Legends of Vancouver

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LEGENDS OF VANCOUVER

By E. Pauline Johnson
(Tekahionwake)




PREFACE


I have been asked to write a preface to these Legends of Vancouver,
which, in conjunction with the members of the Publication
Sub-committee--Mrs. Lefevre, Mr. L. W. Makovski and Mr. R. W.
Douglas--I have helped to put through the press. But scarcely any
prefatory remarks are necessary. This book may well stand on its
own merits. Still, it may be permissible to record one's glad
satisfaction that a poet has arisen to cast over the shoulders of
our grey mountains, our trail-threaded forests, our tide-swept
waters, and the streets and sky-scrapers of our hurrying city, a
gracious mantle of romance. Pauline Johnson has linked the vivid
present with the immemorial past. Vancouver takes on a new aspect
as we view it through her eyes. In the imaginative power that she
has brought to these semi-historical sagas, and in the liquid flow
of her rhythmical prose, she has shown herself to be a literary
worker of whom we may well be proud: she has made a most estimable
contribution to purely Canadian literature.

BERNARD McEVOY




AUTHOR'S FOREWORD


These legends (with two or three exceptions) were told to me
personally by my honored friend, the late Chief Joe Capilano, of
Vancouver, whom I had the privilege of first meeting in London in
1906, when he visited England and was received at Buckingham Palace
by their Majesties King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra.

To the fact that I was able to greet Chief Capilano in the Chinook
tongue, while we were both many thousands of miles from home, I
owe the friendship and the confidence which he so freely gave me
when I came to reside on the Pacific coast. These legends he
told me from time to time, just as the mood possessed him, and he
frequently remarked that they had never been revealed to any other
English-speaking person save myself.

E. PAULINE JOHNSON (Tekahionwake)




BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE


E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) is the youngest child of a family
of four born to the late G. H. M. Johnson (Onwanonsyshon), Head
Chief of the Six Nations Indians, and his wife Emily S. Howells.
The latter was of English parentage, her birthplace being Bristol,
but the land of her adoption Canada.

Chief Johnson was of the renowned Mohawk tribe, being a scion of
one of the fifty noble families which composed the historical
confederation founded by Hiawatha upwards of four hundred years ago,
and known at that period as the Brotherhood of the Five Nations,
but which was afterwards named the Iroquois by the early French
missionaries and explorers. For their loyalty to the British Crown
they were granted the magnificent lands bordering the Grand River,
in the County of Brant, Ontario, on which the tribes still live.

It was upon this Reserve, on her father's estate, "Chiefswood," that
Pauline Johnson was born. The loyalty of her ancestors breathes in
her prose, as well as in her poetic writings.

Her education was neither extensive nor elaborate. It embraced
neither high school nor college. A nursery governess for two years
at home, three years at an Indian day school half a mile from her
home, and two years in the Central School of the city of Brantford,
was the extent of her educational training. But, besides this, she
acquired a wide general knowledge, having been through childhood and
early girlhood a great reader, especially of poetry. Before she was
twelve years old she had read Scott, Longfellow, Byron, Shakespeare,
and such books as Addison's "Spectator," Foster's Essays and Owen
Meredith's writings.

The first periodicals to accept her poems and place them before the
public were "Gems of Poetry," a small magazine published in New
York, and "The Week," established by the late Prof. Goldwin Smith,
of Toronto, the New York "Independent" and Toronto "Saturday Night."
Since then she has contributed to most of the high-grade magazines,
both on this continent and England.

Her writings having brought her into notice, the next step in Miss
Johnson's career was her appearance on the public platform as a
reciter of her own poems. For this she had natural talent, and in
the exercise of it she soon developed a marked ability, joined with
a personal magnetism, that was destined to make her a favorite with
audiences from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Her friend, Mr. Frank
Yeigh, of Toronto, provided for a series of recitals having that
scope, with the object of enabling her to go to England to arrange
for the publication of her poems. Within two years this aim was
accomplished, her book of poems, "The White Wampum," being published
by John Lane, of the Bodley Head. She took with her numerous
letters of introduction, including one from the Governor-General,
the Earl of Aberdeen, and she soon gained both social and literary
standing. Her book was received with much favor, both by reviewers
and the public. After giving many recitals in fashionable
drawing-rooms, she returned to Canada, and made her first tour to
the Pacific Coast, giving recitals at all the cities and towns en
route. Since then she has crossed the Rocky Mountains no fewer
than nineteen times.

