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

born, or I, or”⁠—pointing across the park to the distant city of Vancouver that breathed its wealth and beauty across the September afternoon⁠—“before that place born, before white man came here⁠—oh! long before.”

Dear old klootchman! I knew by the dusk in her eyes that she was back in her Land of Legends, and that soon I would be the richer in my hoard of Indian lore. She sat, still leaning on her paddle; her eyes, half-closed, rested on the distant outline of the blurred heights across the Inlet. I shall not further attempt her broken English, for this is but the shadow of her story, and without her unique personality the legend is as a flower that lacks both colour and fragrance. She called it “The Lost Salmon-Run.”

“The wife of the Great Tyee was but a wisp of a girl, but all the world was young in those days; even the Fraser River was young and small, not the mighty water it is now; but the pink salmon crowded its throat just as they do now, and the tillicums caught and salted and smoked the fish just as they have done this year, just as they will always do. But it was yet winter, and the rains were slanting and the fogs drifting, when the wife of the Great Tyee stood before him and said:

“ ‘Before the salmon-run I shall give to you a great gift. Will you honour me most if it is the gift of a boy-child or a girl-child?’ The Great Tyee loved the woman. He was stern with his people, hard with his tribe; he ruled his council-fires with a will of stone. His medicine-men said he had no human heart in his body; his warriors said he had no human blood in his veins. But he clasped this woman’s hands, and his eyes, his lips, his voice, were gentle as her own, as he replied:

“ ‘Give to me a girl-child⁠—a little girl-child⁠—that she may grow to be like you, and, in her turn, give to her husband children.’

“But when the tribespeople heard of his choice they arose in great anger. They surrounded him in a deep, indignant circle. ‘You are a slave to the woman,’ they declared, ‘and now you desire to make yourself a slave to a woman-baby. We want an heir⁠—a man-child to be our Great Tyee in years to come. When you are old and weary of tribal affairs, when you sit wrapped in your blanket in the hot summer sunshine, because your blood is old and thin, what can a girl-child do to help either you or us? Who, then, will be our Great Tyee?’

“He stood in the centre of the menacing circle, his arms folded, his chin raised, his eyes hard as flint. His voice, cold as stone, replied:

“ ‘Perhaps she will give you such a man-child, and, if so, the child is yours; he will belong to you, not to me; he will become the possession of the people. But if the child is a girl she will belong to me⁠—she will be mine. You cannot take her from me as you took me from my mother’s side and forced me to forget my aged father in my service to the tribe; she will belong to me, will be the mother of my grandchildren, and her husband will be my son.’

“ ‘You do not care for the good of your tribe. You care only for your own wishes and desires,’ they rebelled. ‘Suppose the salmon-run is small, we will have no food; suppose there is no man-child, we will have no Great Tyee to show us how to get food from other tribes, and we shall starve.’

“ ‘Your hearts are black and bloodless,’ thundered the Great Tyee, turning upon them fiercely, ‘and your eyes are blinded. Do you wish the tribe to forget how great is the importance of a child that will some day be a mother herself, and give to your children and grandchildren a Great Tyee? Are the people to live, to thrive, to increase, to become more powerful with no mother-women to bear future sons and daughters? Your minds are dead, your brains are chilled. Still, even in your ignorance, you are my people: you and your wishes must be considered. I call together the great medicine-men, the men of witchcraft, the men of magic. They shall decide the laws which will follow the bearing of either boy or girl-child. What say you, oh! mighty men?’

“Messengers were then sent up and down the coast, sent far up the Fraser River, and to the valley lands inland for many leagues, gathering as they journeyed all the men of magic that could be found. Never were so many medicine-men in council before. They built fires and danced and chanted for many days. They spoke with the gods of the mountains, with the gods of the sea; then ‘the power’ of decision came to them. They were inspired with a choice to lay before the tribespeople, and the most ancient medicine-man in all the coast region arose and spoke their resolution:

“ ‘The people of the tribe cannot be allowed to have all things. They want a boy-child and they want a great salmon-run also. They cannot have both. The Sagalie Tyee has revealed to us, the great men of magic, that both these things will make the people arrogant and selfish. They must choose between the two.’

“ ‘Choose, oh! you ignorant tribespeople,’ commanded the Great Tyee. ‘The wise men of our coast have said that the girl-child who will some day bear children of her own will also bring abundance of salmon at her birth; but the boy-child brings to you but himself.’

“ ‘Let the salmon go,’ shouted the people, ‘but give us a future Great Tyee. Give us the boy-child.’

“And when the child was born it was a boy.

“ ‘Evil will fall upon you,’ wailed the Great Tyee. ‘You have despised a mother-woman. You will suffer evil and starvation and hunger and poverty, oh!