Far over your left shoulder as your boat leaves the Narrows to
thread the beautiful waterways that lead to Vancouver Island,
you will see the summit of Mount Baker robed in its everlasting
whiteness and always reflecting some wonderful glory from the rising
sun, the golden noontide, or the violet and amber sunset. This is
the Mount Ararat of the Pacific Coast peoples; for those readers who
are familiar with the ways and beliefs and faiths of primitive races
will agree that it is difficult to discover anywhere in the world
a race that has not some story of the Deluge, which they have
chronicled and localized to fit the understanding and the conditions
of the nation that composes their own immediate world.
Amongst the red nations of America I doubt if any two tribes have
the same ideas regarding the Flood. Some of the traditions
concerning this vast whim of Nature are grotesque in the extreme;
some are impressive; some even profound; but of all the stories of
the Deluge that I have been able to collect I know of not a single
one that can even begin to equal in beauty of conception, let alone
rival in possible reality and truth, the Squamish legend of "The
Deep Waters."
I here quote the legend of "mine own people," the Iroquois tribes
of Ontario, regarding the Deluge. I do this to paint the color of
contrast in richer shades, for I am bound to admit that we who
pride ourselves on ancient intellectuality have but a childish tale
of the Flood when compared with the jealously preserved annals of
the Squamish, which savour more of history than tradition. With
"mine own people," animals always play a much more important part,
and are endowed with a finer intelligence, than humans. I do not
find amid my notes a single tradition of the Iroquois wherein
animals do not figure, and our story of the Deluge rests entirely
with the intelligence of sea-going and river-going creatures. With
us, animals in olden times were greater than man; but it is not so
with the Coast Indians, except in rare instances.
When a Coast Indian consents to tell you a legend he will, without
variation, begin it with, "It was before the white people came."