Legends of Vancouver Part 10

But this wild tale fortunately has a most beautiful conclusion. The Four Men, fearing that the evil heart imprisoned in the stone would still work destruction, said: "At the end of the trail we must place so good and great a thing that it will be mightier, stronger, more powerful than this evil." So they chose from the nations the kindliest, most benevolent men, men whose hearts were filled with the love of their fellow-beings, and transformed these merciful souls into the stately group of "Cathedral Trees."

How well the purpose of the Sagalie Tyee has wrought its effect through time! The good has predominated as He planned it to, for is not the stone hidden in some unknown part of the park where eyes do not see it and feet do not follow--and do not the thousands who come to us from the uttermost parts of the world seek that wondrous beauty spot, and stand awed by the majestic silence, the almost holiness of that group of giants?

More than any other legend that the Indians about Vancouver have told me does this tale reveal the love of the Coast native for kindness, and his hatred of cruelty. If these tribes really have ever been a warlike race I cannot think they pride themselves much on the occupation. If you talk with any of them and they mention some man they particularly like or admire, their first qualification of him is: "He's a kind man."

They never say he is brave, or rich, or successful, or even strong, that characteristic so loved by the red man. To these Coast tribes if a man is "kind" he is everything. And almost without exception their legends deal with rewards for tenderness and self-abnegation, and personal and mental cleanliness.

Call them fairy tales if you wish to, they all have a reasonableness that must have originated in some mighty mind, and better than that, they all tell of the Indian's faith in the survival of the best impulses of the human heart, and the ultimate extinction of the worst.

In talking with my many good tillic.u.ms, I find this witch-woman legend is the most universally known and thoroughly believed in of all traditions they have honored me by revealing to me.

Deer Lake

Few white men ventured inland, a century ago, in the days of the first Chief Capilano, when the spoils of the mighty Fraser River poured into copper-colored hands, but did not find their way to the remotest corners of the earth, as in our times, when the gold from its sources, the salmon from its mouth, the timber from its sh.o.r.es are world-known riches.

The fisherman's craft, the hunter's cunning were plied where now cities and industries, trade and commerce, buying and selling hold sway. In those days the moccasined foot awoke no echo in the forest trails.

Primitive weapons, arms, implements, and utensils were the only means of the Indians' food-getting. His livelihood depended upon his own personal prowess, his skill in woodcraft and water lore. And, as this is a story of an elk-bone spear, the reader must first be in sympathy with the fact that this rude instrument, most deftly fas.h.i.+oned, was of priceless value to the first Capilano, to whom it had come through three generations of ancestors, all of whom had been experienced hunters and dexterous fishermen.

Capilano himself was without a rival as a spearsman. He knew the moods of the Fraser River, the habits of its thronging tenants, as no other man has ever known them before or since. He knew every isle and inlet along the coast, every boulder, the sand-bars, the still pools, the temper of the tides. He knew the sp.a.w.ning grounds, the secret streams that fed the larger rivers, the outlets of rock-bound lakes, the turns and tricks of swirling rapids. He knew the haunts of bird and beast and fish and fowl, and was master of the arts and artifice that man must use when matching his brain against the eluding wiles of the untamed creatures of the wilderness.

Once only did his cunning fail him, once only did Nature baffle him with her mysterious fabric of waterways and land lures. It was when he was led to the mouth of the unknown river, which has evaded discovery through all the centuries, but which--so say the Indians--still sings on its way through some buried channel that leads from the lake to the sea.

He had been sealing along the sh.o.r.es of what is now known as Point Grey. His canoe had gradually crept inland, skirting up the coast to the mouth of False Creek. Here he encountered a very king of seals, a colossal creature that gladdened the hunter's eyes as game worthy of his skill. For this particular prize he would cast the elk-bone spear.

