Theodore Winthrop, in his own brilliant way, tells a quaint legend of
Tacoma, as related to him by a frowsy Siwash at Nisqually. "Tamanous,"
among the native Indians of this section, is a vague and
half-personified type of the unknown and mysterious forces of Nature.
There is the one all-pervading Tamanous, but there are a thousand
emanations, each one a tamanous with a small "t." Each Indian has his
special tamanous, who thus becomes "the guide, philosopher, and friend"
of every Siwash. The tamanous, or totem, types himself as a salmon, a
beaver, an elk, a canoe, a fir-tree, and so on indefinitely. In some of
its features this legend resembles strongly the immortal story of Rip
Van Winkle; it may prove interesting as a study in folk-lore.
"Avarice, O, Boston tyee!" quoth the Siwash, studying me with dusky
eyes, "is a mighty passion. Know you that our first circulating medium
was shells, 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. And with this we buy what our
hearts desire. Hiaqua, we call it, and he who has most hiaqua is wisest
and best of all the dwellers on the Sound.
"Now, in old times there dwelt here an old man, a mighty hunter and
fisherman. And he worshipped hiaqua. And always this old man thought
deeply and communed with his wisdom, and while he waited for elk or
salmon he took advice within himself from his demon--he talked with
tamanous. And always his question was, 'How may I put hiaqua in my
purse?' But never had Tamanous revealed to him the secret. There loomed
Tacoma, so white and glittering that it seemed to stare at him very
terribly and mockingly, and to know of his shameful avarice, and how it
led him to take from starving women their cherished lip and nose jewels
of hiaqua, and give them in return tough scraps of dried elk-meat and
salmon. His own peculiar tamanous was the elk. One day he was hunting
on the sides of Tacoma, and in that serene silence his tamanous began
to talk to his soul. 'Listen!' said tamanous--and then the great secret
of untold wealth was revealed to him. He went home and made his
preparations, told his old, ill-treated squaw he was going for a long
hunt, and started off at eventide. The next night he camped just below
the snows of Tacoma, but sunrise and he struck the summit together, for
there, tamanous had revealed to him, was hiaqua--hiaqua that should
make him the greatest and richest of his tribe. He looked down and saw
a hollow covered with snow, save at the centre, where a black lake lay
deep in a well of purple rock, and at one end of the lake were three
large stones or monuments. Down into the crater sprang the miser, and
the morning sunshine followed him. He found the first stone shaped like
a salmon head; the second like a kamas root, and the third, to his
great joy, was the carven image of an elk's head. This was his own
tamanous, and right joyous was he at the omen, so taking his elk-horn
pick he began to dig right sturdily at the foot of the monument. At the
sound of the very first blow he made, thirteen gigantic otters came out
of the black lake and, sitting in a circle, watched him. And at every
thirteenth blow they tapped the ground with their tails in concert The
miser heeded them not, but labored lustily for hours. At last,
overturning a thin scale of rock, he found a square cavity filled to
the brim with hiaqua.
"He was a millionaire.
"The otters retired to a respectful distance, recognizing him as a
favorite of Tamanous.
"He reveled in the treasure, exulting. Deep as he could plunge his arm,
there was still more hiaqua below. It was strung upon elk sinews, fifty
shells on a string. But he saw the noon was passed, so he prepared to
depart. He loaded himself with countless strings of hiaqua, by fifties
and hundreds, so that he could scarcely stagger along. Not a string did
he hang on the tamanous of the elk, or the salmon, or the kamas--not
one--but turned eagerly toward his long descent. At once all the otters
plunged back into the lake and began to beat the waters with their tails;
a thick, black mist began to rise threateningly. Terrible are the storms
in the mountains--and Tamanous was in this one. Instantly the fierce
whirlwind overtook the miser. He was thrown down and flung over icy
banks, but he clung to his precious burden. Utter night was around him,
and in every crash and thunder of the gale was a growing undertone which
he well knew to be the voice of Tamanous. Floating upon this undertone
were sharper tamanous voices, shouting and screaming, always sneeringly,
'Ha, ha, hiaqua!--ha, ha, ha!' Whenever the miser attempted to continue
his descent the whirlwind caught him and tossed him hither and thither,
flinging him into a pinching crevice, burying him to the eyes in a snow
drift, throwing him on jagged boulders, or lacerating him on sharp lava
jaws. 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; and the miser more and more exhausted with
vain buffeting. He at last thought to propitiate exasperated Tamanous,
and threw away a string of hiaqua. But the storm was renewed blacker,
louder, crueler than before. String by string he parted with his
treasure, until at the last, sorely wounded, terrified, and weak, with a
despairing cry, he cast from him the last vestige of wealth, and sank
down insensible.
