The upcoast people called her "Hoolool," which means "The Mouse" in the
Chinook tongue. For was she not silent as the small, grey creature that
depended on its own bright eyes and busy little feet to secure a living?
The fishermen and prospectors had almost forgotten the time when she
had not lived alone with her little son, "Tenas," for although Big Joe,
her husband, had been dead but four years, time travels slowly north
of Queen Charlotte Sound, and four years on the "Upper Coast" drag
themselves more leisurely than twelve at the mouth of the Fraser River.
Big Joe had left her with but three precious possessions--"Tenas," their
boy, the warm, roomy firwood house of the thrifty Pacific Coast Indian
build, and the great Totem Pole that loomed outside at its northwestern
corner like a guardian of her welfare and the undeniable hallmark of
their child's honorable ancestry and unblemished lineage.
After Big Joe died Hoolool would have been anchorless without that Totem
Pole. Its extraordinary carving, its crude but clever coloring, its
massed figures of animals, birds and humans, all designed and carved
out of the solid trunk of a single tree, meant a thousand times more to
her than it did to the travellers who, in their great "Klondike rush,"
thronged the decks of the northern-bound steamboats; than it did even
to those curio-hunters who despoil the Indian lodges of their ancient
wares, leaving their white man's coin in lieu of old silver bracelets
and rare carvings in black slate or finely woven cedar-root baskets.
Many times was she offered money for it, but Hoolool would merely shake
her head, and, with a half smile, turn away, giving no reason for her
refusal.
"The woman is like a mouse," those would-be purchasers would say, so
"Hoolool" she became, even to her little son, who called her the quaint
word as a white child would call its mother a pet name; and she in
turn called the little boy "Tenas," which means "Youngness"--the young
spring, the young day, the young moon--and he was all these blessed
things to her. But all the old-timers knew well why she would never
part with the Totem Pole.
"No use to coax her," they would tell the curio-hunters. "It is to her
what your family crest is to you. Would you sell your _crest_?"
So year after year the greedy-eyed collectors would go away
empty-handed, their coin in their pockets, and Hoolool's silent refusal
in their memories.
Yet how terribly she really needed their money she alone knew. To be
sure, she had her own firewood in the forest that crept almost to her
door, and in good seasons the salmon fishing was a great help. She
caught and smoked and dried this precious food, stowing it away for
use through the long winter months; but life was a continual struggle,
and Tenas was yet too young to help her in the battle.
Sometimes when the silver coins were very, very scarce, when her
shoulders ached with the cold, and her lips longed for tea and her mouth
for bread, when the smoked salmon revolted her, and her thin garments
grew thinner, she would go out and stand gazing at the Totem Pole, and
think of the great pile of coin that the last "collector" had offered
for it--a pile of coin that would fill all her needs until Tenas was
old enough to help her, to take his father's place at the hunting, the
fishing, and above all, in the logging camps up the coast.
"I would sell it to-day if they came," she would murmur. "I would not be
strong enough to refuse, to say no."
Then Tenas, knowing her desperate thoughts, would slip, mouse-like,
beside her and say:
"Hoolool, you are looking with love on our great Totem Pole--with love,
as you always do. It means that I shall be a great man some day, does it
not, Hoolool?"
Then the treachery of her thoughts would roll across her heart like a
crushing weight, and she knew that no thirst for tea, no hunger for
flour-bread, no shivering in thin garments, would ever drive her to part
with it. For the grotesque, carven thing was the very birthright of
her boy. Every figure, hewn with infinite patience by his sire's, his
grandsire's, his great-grandsire's, hands meant the very history from
which sprang the source of red blood in his young veins, the birth of
each generation, its deeds of valor, its achievements, its honors, its
undeniable right to the family name.
Should Tenas grow to youth, manhood, old age, and have no Totem Pole to
point to as a credential of being the honorable son of a long line of
honorable sons? Never! She would suffer in silence, like the little
grey, hungry Hoolool that scampered across the bare floors of her
firwood shack in the chill night hours, but her boy must have his
birthright. And so the great pole stood unmoved, baring its grinning
figures to the storms, the suns, the grey rains of the Pacific Coast,
but by its very presence it was keeping these tempests from entering
the heart of the lonely woman at its feet.
It was the year that spring came unusually early, weeks earlier than the
oldest Indian recalled its ever having come before. March brought the
wild geese honking northward, and great flocks of snow-white swans came
daily out of the southern horizon to sail overhead and lose themselves
along the Upper Coast, for it was mating and nesting time, and the heat
of the south had driven them early from its broad lagoons.
Every evening Tenas would roll himself in his blanket bed, while he
chatted about the migrating birds, and longed for the time when he would
be a great hunter, able to shoot the game as they flitted southward with
their large families in September.
"_Then_, Hoolool, we will have something better to eat than the smoked
salmon," he would say.
"Yes, little loved one," she would reply, "and you are growing so fast,
so big, that the time will not be long now before you can hunt down the
wild birds for your Hoolool to eat, eh, little Spring Eyes? But now you
must go to sleep; perhaps you will dream of the great flocks of the fat,
young, grey geese you are to get us for food."
"I'll tell you if I do; I'll tell you in the morning if I dream of the
little geese," he would reply, his voice trailing away into dreamland as
his eyes blinked themselves to sleep.