It had never failed his sire, his grandsire, his great-grandsire. He knew it would not fail him now. A long, pliable, cedar-fibre rope lay in his canoe. Many expert fingers had woven and plaited that rope, had beaten and oiled it until it was soft and flexible as a serpent. This he attached to the spearhead, and with deft, unerring aim cast it at the king seal. The weapon struck home. The gigantic creature shuddered and, with a cry like a hurt child, it plunged down into the sea. With the rapidity and strength of a giant fish it scudded inland with the rising tide, while Capilano paid out the rope its entire length, and, as it stretched taut, felt the canoe leap forward, propelled by the mighty strength of the creature which lashed the waters into whirlpools, as though it was possessed with the power and properties of a whale.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SEVEN SISTERS, STANLEY PARK. Bishop & Christie, Photo.]

Up the stretch of False Creek the man and monster drove their course, where a century hence great city bridges were to over-arch the waters.

They strove and struggled each for the mastery, neither of them weakened, neither of them faltered--the one dragging, the other driving. In the end it was to be a matching of brute and human wits, not forces. As they neared the point where now Main Street bridge flings its shadow across the waters, the brute leaped high into the air, then plunged headlong into the depths. The impact ripped the rope from Capilano's hands. It rattled across the gunwale. He stood staring at the spot where it had disappeared--the brute had been victorious. At low tide the Indian made search. No trace of his game, of his precious elk-bone spear, of his cedar-fibre rope, could be found. With the loss of the latter he firmly believed his luck as a hunter would be gone. So he patrolled the mouth of False Creek for many moons. His graceful, high-bowed canoe rarely touched other waters, but the seal king had disappeared. Often he thought long strands of drifting sea gra.s.ses were his lost cedar-fibre rope. With other spears, with other cedar-fibres, with paddle blade and cunning traps he dislodged the weeds from their moorings, but they slipped their slimy lengths through his eager hands: his best spear with its attendant coil was gone.

The following year he was sealing again off the coast of Point Grey, and one night after sunset he observed the red reflection from the west, which seemed to transfer itself to the eastern skies. Far into the night dashes of flaming scarlet pulsed far beyond the head of False Creek. The color rose and fell like a beckoning hand, and, Indian-like, he immediately attached some portentous meaning to the unusual sight. That it was some omen he never doubted, so he paddled inland, beached his canoe, and took the trail towards the little group of lakes that crowd themselves into the area that lies between the present cities of Vancouver and New Westminster. But long before he reached the sh.o.r.es of Deer Lake he discovered that the beckoning hand was in reality flame. The little body of water was surrounded by forest fires. One avenue alone stood open. It was a group of giant trees that as yet the flames had not reached. As he neared the point he saw a great moving ma.s.s of living things leaving the lake and hurrying northward through this one egress. He stood, listening, intently watching with alert eyes; the swirr of myriads of little travelling feet caught his quick ear--the moving ma.s.s was an immense colony of beaver. Thousands upon thousands of them. Scores of baby beavers staggered along, following their mothers; scores of older beavers that had felled trees and built dams through many seasons; a countless army of trekking fur bearers, all under the generals.h.i.+p of a wise old leader, who, as king of the colony, advanced some few yards ahead of his battalions. Out of the waters through the forest towards the country to the north they journeyed. Wandering hunters said they saw them cross Burrard Inlet at the Second Narrows, heading inland as they reached the farther sh.o.r.e. But where that mighty army of royal little Canadians set up their new colony, no man knows. Not even the astuteness of the first Capilano ever discovered their destination.

Only one thing was certain. Deer Lake knew them no more.

After their pa.s.sing, the Indian retraced their trail to the water's edge. In the red glare of the encircling fires he saw what he at first thought was some dead and dethroned king beaver on the sh.o.r.e. A huge carca.s.s lay half in, half out, of the lake. Approaching it he saw the wasted body of a giant seal. There could never be two seals of that marvellous size. His intuition now grasped the meaning of the omen of the beckoning flame that had called him from the far coasts of Point Grey. He stooped above his dead conqueror and found, embedded in its decaying flesh, the elk-bone spear of his forefathers, and trailing away at the water's rim was a long flexible cedar-fibre rope.