Miss Johnson's pen had not been idle, and in 1903 the George
Morang Co., of Toronto, published her second book of poems,
entitled "Canadian Born," which was also well received.

After a number of recitals, which included Newfoundland and the
Maritime Provinces, she went to England again in 1906 and made her
first appearance in Steinway Hall, under the distinguished patronage
of Lord and Lady Strathcona. In the following year she again
visited London, returning by way of the United States, where she
gave many recitals. After another tour of Canada she decided to
give up public work, to make Vancouver, B. C., her home, and to
devote herself to literary work.

Only a woman of remarkable powers of endurance could have borne up
under the hardships necessarily encountered in travelling through
North-western Canada in pioneer days as Miss Johnson did; and
shortly after settling down in Vancouver the exposure and hardship
she had endured began to tell on her, and her health completely
broke down. For almost a year she has been an invalid, and as she
is unable to attend to the business herself, a trust has been formed
by some of the leading citizens of her adopted city for the purpose
of collecting and publishing for her benefit her later works. Among
these are the beautiful Indian Legends contained in this volume,
which she has been at great pains to collect, and a series of boys'
stories, which have been exceedingly well received by magazine
readers.

During the sixteen years Miss Johnson was travelling, she had
many varied and interesting experiences. She travelled the old
Battleford trail before the railroad went through, and across the
Boundary country in British Columbia in the romantic days of the
early pioneers. Once she took an eight hundred and fifty mile
drive up the Cariboo trail to the gold fields. She has always been
an ardent canoeist, and has run many strange rivers, crossed many
a lonely lake, and camped in many an unfrequented place. These
venturesome trips she made more from her inherent love of Nature
and adventure than from any necessity of her profession.





CONTENTS


Preface
Author's Foreword
Biographical Notice
The Two Sisters
The Siwash Rock
The Recluse
The Lost Salmon-run
The Deep Waters
The Sea-Serpent
The Lost Island
Point Grey
The Tulameen Trail
The Grey Archway
Deadman's Island
A Squamish Legend of Napoleon
The Lure in Stanley Park
Deer Lake
A Royal Mohawk Chief





THE TWO SISTERS
-----
THE LIONS


You can see them as you look towards the north and the west, where
the dream-hills swim into the sky amid their ever-drifting clouds
of pearl and grey. They catch the earliest hint of sunrise, they
hold the last color of sunset. Twin mountains they are, lifting
their twin peaks above the fairest city in all Canada, and known
throughout the British Empire as "The Lions of Vancouver."