"Hoolool, I _did_ dream last night," he told her one early April day,
when he awoke dewy-eyed and bird-like from a long night's rest. "But it
was not of the bands of grey geese; it was of our great Totem Pole."
"Did it speak to you in your dreams, little April Eyes?" she asked,
playfully.
"No-o," he hesitated, "it did not really _speak_, but it showed me
something strange. Do you think it will come true, Hoolool?" His
dark, questioning eyes were pathetic in appeal. He _did_ want it to
come true.
"Tell your Hoolool," she replied indulgently, "and perhaps she can
decide if the dream will come true."
"You know how I longed to dream of the great flocks of young geese
flying southward in September," he said, longingly, his little thin
elbows propped each on one of her knees, his small, dark chin in his
hands, his wonderful eyes shadowy with the fairy dreams of childhood.
"But the flocks I saw were not flying grey geese, that make such fat
eating, but around the foot of our Totem Pole I saw flocks and flocks of
little tenas Totem Poles, hundreds of them. They were not _half_ as high
as I am. They were just baby ones you could take in your hand, Hoolool.
Could you take my knife the trader gave me and make me one just like our
big one? Only make it little, young--oh, _very_ tenas--that I can carry
it about with me. I'll paint it. Will you make me one, Hoolool?"
The woman sat still, a peculiar stillness that came of half fear, half
unutterable relief, and wholly of inspiration. Then she caught up the
boy, and her arms clung about him as if they would never release him.
"I know little of the white man's God," she murmured, "except that He is
good, but I know that the Great Tyee (god) of the West is surely good.
One of them has sent you this dream, my little April Eyes."
"Perhaps the Great Tyee and the white man's God are the same," the
child said, innocent of expressing a wonderful truth. "_You_ have two
names--'Marna' (mother, in the Chinook) and 'Hoolool'--yet you are the
same. Maybe it's that way with the two Great Tyees, the white man's and
ours. But why should they send me dreams of flocks of baby Totem Poles?"
"Because Hoolool will make _you_ one to-day, and then flocks and flocks
of tenas poles for the men with the silver coins. I cannot sell them our
great one, but I can make many small ones like it. Oh! they will buy the
little totems, and the great one will stand as the pride of your manhood
and the honor of your old age." Her voice rang with the hope of the
future, the confidence of years of difficulty overcome.
Before many hours had passed, she and the child had scoured the nearby
edges of the forest for woods that were dried, seasoned, and yet solid.
They had carried armfuls back to the fir shack, and the work of carving
had begun. The woman sat by the fire hour after hour--the fire that
burned in primitive fashion in the centre of the shack, stoveless and
hearthless, its ascending smoke curling up through an aperture in the
roof, its red flames flickering and fading, leaping and lighting the
work that even her unaccustomed fingers developed with wonderful
accuracy in miniature of the Totem Pole at the north-west corner
outside. By nightfall it was completed, and by the fitful firelight
Tenas painted and stained its huddled figures in the black, orange,
crimson and green that tribal custom made law. The warmth of the burning
cedar knots dried the paints and pigments, until their acrid fragrance
filled the little room, and the child's eyelids drooped sleepily, and in
a delightful happiness he once more snuggled into his blanket bed, the
baby Totem Pole hugged to his little heart. But his mother sat far into
the night, her busy fingers at work on the realization of her child's
dream. She was determined to fashion his dream-flock of "young" totems
which would bring to them both more of fat eating than many bands of
grey geese flying southward. The night wore on, and she left her task
only to rebuild the fire and to cover with an extra blanket the little
form of her sleeping boy. Finally she, too, slept, but briefly, for
daybreak found her again at her quaint occupation, and the following
nightfall brought no change. A week drifted by, and one morning, far
down the Sound, the whistle of a coming steamer startled both boy and
woman into brisk action. The little flock of Totem Poles now numbered
nine, and hastily gathering them together in one of her cherished
cedar-root baskets she clasped the child's hand, and they made their
way to the landing-stage.
When she returned an hour later, her basket was empty, and her kerchief
filled with silver coins.
On the deck of the steamer one of the ship's officers was talking to a
little group of delighted tourists who were comparing their miniature
purchases with the giant Totem Pole in the distance.
"You _are_ lucky," said the officer. "I know people who have tried
for years to buy the big Pole from her, but it was always 'No' with
her--just a shake of her head, and you might as well try to buy the
moon. It's for that little boy of hers she's keeping it, though she
could have sold it for hundreds of good dollars twenty times over."
That all happened eleven years ago, and last summer when I journeyed far
north of Queen Charlotte Sound, as the steamer reached a certain landing
I saw a giant Totem Pole with a well-built frame house at its base.
It was standing considerably away from the shore, but its newness was
apparent, for on its roof, busily engaged at shingling, was an agile
Indian youth of some seventeen years.
"That youngster built that house all by himself," volunteered one of the
ship's officers at my elbow. "He is a born carpenter, and gets all the
work he can do. He has supported his mother in comfort for two years,
and he isn't full grown yet."
"Who is he?" I asked, with keen interest.
"His name is Tenas," replied the officer. "His mother is a splendid
woman. 'Hoolool,' they call her. She is quite the best carver of Totem
Poles on the North Coast."