| “YES,”
said my old tillicum, “we Indians have lost many
things. We have lost our lands, our forests, our game,
our fish; we have lost our ancient religion, our ancient
dress; some of the younger people have even lost their
fathers’ language and the legends and traditions
of their ancestors. We cannot call those old things
back to us; they will never come again. We may travel
many days up the mountain trails, and look in the silent
places for them. They are not there. We may paddle many
moons on the sea, but our canoes will never enter the
channel that leads to the yesterdays of the Indian people.
These things are lost, just like ‘The Island of
the North Arm.’ They may be somewhere nearby,
but no one can ever find them.”
“But
there are many islands up the North Arm,” I asserted.
“Not the island we Indian
people have sought for many tens of summers,”
he replied sorrowfully.
“Was it ever there?”
I questioned.
“Yes, it was there,”
he said. “My grandsires and my great-grandsires
saw it; but that was long ago. My father never saw it,
though he spent many days in many years searching, always
searching for it. I am an old man myself, and I have
never seen it, though from my youth, I, too, have searched.
Sometimes in the stillness of the nights I have paddled
up in my canoe.” Then, lowering his voice: “Twice
I have seen its shadow: high rocky shores, reaching
as high as the tree tops on the mainland, then tall
pines and firs on its summit like a king’s crown.
As I paddled up the Arm one summer night, long ago,
the shadow of these rocks and firs fell across my canoe,
across my face, and across the waters beyond. I turned
rapidly to look. There was no island there, nothing
but a wide stretch of waters on both sides of me, and
the moon [Page 39] almost directly
overhead. Don’t say it was the shore that shadowed
me,” he hastened, catching my thought. “The
moon was above me; my canoe scarce made a shadow on
the still waters. No, it was not the shore.”
“Why do you search for
it?” I lamented, thinking of the old dreams in
my own life whose realization I have never attained.
“There is something on
that island that I want. I shall look for it until I
die, for it is there,” he affirmed.
There was a long silence between
us after that. I had learned to love silences when with
my old tillicum, for they always led to a legend. After
a time he began voluntarily:
“It was more than one
hundred years ago. This great city of Vancouver was
but the dream of the Sagalie Tyee (God) at that time.
The dream had not yet come to the white man; only one
great Indian medicine-man knew that some day a great
camp for Palefaces would lie between False Creek and
the Inlet. This dream haunted them; it came to him night
and day—when he was amid his people laughing and
feasting, or when he was alone in the forest chanting
his strange songs, beating his hollow drum, or shaking
his wooden witch-rattle to gain more power to cure the
sick and the dying of his tribe. For years this dream
followed him. He grew to be an old, old man, yet always
he could hear voices, strong and loud, as when they
first spoke to him in his youth, and they would say:
‘Between the two narrow strips of salt water the
white men will camp—many hundreds of them, many
thousands of them. The Indians will learn their ways,
will live as they do, will become as they are. There
will be no more great war dances, no more fights with
other powerful tribes; it will be as if the Indians
had lost all bravery, all courage, all confidence.’
He hated the voices, he hated the dream; but all his
power, all his big medicine, could not drive them away.
He was the strongest man on all the North Pacific Coast.
He was mighty and very tall, and his muscles were as
those of Leloo, the timber wolf, when he is strongest
to kill his prey. He could go for many days [Page
40] without food; he could fight the largest
mountain lion; he could overthrow the fiercest grizzly
bear; he could paddle against the wildest winds and
ride the highest waves. He could meet his enemies and
kill whole tribes single-handed. His strength, his courage,
his power, his bravery, were those of a giant. He knew
no fear; nothing in the sea, or in the forest, nothing
in the earth or the sky, could conquer him. He was fearless,
fearless. Only this haunting dream of the coming white
man’s camp he could not drive away; it was the
one thing in life he had tried to kill and failed. It
drove him from the feasting, drove him from the pleasant
lodges, the fires, the dancing, the story-telling of
his people in their camp by the water’s edge,
where the salmon thronged and the deer came down to
drink of the mountain streams. He left the Indian village,
chanting his wild songs as he went. Up through the mighty
forests he climbed, through the trailless deep mosses
and matted vines, up to the summit of what the white
men call Grouse Mountain. For many days he camped there.
He ate no food, he drank no water, but sat and sang
his medicine songs through the dark hours and through
the day. Before him—far beneath his feet—lay
the narrow strip of land between the two salt waters.
Then the Sagalie Tyee gave him the power to see far
into the future. He looked across a hundred years, just
as he looked across what you call the Inlet, and he
saw mighty lodges built close together, hundreds and
thousands of them; lodges of stone and wood, and long
straight trails to divide them. He saw these trails
thronging with Palefaces; he heard the sound of the
white man’s paddle-dip on the waters, for it is
not silent like the Indian’s; he saw the white
man’s trading posts, saw the fishing nets, heard
his speech. Then the vision faded as gradually as it
came. The narrow strip of land was his own forest once
more.
“‘I am old,’
he called, in his sorrow and his trouble for his people.
‘I am old, oh, Sagalie Tyee! Soon I shall die
and go to the Happy Hunting Grounds of my fathers. Let
not my [Page 41] strength die with
me. Keep living for all time my courage, my bravery,
my fearlessness. Keep them for my people that they may
be strong enough to endure the white man’s rule.
Keep my strength living for them; hide it so that the
Paleface may never find or see it.’
“Then he came down from
the summit of Grouse Mountain. Still chanting his medicine
songs, he entered his canoe, and paddled through the
colors of the setting sun far up the North Arm. When
night fell he came to an island with misty shores of
great grey rock; on its summit tall pines and firs encircled
like a king’s crown. As he neared it he felt all
his strength, his courage, his fearlessness, leaving
him; he could see these things drift from him on to
the island. They were as the clouds that rest on the
mountains, grey-white and half transparent. Weak as
a woman he paddled back to the Indian village; he told
them to go and search for ‘The Island,’
where they would find all his courage, his fearlessness
and his strength, living, living forever. He slept then,
but—in the morning he did not awake. Since then
our young men and our old have searched for ‘The
Island.’ It is there somewhere, up some lost channel,
but we cannot find it. When we do, we will get back
all the courage and bravery we had before the white
man came, for the great medicine man said those things
never die—they live for one’s children and
grandchildren.”
His voice ceased. My whole heart
went out to him in his longing for the lost island.
I thought of all the splendid courage I knew him to
possess, so made answer: “But you say that the
shadow of this island has fallen upon you; is it not
so, tillicum?”
“Yes,” he said half
mournfully. “But only the shadow.” [Page
42]
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