Sometimes the smoke of forest fires blurs them until they gleam like
opals in a purple atmosphere, too beautiful for words to paint.
Sometimes the slanting rains festoon scarfs of mist about their
crests, and the peaks fade into shadowy outlines, melting, melting,
forever melting into the distances. But for most days in the year
the sun circles the twin glories with a sweep of gold. The moon
washes them with a torrent of silver. Oftentimes, when the city is
shrouded in rain, the sun yellows their snows to a deep orange; but
through sun and shadow they stand immovable, smiling westward above
the waters of the restless Pacific, eastward above the superb beauty
of the Capilano Canyon. But the Indian tribes do not know these
peaks as "The Lions." Even the chief, whose feet have so recently
wandered to the Happy Hunting Grounds, never heard the name given
them until I mentioned it to him one dreamy August day, as together
we followed the trail leading to the canyon. He seemed so surprised
at the name that I mentioned the reason it had been applied to them,
asking him if he recalled the Landseer Lions in Trafalgar Square.
Yes, he remembered those splendid sculptures, and his quick eye saw
the resemblance instantly. It appeared to please him, and his fine
face expressed the haunting memories of the far-away roar of Old
London. But the "call of the blood" was stronger, and presently he
referred to the Indian legend of those peaks--a legend that I have
reason to believe is absolutely unknown to thousands of Palefaces
who look upon "The Lions" daily, without the love for them that is
in the Indian heart, without knowledge of the secret of "The Two
Sisters." The legend was intensely fascinating as it left his lips
in the quaint broken English that is never so dulcet as when it
slips from an Indian tongue. His inimitable gestures, strong,
graceful, comprehensive, were like a perfectly chosen frame
embracing a delicate painting, and his brooding eyes were as the
light in which the picture hung. "Many thousands of years ago,"
he began, "there were no twin peaks like sentinels guarding the
outposts of this sunset coast. They were placed there long after
the first creation, when the Sagalie Tyee moulded the mountains,
and patterned the mighty rivers where the salmon run, because
of His love for His Indian children, and His wisdom for their
necessities. In those times there were many and mighty Indian
tribes along the Pacific--in the mountain ranges, at the shores
and sources of the great Fraser River. Indian law ruled the land.
Indian customs prevailed. Indian beliefs were regarded. Those
were the legend-making ages when great things occurred to make the
traditions we repeat to our children to-day. Perhaps the greatest
of these traditions is the story of 'The Two Sisters,' for they
are known to us as 'The Chief's Daughters,' and to them we owe the
Great Peace in which we live, and have lived for many countless
moons. There is an ancient custom amongst the coast tribes that,
when our daughters step from childhood into the great world of
womanhood, the occasion must be made one of extreme rejoicing.
The being who possesses the possibility of some day mothering a
man-child, a warrior, a brave, receives much consideration in most
nations; but to us, the Sunset tribes, she is honored above all
people. The parents usually give a great potlatch, and a feast
that lasts many days. The entire tribe and the surrounding tribes
are bidden to this festival. More than that, sometimes when a
great Tyee celebrates for his daughter, the tribes from far up the
coast, from the distant north, from inland, from the island, from
the Cariboo country, are gathered as guests to the feast. During
these days of rejoicing the girl is placed in a high seat, an
exalted position, for is she not marriageable? And does not
marriage mean motherhood? And does not motherhood mean a vaster
nation of brave sons and of gentle daughters, who, in their turn,
will give us sons and daughters of their own?

"But it was many thousands of years ago that a great Tyee had two
daughters that grew to womanhood at the same springtime, when the
first great run of salmon thronged the rivers, and the ollallie
bushes were heavy with blossoms. These two daughters were young,
lovable, and oh! very beautiful. Their father, the great Tyee,
prepared to make a feast such as the Coast had never seen. There
were to be days and days of rejoicing, the people were to come for
many leagues, were to bring gifts to the girls and to receive gifts
of great value from the chief, and hospitality was to reign as long
as pleasuring feet could dance, and enjoying lips could laugh, and
mouths partake of the excellence of the chief's fish, game, and
ollallies.

"The only shadow on the joy of it all was war, for the tribe of the
great Tyee was at war with the Upper Coast Indians, those who lived
north, near what is named by the Paleface as the port of Prince
Rupert. Giant war-canoes slipped along the entire coast, war
parties paddled up and down, war-songs broke the silences of the
nights, hatred, vengeance, strife, horror festered everywhere like
sores on the surface of the earth. But the great Tyee, after
warring for weeks, turned and laughed at the battle and the
bloodshed, for he had been victor in every encounter, and he could
well afford to leave the strife for a brief week and feast in his
daughters' honor, nor permit any mere enemy to come between him and
the traditions of his race and household. So he turned insultingly
deaf ears to their war-cries; he ignored with arrogant indifference
their paddle-dips that encroached within his own coast waters, and
he prepared, as a great Tyee should, to royally entertain his
tribesmen in honor of his daughters.

"But seven suns before the great feast these two maidens came before
him, hand clasped in hand.

"'Oh! our father,' they said, 'may we speak?'

"'Speak, my daughters, my girls with the eyes of April, the hearts
of June'" (early spring and early summer would be the more accurate
Indian phrasing).

"'Some day, oh! our father, we may mother a man-child, who may grow
to be just such a powerful Tyee as you are, and for this honor that
may some day be ours we have come to crave a favor of you--you, Oh!
our father.'

"'It is your privilege at this celebration to receive any favor your
hearts may wish,' he replied graciously, placing his fingers beneath
their girlish chins. 'The favor is yours before you ask it, my
daughters.'

