Legends of Vancouver E. Pauline Johnson (best beach reads .txt) 📖

Such is the “Legend of the Lure.” Whether or not this stone is really in existence who knows? One thing is positive, however: no Indian will ever help to discover it.

Three different Indians have told me that fifteen or eighteen years ago, two tourists⁠—a man and a woman⁠—were lost in Stanley Park. When found a week later the man was dead, the woman mad, and each of my informants firmly believed they had, in their wanderings, encountered “the stone” and were compelled to circle around it, because of its powerful lure.

But this wild tale, fortunately, had 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 fairytales 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 tillicums, I find this witch-woman legend is the most universally known and thoroughly believed in of all traditions they have honoured me by revealing to me.

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-coloured 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 shores 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 fashioned, 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 spearman. 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 sandbars, the still pools, the temper of the tides. He knew the spawning-grounds, the secret streams that fed the larger rivers, the outlets of rockbound 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 shores 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 the 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