[Illustration: ROOSTER ROCK, COLUMBIA RIVER, ORE. On the Union Pacific
Ry.]
"It seemed a long slumber to him, but at last he woke. He was upon the
very spot whence he started at morning. He felt hungry, and made a
hearty breakfast of the chestnut-like bulbs of the kamas root, and took
a smoke. Reflecting on the events of yesterday, he became aware of an
odd change in his condition. He was not bruised and wounded, as he
expected, but very stiff only, and his joints creaked like the creak of
a lazy paddle on the rim of a canoe. His hair was matted and reached a
yard down his back. 'Tamanous,' thought the old man. But chiefly he was
conscious of a mental change. He was calm and content. Hiaqua and
wealth seemed to have lost their charm for him. Tacoma, shining like
gold and silver and precious stones of gayest lustre, seemed a benign
comrade and friend. All the outer world was cheerful, and he thought
he had never wakened to a fresher morning. He rose and started on
his downward way, but the woods seemed strangely transformed since
yesterday; just before sunset he came to the prairie where his lodge
used to be; he saw an old squaw near the door crooning a song; she was
decked with many strings of hiaqua and costly beads. It was his wife;
and she told him he had been gone many, many years--she could not tell
how many; that she had remained faithful and constant to him, and
distracted her mind from the bitterness of sorrow by trading in kamas
and magic herbs, and had thus acquired a genteel competence. But little
cared the sage for such things; he, was rejoiced to be at home and at
peace, and near his own early gains of hiaqua and treasure buried in
a place of security. He imparted whatever he possessed--material
treasures or stores of wisdom and experience--freely to all the land.
Every dweller came to him for advice how to spear the salmon, chase the
elk, or propitiate Tamanous. He became the great medicine man of the
Siwashes and a benefactor to his tribe and 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, revered and beloved, and on
his death-bed 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. Mayst thou and thy nation not disdain this lesson of an earlier
age, but profit by it and be wise!"
So far the Siwash recounted his legend without the palisades of Fort
Nisqually, and motioning, in expressive pantomime, at the close, that he
was dry with big talk and would gladly "wet his whistle."
The town of Tacoma contains about 15,000 inhabitants, and is in a highly
prosperous condition. From here one may start on the grand Alaskan tour,
winding up through all the wonders of sound and strait, bay and ocean, to
the far North summerland--a trip of most entrancing interest. The return
from Tacoma to Portland may be made by either rail or boat.
So much has already been said in preceding pages about Puget Sound that
it would seem the subject might be somewhat overdone. But it still
remains to be said that justice can never be done to the scenic glories
of this beautiful inland sea. The views from different points, and from
almost every point on the Sound, are of sublime grandeur. On the east are
the Cascade Mountains, ranging from 5,000 to 14,444 feet in height, Mount
Rainier for Tacoma, (as it is also called) being of the latter altitude,
and only third in height of the mountains of the United States. On the
west are the Olympic Mountains, the highest peaks of which reach up to
8,000 feet. Both ranges, brilliantly snow-crowned, are within view at the
same time from various points, and the scenery in its entirety, with its
continual changefulness and features of sublimity, can not be excelled.
Strangers and travelers who have visited every part of the world never
leave the deck of the steamers while going through the waters of the
Sound country. In noting a single feature, Mount Rainier, Senator George
F. Edmunds wrote as follows: "I have been through the Swiss mountains,
and am compelled to own that there is no comparison between the finest
effects exhibited there and what is seen in approaching this grand and
isolated mountain. I would be willing to go 500 miles again to see that
scene. The Continent is yet in ignorance of what will be one of the
grandest show places, as well as sanitariums. If Switzerland is rightly
called the play-ground of Europe, I am satisfied that around the base of
Mt. Rainier will become a prominent place of resort, not for America
only, but for the world besides, with thousands of sites for building
purposes that are nowhere excelled for the grandeur of the view that can
be obtained from them, with topographical features that would make the
most perfect system of drainage both possible and easy, and with a most
agreeable and health-giving climate."