"'Will you, for our sakes, invite the great northern hostile
tribe--the tribe you war upon--to this, our feast?' they asked
fearlessly.

"'To a peaceful feast, a feast in the honor 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 honor 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 camp-fires, 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.





THE SIWASH ROCK


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 to-day," she said proudly.

He sprang from his couch of wolf-skins and looked out upon the
coming day: the promise of what it would bring him seemed breathing
through all his forest world. He took her very gently by the hand
and led her through the tangle of wilderness down to the water's
edge, where the beauty spot we moderns call Stanley Park bends
about Prospect Point. "I must swim," he told her.

"I must swim, too," she smiled, with the perfect understanding of
two beings who are mated. For, to them, the old Indian custom was
law--the custom that the parents of a coming child must swim until
their flesh is so clear and clean that a wild animal cannot scent
their proximity. If the wild creatures of the forests have no fear
of them, then, and only then, are they fit to become parents, and
to scent a human is in itself a fearsome thing to all wild creatures.

So those two plunged into the waters of the Narrows as the grey dawn
slipped up the eastern skies and all the forest awoke to the life of
a new, glad day. Presently he took her ashore, and smilingly she
crept away under the giant trees. "I must be alone," she said, "but
come to me at sunrise: you will not find me alone then." He smiled
also, and plunged back into the sea. He must swim, swim, swim
through this hour when his fatherhood was coming upon him. It was
the law that he must be clean, spotlessly clean, so that when his
child looked out upon the world it would have the chance to live its
own life clean. If he did not swim hour upon hour his child would
come to an unclean father. He must give his child a chance in life;
he must not hamper it by his own uncleanliness at its birth. It was
the tribal law--the law of vicarious purity.

As he swam joyously to and fro, a canoe bearing four men headed up
the Narrows. These men were giants in stature, and the stroke of
their paddles made huge eddies that boiled like the seething tides.

"Out from our course!" they cried as his lithe, copper-colored body
arose and fell with his splendid stroke. He laughed at them, giants
though they were, and answered that he could not cease his swimming
at their demand.

"But you shall cease!" they commanded. "We are the men [agents] of
the Sagalie Tyee [God], and we command you ashore out of our way!"
(I find in all these Coast Indian legends that the Deity is
represented by four men, usually paddling an immense canoe.)

He ceased swimming, and, lifting his head, defied them. "I shall
not stop, nor yet go ashore," he declared, striking out once more
to the middle of the channel.

"Do you dare disobey us," they cried--"we, the men of the Sagalie
Tyee? We can turn you into a fish, or a tree, or a stone for this;
do you dare disobey the Great Tyee?"

"I dare anything for the cleanliness and purity of my coming child.
I dare even the Sagalie Tyee Himself, but my child must be born to a
spotless life."

The four men were astounded. They consulted together, lighted their
pipes, and sat in council. Never had they, the men of the Sagalie
Tyee, been defied before. Now, for the sake of a little unborn
child, they were ignored, disobeyed, almost despised. The lithe
young copper-colored body still disported itself in the cool
waters; superstition held that should their canoe, or even their
paddle-blades, touch a human being, their marvellous power would be
lost. The handsome young chief swam directly in their course. They
dared not run him down; if so, they would become as other men.
While they yet counselled what to do, there floated from out the
forest a faint, strange, compelling sound. They listened, and
the young chief ceased his stroke as he listened also. The faint
sound drifted out across the waters once more. It was the cry of
a little, little child. Then one of the four men, he that steered
the canoe, the strongest and tallest of them all, arose, and,
standing erect, stretched out his arms towards the rising sun
and chanted, not a curse on the young chief's disobedience, but
a promise of everlasting days and freedom from death.

"Because you have defied all things that come in your path we
promise this to you," he chanted; "you have defied what interferes
with your child's chance for a clean life, you have lived as you
wish your son to live, you have defied us when we would have stopped
your swimming and hampered your child's future. You have placed
that child's future before all things, and for this the Sagalie Tyee
commands us to make you forever a pattern for your tribe. You shall
never die, but you shall stand through all the thousands of years to
come, where all eyes can see you. You shall live, live, live as an
indestructible monument to Clean Fatherhood."