"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 grandsires 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
only 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, O 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 encircled 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."