A more enthusiastic writer says: "Puget Sound scenery is the grandest
scenery in the world. One has here in combination the sublimity of
Switzerland, the picturesqueness of the Rhine, the rugged beauty of
Norway, the breezy variety of the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence,
or the Hebrides of the North Sea, the soft, rich-toned skies of Italy,
the pastoral landscape of England, with velvet meadows and magnificent
groves, massed with floral bloom, and the blending tints and bold color
of the New England Indian summer. Features with which nothing within the
vision of another city can be placed in comparison are the Olympic range
of mountains in front of Seattle, and the sublime snow peaks of the
Rainier, Baker, Adams, and St. Helens, with their glaciers and robes of
eternal white, and the great falls of the Snoqualmie, 280 feet high, near
by."
[Illustration: MOUNT ST. HELENS, WASHINGTON, FROM NEAR MOUTH OF THE
WILLAMETTE RIVER. Reached via the Union Pacific Ry.]
The geography and topography of this sheet are alone a wonder and a
study. Glance upon the map. The elements of earth and water seem to
have struggled for dominion one over the other. The Strait of Juan de
Fuca and the Gulf of Georgia to the south narrow into Admiralty Inlet;
the inlet penetrates the very heart of the Territory, cutting the land
into most grotesque shapes, circling and twisting into a hundred minor
inlets, into which flow a hundred rivers, fed in their turn by myriads
of smaller creeks and bayous--a veritable network of lakes, streams,
peninsulas, and islands which, with the mountain ranges backing the
landscapes on either hand, can not fail to be picturesque in the
extreme. Here on the placid bosom of this inland sea, the pleasure
seeker can enjoy all the delights and exhilarating influences of ocean
travel without its inconveniences. No sea sickness, no proneness to
reflect on "to be or not to be," but, amid the bracing breezes, the
steady, easy glide of the commodious steamer over pleasant waters,
takes him through scenes as fair as the poet's brightest dreams. This
"Mediterranean of the Pacific" throughout its length and breadth is
adorned with heavily-wooded and fantastically-formed islands. The giant
firs are the tallest and straightest in the world. Here the "Great
Eastern" came for her masts, and here thousands of ships obtain their
spars yearly.
To repeat, the scenery is indeed something unsurpassed. A ride over these
placid waters, in and out, around rocky headlands, among woody mountains,
along beautiful beaches and graceful tongues of velvety meadows--all
'neath the shadows of towering, snow-clad peaks, is a delight worth days
of travel to experience. It enraptures the artist and enthuses even
ordinarily prosy folks. There is no single feature wanting to make of
such places as Tacoma, Seattle, and Port Townsend, the most delightful
and agreeable watering places in the world. Surrounded by magnificent and
picturesque scenery, with beautiful drives and lovely bays for yachting
purposes, with splendid fishing and sport of every description to be had,
with a climate that would charm a misanthrope, why should they not become
the favorite resorts on the Great West Coast? These facts led to the
building of the magnificent Hotel Tacoma, at a cost of a quarter of a
million dollars. Other such caravansaries will follow, and in time Puget
Sound will be famous the world over for its incomparable attractions for
the health and pleasure seeker.
The average traveler has but a faint idea of the wonderful resources of
this grand empire. Puget Sound has about 1,800 miles of shore line, and
all along this long stretch is one vast and almost unbroken forest of
enormous trees. The forests are so vast that, although the saw-mills have
been ripping 500,000,000 feet of lumber out of them every year for the
past ten years, the spaces made by these inroads seem no more than garden
patches. An official estimate places the amount of standing timber in that
area at 500,000,000,000 feet, or a thousand years' supply, even at the
enormous rate the timber is now being felled and sawed.
In the vicinity of Olympia, the capital of Washington, are a number of
popular resorts for sportsmen and campers--beautiful lakes filled with
voracious trout, and streams alive with the speckled mountain beauties.
The forests abound in bear and deer, while grouse, pheasants, quail, and
water-fowl afford fine sport to the hunter of small game.