As he extracted this treasured heirloom he felt the "power," that men of magic possess, creep up his sinewy arms. It entered his heart, his blood, his brain. For a long time he sat and chanted songs that only great medicine men may sing, and, as the hours drifted by, the heat of the forest fires subsided, the flames diminished into smouldering blackness. At daybreak the forest fire was dead, but its beckoning fingers had served their purpose. The magic elk-bone spear had come back to its own.

Until the day of his death the first Capilano searched for the unknown river up which the seal travelled from False Creek to Deer Lake, but its channel is a secret that even Indian eyes have not seen.

But although those of the Squamish tribe tell and believe that the river still sings through its hidden trail that leads from Deer Lake to the sea, its course is as unknown, its channel is as hopelessly lost as the brave little army of beavers that a century ago marshalled their forces and travelled up into the great lone north.

A Royal Mohawk Chief

How many Canadians are aware that in Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, and only surviving son of Queen Victoria, who has been appointed to represent King George V. in Canada, they undoubtedly have what many wish for--one bearing an ancient Canadian t.i.tle as Governor-General of all the Dominion? It would be difficult to find a man more Canadian than any one of the fifty chiefs who compose the parliament of the ancient Iroquois nation, that loyal race of Redskins that has fought for the British crown against all of the enemies thereof, adhering to the British flag through the wars against both the French and the colonists.

Arthur Duke of Connaught is the only living white man who to-day has an undisputed right to the t.i.tle of "Chief of the Six Nations Indians"

(known collectively as the Iroquois). He possesses the privilege of sitting in their councils, of casting his vote on all matters relative to the governing of the tribes, the disposal of reservation lands, the appropriation of both the princ.i.p.al and interest of the more than half a million dollars these tribes hold in Government bonds at Ottawa, acc.u.mulated from the sales of their lands. In short, were every drop of blood in his royal veins red, instead of blue, he could not be more fully qualified as an Indian chief than he now is, not even were his t.i.tle one of the fifty hereditary ones whose ill.u.s.trious names composed the Iroquois confederacy before the Paleface ever set foot in America.

It was on the occasion of his first visit to Canada in 1869, when he was little more than a boy, that Prince Arthur received, upon his arrival at Quebec, an address of welcome from his Royal mother's "Indian Children" on the Grand River Reserve, in Brant county, Ontario.

In addition to this welcome they had a request to make of him: would he accept the t.i.tle of Chief and visit their reserve to give them the opportunity of conferring it?

One of the great secrets of England's success with savage races has been her consideration, her respect, her almost reverence of native customs, ceremonies and potentates. She wishes her own customs and kings to be honored, so she freely accords like honor to her subjects, it matters not whether they be white, black or red.

Young Arthur was delighted--royal lads are pretty much like all other boys; the unique ceremony would be a break in the endless round of state receptions, banquets and addresses. So he accepted the Red Indians' compliment, knowing well that it was the loftiest honor those people could confer upon a white man.

It was the morning of October first when the royal train steamed into the little city of Brantford, where carriages awaited to take the Prince and his suite to the "Old Mohawk Church," in the vicinity of which the ceremony was to take place. As the Prince's especial escort, Onwanonsyshon, head chief of the Mohawks, rode on a jet-black pony beside the carriage. The chief was garmented in full native costume--a buckskin suit, beaded moccasins, headband of owl's and eagle's feathers, and ornaments hammered from coin silver that literally covered his coat and leggings. About his shoulders was flung a scarlet blanket, consisting of the identical broadcloth from which the British army tunics are made; this he "hunched" with his shoulders from time to time in true Indian fas.h.i.+on. As they drove along, the Prince chatted boyishly with his Mohawk escort, and once leaned forward to pat the black pony on its s.h.i.+ning neck and speak admiringly of it. It was a warm autumn day: the roads were dry and dusty, and, after a mile or so, the boy-prince brought from beneath the carriage seat a basket of grapes. With his handkerchief he flicked the dust from them, handed a bunch to the chief and took one himself. An odd spectacle to be traversing a country road: an English prince and an Indian chief, riding amicably side-by-side, enjoying a banquet of grapes like two schoolboys.

On reaching the church, Arthur leapt lightly to the green sward. For a moment he stood, rigid, gazing before him at his future brother-chiefs.

