Legends of Vancouver by E. Pauline Johnson (the best books of all time .txt) 📕

tip of Brockton Point, greeting the coming day and then plunging from the summit into the sea.

“And at his home on the north shore his mother dressed his bed with fresh furs each morning. The seasons drifted by; winter followed summer, summer followed winter. But it was four years before the Tenas Tyee found the centre of the great salt-chuck oluk and plunged his hunting-knife into its evil heart. In its death-agony it writhed through the Narrows, leaving a trail of blackness on the waters. Its huge body began to shrink, to shrivel; it became dwarfed and withered, until nothing but the bones of its back remained, and they, sea-bleached and lifeless, soon sank to the bed of the ocean leagues off from the rim of land. But as the Tenas Tyee swam homeward and his clean, young body crossed through the black stain left by the serpent, the waters became clear and blue and sparkling. He had overcome even the trail of the salt-chuck oluk.

“When at last he stood in the doorway of his home he said, ‘My mother, I could not have killed the monster of greed amongst my people had you not helped me by keeping one place for me at home fresh and clean for my return.’

“She looked at him as only mothers look. ‘Each day, these four years, fresh furs have I laid for your bed. Sleep now, and rest, oh! my Tenas Tyee,’ she said.”

The chief unfolded his arms, and his voice took another tone as he said, “What do you call that story⁠—a legend?”

“The white people would call it an allegory,” I answered. He shook his head.

“No savvy,” he smiled.

I explained as simply as possible, and with his customary alertness he immediately understood. “That’s right,” he said. “That’s what we say it means, we Squamish, that greed is evil and not clean, like the salt-chuck oluk. That it must be stamped out amongst our people, killed by cleanliness and generosity. The boy that overcame the serpent was both these things.”

“What became of this splendid boy?” I asked.

“The Tenas Tyee? Oh! some of our old, old people say they sometimes see him now, standing on Brockton Point, his bare young arms outstretched to the rising sun,” he replied.

“Have you ever seen him, Chief?” I questioned.

“No,” he answered simply. But I have never heard such poignant regret as his wonderful voice crowded into that single word.

The Lost Island

“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 treetops 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 Tyee9 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