insensible.
"It seemed a long slumber to him, but at last he awoke. The jagged
moon was just paling overhead, and he heard Skai-ki, the Blue-Jay,
foe to magic, singing welcome to sunrise. It was the very spot
whence he started at morning.
"He was hungry, and felt for his bag of kamas and pouch of
smoke-leaves. There, indeed, by his side were the elk-sinew strings
of the bag, and the black stone pipe-bowl,--but no bag, no kamas,
no kinnikinnick. The whole spot was thick with kamas plants,
strangely out of place on the mountainside, and overhead grew a
large arbutus tree, with glistening leaves, ripe for smoking. The
old man found his hardwood fire-sticks safe under the herbage, and
soon twirled a light, and, nurturing it in dry grass, kindled a
cheery fire. He plucked up kamas, set it to roast, and laid a store
of the arbutus leaves to dry on a flat stone.
"After he had made a hearty breakfast on the chestnut-like
kamas-bulbs, and, smoking the thoughtful pipe, was reflecting on
the events of yesterday, he became aware of an odd change in his
condition. He was not bruised and wounded from head to foot, as he
expected, but very stiff only, and as he stirred, his joints
creaked like the creak of a lazy paddle upon the rim of a canoe.
Skai-ki, the Blue-Jay, was singularly familiar with him, hopping
from her perch in the arbutus, and alighting on his head. As he put
his hand to dislodge her, he touched his scratching-stick of bone,
and attempted to pass it, as usual, through his hair. The hair was
matted and interlaced into a network reaching fully two ells down
his back. 'Tamanous,' thought the old man.
"Chiefly he was conscious of a mental change. He was calm and
content. Hiaqua and wealth seemed to have lost their charms for
him. Tacoma, shining like gold and silver and precious stones of
gayest luster, seemed a benign comrade and friend. All the outer
world was cheerful and satisfying. He thought he had never awakened
to a fresher morning. He was a young man again, except for that
unusual stiffness and unmelodious creaking in his joints. He felt
no apprehension of any presence of a deputy tamanous, sent by
Tamanous to do malignities upon him in the lonely wood. Great
Nature had a kindly aspect, and made its divinity perceived only by
the sweet notes of birds and hum of forest life, and by a joy that
clothed his being. And now he found in his heart a sympathy for
man, and a longing to meet his old acquaintances down by the shores
of Whulge.
"He rose, and started on the downward way, smiling, and sometimes
laughing heartily at the strange croaking, moaning, cracking, and
rasping of his joints. But soon motion set the lubricating valves
at work, and the sockets grew slippery again. He marched rapidly,
hastening out of loneliness into society. The world of wood, glade,
and stream seemed to him strangely altered. Old colossal trees,
firs behind which he had hidden when on the hunt, cedars under
whose drooping shade he had lurked, were down, and lay athwart his
path, transformed into immense mossy mounds, like barrows of
giants, over which he must clamber warily, lest he sink and be half
stifled in the dust of rotten wood. Had Tamanous been widely at
work in that eventful night?--or had the spiritual change the old
man felt affected his views of the outer world?
"Traveling downward, he advanced rapidly, and just before sunset
came to the prairies where his lodge should be. Everything had
seemed to him so totally altered, that he tarried a moment in the
edge of the woods to take an observation before approaching his
home. There was a lodge, indeed, in the old spot, but a newer and
far handsomer one than he had left on the fourth evening before.
"A very decrepit old squaw, ablaze with vermilion and decked with
countless strings of hiaqua and costly beads, was seated on the
ground near the door, tending a kettle of salmon, whose blue and
fragrant steam mingled pleasantly with the golden haze of sunset.
She resembled his own squaw in countenance, as an ancient smoked
salmon is like a newly dried salmon. If she was indeed his spouse,
she was many years older than when he saw her last, and much better
dressed than the respectable lady had ever been during his miserly
days.
"He drew near quietly. The bedizened dame was crooning a chant,
very dolorous,--like this:
'My old man has gone, gone, gone,--
My old man to Tacoma has gone.
To hunt the elk, he went long ago.
When will he come down, down, down,
Down to the salmon-pot and me?'
'He has come from Tacoma down, down, down,--
Down to the salmon-pot and thee,'
shouted the reformed miser, rushing forward to supper with his
faithful wife."
"And how did Penelope explain the mystery?" I asked.
"If you mean the old lady," replied Hamitchou, "she was my
grandmother, and I'd thank you not to call names. She told my
grandfather that he had been gone many years;--she could not tell
how many, having dropped her tally-stick in the fire by accident
that very day. She also told him how, in despite of the entreaties
of many a chief who knew her economic virtues, and prayed her to
become the mistress of his household, she had remained constant to
the Absent, and forever kept the hopeful salmon-pot boiling for his
return. She had distracted her mind from the bitterness of sorrow
by trading in kamas and magic herbs, and had thus acquired a
genteel competence. The excellent dame then exhibited with great
complacency her gains, most of which she had put in the portable
and secure form of personal ornament, making herself a resplendent
magazine of valuable frippery.
"Little cared the repentant sage for such things. But he was
rejoiced to be again at home and at peace, and near his own early
gains of hiaqua and treasure, buried in a place of security. These,
however, he no longer overesteemed and hoarded. He imparted
whatever he possessed, material treasures or stores of wisdom and
experience, freely to all the land. Every dweller by Whulge came to
him for advice how to chase the elk, how to troll or spear the
salmon, and how to propitiate Tamanous. He became the Great
Medicine Man of the Siwashes, a benefactor to his tribe and his
race.
"Within a year after he came down from his long nap on the side of
Tacoma, a child, my father, was born to him. The sage lived many
years, beloved and revered, and on his death-bed, long before the
Boston tilicum or any blanketeers were seen in the regions of
Whulge, he told this history to my father, as a lesson and a
warning. My father, dying, told it to me. But I, alas! have no
son; I grow old, and lest this wisdom perish from the earth, and
Tamanous be again obliged to interpose against avarice, I tell the
tale to thee, O Boston tyee. Mayest thou and thy nation not disdain
this lesson of an earlier age, but profit by it and be wise."
So far Hamitchou recounted his legend without the palisades of Fort
Nisqually, and motioned, in expressive pantomime, at the close, that he
was dry with big talk, and would gladly wet his whistle.
[Illustration]