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

“ ‘To a peaceful feast, a feast in the honour of women?’ he exclaimed incredulously.

“ ‘So we would desire it,’ they answered.

“ ‘And so shall it be,’ he declared. ‘I can deny you nothing this day, and some time you may bear sons to bless this peace you have asked, and to bless their mother’s sire for granting it.’ Then he turned to all the young men of the tribe and commanded: ‘Build fires at sunset on all the coast headlands⁠—fires of welcome. Man your canoes and face the north, greet the enemy, and tell them that I, the Tyee of the Capilanos, ask⁠—no, command⁠—that they join me for a great feast in honour of my two daughters.’ And when the northern tribes got this invitation they flocked down the coast to this feast of a Great Peace. They brought their women and their children; they brought game and fish, gold and white stone beads, baskets and carven ladles, and wonderful woven blankets to lay at the feet of their now acknowledged ruler, the great Tyee. And he, in turn, gave such a potlatch that nothing but tradition can vie with it. There were long, glad days of joyousness, long, pleasurable nights of dancing and campfires, and vast quantities of food. The war-canoes were emptied of their deadly weapons and filled with the daily catch of salmon. The hostile war-songs ceased, and in their place were heard the soft shuffle of dancing feet, the singing voices of women, the play-games of the children of two powerful tribes which had been until now ancient enemies, for a great and lasting brotherhood was sealed between them⁠—their war-songs were ended forever.

“Then the Sagalie Tyee smiled on His Indian children: ‘I will make these young-eyed maidens immortal,’ He said. In the cup of His hands He lifted the chief’s two daughters and set them forever in a high place, for they had borne two offspring⁠—Peace and Brotherhood⁠—each of which is now a great Tyee ruling this land.

“And on the mountain crest the chief’s daughters can be seen wrapped in the suns, the snows, the stars of all seasons, for they have stood in this high place for thousands of years, and will stand for thousands of years to come, guarding the peace of the Pacific Coast and the quiet of the Capilano Canyon.”

This is the Indian legend of “The Lions of Vancouver” as I had it from one who will tell me no more the traditions of his people.

Unique, and so distinct from its surroundings as to suggest rather the handicraft of man than a whim of Nature, it looms up at the entrance to the Narrows, a symmetrical column of solid grey stone. There are no similar formations within the range of vision, or indeed within many a day’s paddle up and down the coast. Amongst all the wonders, the natural beauties that encircle Vancouver, the marvels of mountains, shaped into crouching lions and brooding beavers, the yawning canyons, the stupendous forest firs and cedars, Siwash Rock stands as distinct, as individual, as if dropped from another sphere.

I saw it first in the slanting light of a redly setting August sun; the little tuft of green shrubbery that crests its summit was black against the crimson of sea and sky, and its colossal base of grey stone gleamed like flaming polished granite.

My old tillicum lifted his paddle-blade to point towards it. “You know the story?” he asked. I shook my head (experience has taught me his love of silent replies, his moods of legend-telling). For a time we paddled slowly; the rock detached itself from its background of forest and shore, and it stood forth like a sentinel⁠—erect, enduring, eternal.

“Do you think it stands straight⁠—like a man?” he asked.

“Yes, like some noble-spirited, upright warrior,” I replied.

“It is a man,” he said, “and a warrior man, too; a man who fought for everything that was noble and upright.”

“What do you regard as everything that is noble and upright, Chief?” I asked, curious as to his ideas. I shall not forget the reply; it was but two words⁠—astounding, amazing words. He said simply:

“Clean fatherhood.”

Through my mind raced tumultuous recollections of numberless articles in yet numberless magazines, all dealing with the recent “fad” of motherhood, but I had to hear from the lip of a Squamish Indian chief the only treatise on the nobility of “clean fatherhood” that I have yet unearthed. And this treatise has been an Indian legend for centuries; and, lest they forget how all-important those two little words must ever be, Siwash Rock stands to remind them, set there by the Deity as a monument to one who kept his own life clean, that cleanliness might be the heritage of the generations to come.

It was “thousands of years ago” (all Indian legends begin in extremely remote times) that a handsome boy chief journeyed in his canoe to the upper coast for the shy little northern girl whom he brought home as his wife. Boy though he was, the young chief had proved himself to be an excellent warrior, a fearless hunter, and an upright, courageous man among men. His tribe loved him, his enemies respected him, and the base and mean and cowardly feared him.

The customs and traditions of his ancestors were a positive religion to him, the sayings and the advices of the old people were his creed. He was conservative in every rite and ritual of his race. He fought his tribal enemies like the savage that he was. He sang his war-songs, danced his war-dances, slew his foes, but the little girl-wife from the north he treated with the deference that he gave his own mother, for was she not to be the mother of his warrior son?

The year rolled round, weeks merged into months, winter into spring, and one glorious summer at daybreak he wakened to her voice calling him. She stood beside him, smiling.

“It will be today,”