| GREAT
had been the “run,” and the sockeye season
was almost over. For that reason I wondered many times
why my old friend, the klootchman, had failed to make
one of the fishing fleet. She was an indefatigable workwoman,
rivalling her husband as an expert catcher, and all
the year through she talked of little else but the coming
run. But this especial season she had not appeared amongst
her fellow-kind. The fleet and the canneries knew nothing
of her, and when I enquired of her tribes-people they
would reply without explanation, “She not here
this year.”
But
one russet September afternoon I found her. I had idled
down the trail from the swans’ basin in Stanley
Park to the rim that skirts the Narrows, and I saw her
graceful, high-bowed canoe heading for the beach that
is the favorite landing place of the “tillicums”
from the Mission. Her canoe looked like a dream-craft,
for the water was very still and everywhere a blue film
hung like a fragrant veil, for the peat on Lulu Island
had been smoldering for days and its pungent odors and
blue-grey haze made a dream-world of sea and shore and
sky.
I hurried upshore, hailing her
in the Chinook, and as she caught my voice she lifted
her paddle directly above her head in the Indian signal
of greeting.
As she beached, I greeted her
with extended eager hands to assist her ashore, for
the klootchman is getting to be an old woman; albeit
she paddles against tidewater like a boy in his teens.
“No,” she said,
as I begged her to come ashore. “I not wait—me.
I just come to fetch Maarda; she been city; she come
soon—now.” But she left her “working”
attitude and curled like a schoolgirl in the bow of
the [Page 21] canoe, her elbows resting
on her paddle which she had flung across the gunwales.
“I have missed you, klootchman;
you have not been to see me for three moons, and you
have not fished or been at the canneries,” I remarked.
“No,” she said.
“I stay home this year.” Then leaning towards
me with grave import in her manner, her eyes, her voice,
she added, “I have a grandchild, born first week
July, so—I stay.”
So this explained her absence.
I, of course, offered congratulations and enquired all
about the great event, for this was her first grandchild,
and the little person was of importance.
“And are you going to
make a fisherman of him?” I asked.
“No, no, not boy-child,
it is girl-child,” she answered with some indescribable
trick of expression that led me to know she preferred
it so.
“You are pleased it is
a girl?” I questioned in surprise.
“Very pleased,”
she replied emphatically. “Very good luck to have
girl for first grandchild. Own tribe not like yours;
we want girl children first; we not always wish boy-child
born just for fight. Your people, they care only for
war-path; our tribe more peaceful. Very good sign first
grandchild to be girl. I tell you why: girl-child maybe
some time mother herself; very grand thing to be mother.”
I felt I had caught the secret
of her meaning. She was rejoicing that this little one
should some time become one of the mothers of her race.
We chatted over it a little longer and she gave me several
playful “digs” about my own tribe thinking
so much less of motherhood than hers, and so much more
of battle and bloodshed. Then we drifted into talk of
the sockeye run and of the hyiu chickimin the Indians
would get.
“Yes, hyiu chickimin,”
she repeated with a sigh of satisfaction. “Always;
and hyiu muck-a-muck when big salmon run. No more ever
come that bad year when not any fish.”
“When was that?”
I asked. [Page 22]
“Before you 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
color 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 honor
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 tribes-people
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 [Page
23] 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 my 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 [Page 24] 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 tribes-people,
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 tribes-people,’ 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! foolish tribes-people. Did
you not know how great a girl-child is?’
“That spring, people from
a score of tribes came up to the Fraser for the salmon
run. They came great distances—from the mountains,
the lakes, the far-off dry lands, but not one fish entered
the vast rivers of the Pacific Coast. The people had
made their choice. They had forgotten the honor that
a mother-child would have brought them. They were bereft
of their food. They were stricken with poverty. Through
the long winter that followed they endured hunger and
starvation. Since then our tribe has always [Page
25] welcomed girl-children—we want no
more lost runs.”
The klootchman lifted her arms
from her paddle as she concluded; her eyes left the
irregular outline of the violet mountains. She had come
back to this year of grace—her Legend Land had
vanished.
“So,” she added,
“you see now, maybe, why I glad my grandchild
is girl; it means big salmon run next year.”
“It is a beautiful story,
klootchman,” I said, “and I feel a cruel
delight that your men of magic punished the people for
their ill choice.”
“That because you girl-child
yourself,” she laughed.
There was the slightest whisper
of a step behind me. I turned to find Maarda almost
at my elbow. The rising tide was unbeaching the canoe,
and as Maarda stepped in and the klootchman slipped
astern, it drifted afloat.
“Kla-how-ya,” nodded
the klootchman as she dipped her paddle-blade in exquisite
silence.
“Kla-how-ya,” smiled
Maarda.
“Kla-how-ya, tillicums,”
I replied, and watched for many moments as they slipped
away into the blurred distance, until the canoe merged
into the violet and grey of the farther shore. [Page
26]
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