His escort had given him a faint idea of what he was to see, but he certainly never expected to be completely surrounded by three hundred full-blooded Iroquois braves and warriors, such as now encircled him on every side. Every Indian was in war paint and feathers, some stripped to the waist, their copper-colored skins brilliant with paints, dyes and "patterns"; all carried tomahawks, scalping-knives, and bows and arrows. Every red throat gave a tremendous war-whoop as he alighted, which was repeated again and again, as for that half moment he stood silent, a slim boyish figure, clad in light grey tweeds--a singular contrast to the stalwarts in gorgeous costumes who crowded about him.

His young face paled to ashy whiteness, then with true British grit he extended his right hand and raised his black "billy-c.o.c.k" hat with his left. At the same time he took one step forward. Then the war cries broke forth anew, deafening, savage, terrible cries, as one by one the entire three hundred filed past, the Prince shaking hands with each one, and removing his glove to do so. This strange reception over, Onwanonsyshon rode up, and, flinging his scarlet blanket on the gra.s.s, dismounted, and asked the Prince to stand on it.

Then stepped forward an ancient chief, father of Onwanonsyshon, and Speaker of the Council. He was old in inherited and personal loyalty to the British crown. He had fought under Sir Isaac Brock at Queenston Heights in 1812, while yet a mere boy, and upon him was laid the honor of making his Queen's son a chief. Taking Arthur by the hand this venerable warrior walked slowly to and fro across the blanket, chanting as he went the strange, wild formula of induction. From time to time he was interrupted by loud expressions of approval and a.s.sent from the vast throng of encircling braves, but apart from this no sound was heard but the low, weird monotone of a ritual older than the white man's footprints in North America.

It is necessary that a chief of each of the three "clans" of the Mohawks shall a.s.sist in this ceremony. The veteran chief, who sang the formula, was of the Bear clan. His son, Onwanonsyshon, was of the Wolf (the clan-s.h.i.+p descends through the mother's side of the family). Then one other chief, of the Turtle clan, and in whose veins coursed the blood of the historic Brant, now stepped to the edge of the scarlet blanket. The chant ended, these two young chiefs received the Prince into the Mohawk tribe, conferring upon him the name of "Kavakoudge,"

which means "the sun flying from East to West under the guidance of the Great Spirit."

Onwanonsyshon then took from his waist a brilliant deep-red sash, heavily embroidered with beads, porcupine quills and dyed moose hair, placing it over the Prince's left shoulder and knotting it beneath his right arm. The ceremony was ended. The Const.i.tution that Hiawatha had founded centuries ago, a Const.i.tution wherein fifty chiefs, no more, no less, should form the parliament of the "Six Nations," had been shattered and broken, because this race of loyal red men desired to do honor to a slender young boy-prince, who now bears the fifty-first t.i.tle of the Iroquois.

Many white men have received from these same people honorary t.i.tles, but none has been bestowed through the ancient ritual, with the imperative members of the three clans a.s.sisting, save that borne by Arthur of Connaught.

After the ceremony the Prince entered the church to autograph his name in the ancient Bible, which, with a silver Holy Communion service, a bell, two tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, and a bronze British coat-of-arms, had been presented to the Mohawks by Queen Anne.

He inscribed "Arthur" just below the "Albert Edward," which, as Prince of Wales, the late king wrote when he visited Canada in 1860.

When he returned to England, Chief Kavakoudge sent his portrait, together with one of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort, to be placed in the Council House of the "Six Nations," where they decorate the walls today.

As I write, I glance up to see, in a corner of my room, a draping scarlet blanket, made of British army broadcloth, for the chief who rode the jet-black pony so long ago was the writer's father. He was not here to wear it when Arthur of Connaught again set foot on Canadian sh.o.r.es.

Many of these facts I have culled from a paper that lies on my desk; it is yellowing with age, and bears the date, "Toronto, October 2, 1869,"

and on the margin is written in a clear, half-boyish hand, "Onwanonsyshon, with kind regards from your brother-chief, Arthur."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Native tools]