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is a well-known trail in Stanley Park that leads to
what I always love to call the “Cathedral
Trees”—that group of some half-dozen
forest giants that arch overhead with such superb loftiness.
But in all the world there is no cathedral whose marble
or onyx columns can vie with those straight, clean,
brown cedar boles that teem with the sap and blood of
life. There is no fresco that can rival the delicacy
of lace-work they have festooned between you and the
far skies. No tiles, no mosaic or inlaid marble, are
as fascinating as the bare, russet, fragrant floor outspreading
about their feet. They are the acme of Nature’s
architecture, and in building them she has outrivalled
all her erstwhile conceptions. She will never originate
a more faultless design, never erect a more perfect
edifice. But the divinely moulded cedars and the man-made
cathedral have one exquisite characteristic in common.
It is the atmosphere of holiness. Most of us have better
impulses after viewing a stately cathedral, and none
of us can stand amid that majestic forest group of cedars
without experiencing some elevating thoughts, some refinement
of our coarser nature. Perhaps those who read this little
legend will never again stand amid those cathedral trees
without thinking of the glorious souls they contain,
for according to the Coast Indians they do harbor human
souls, and the world is better because they once had
the speech and the hearts of mighty men.
My
tillicum did not use the word “lure” in
telling me this legend. There is no equivalent for the
word in the Chinook tongue, but the gestures of his
voiceful hands so expressed the quality of something
between magnetism and charm that I have selected this
word “lure” as best fitting what he wished
to convey. Some few yards beyond the cathedral trees,
an overgrown disused trail turns into the [Page
73] dense wilderness to the right. Only Indian
eyes could discern that trail, and the Indians do not
willingly go to that part of the park to the right of
the cedar group. Nothing in this, nor yet the next world
would tempt a Coast Indian into the compact centres
of the wild portions of the park, for therein, concealed
cunningly, is the “lure” they all believe
in. There is not a tribe in the entire district that
does not know of this strange legend. You will hear
the tale from those that gather at Eagle Harbor for
the fishing, from the Fraser River tribes, from the
Squamish at the Narrows, from the Mission, from up the
Inlet, even from the tribes at North Bend, but no one
will volunteer to be your guide, for having once come
within the “aura” of the lure it is a human
impossibility to leave it. Your will-power is dwarfed,
your intelligence blighted, your feet will refuse to
lead you out by a straight trail, you will circle, circle
for evermore about this magnet, for if death kindly
comes to your aid your immortal spirit will go on in
that endless circling that will bar it from entering
the Happy Hunting Grounds.
And, like the cathedral trees,
the lure once lived, a human soul, but in this instance
it was a soul depraved, not sanctified. The Indian belief
is very beautiful concerning the results of good and
evil in the human body. The Sagalie Tyee (God) has His
own way of immortalizing each. People who are wilfully
evil, who have no kindness in their hearts, who are
bloodthirsty, cruel, vengeful, unsympathetic, the Sagalie
Tyee turns to solid stone that will harbor no growth,
even that of moss or lichen, for these stones contain
no moisture, just as their wicked hearts lacked the
milk of human kindness. The one famed exception, wherein
a good man was transformed into stone, was in the instance
of Siwash Rock, but as the Indian tells you of it he
smiles with gratification as he calls your attention
to the tiny tree cresting that imperial monument. He
says the tree was always there to show the nations that
the good in this man’s heart kept on growing even
when his body had ceased [Page 74] to
be. On the other hand the Sagalie Tyee transforms the
kindly people, the humane, sympathetic, charitable-loving
people into trees, so that after death they may go on
forever benefiting all mankind; they may yield fruit,
give shade and shelter, afford unending service to the
living, by their usefulness as building material and
as firewood. Their saps and gums, their fibres, their
leaves, their blossoms, enrich, nourish and sustain
the human form; no evil is produced by trees—all,
all is goodness, is hearty, is helpfulness and growth.
They give refuge to the birds, they give music to the
winds, and from them are carved the bows and arrows,
the canoes and paddles, bowls, spoons and baskets. Their
service to mankind is priceless; the Indian that tells
you this tale will enumerate all these attributes and
virtues of these trees. No wonder the Sagalie Tyee chose
them to be the abode of souls good and great.
But the lure in Stanley Park
is that most dreaded of all things,
an evil soul. It is embodied in a bare, white stone,
which is shunned by moss and vine and lichen, but over
which are splashed innumerable jet-black spots that
have eaten into the surface like an acid.
This condemned soul once animated
the body of a witch-woman, who went up and down the
coast, over seas and far inland, casting her evil eye
on innocent people, and bringing them untold evils and
diseases. About her person she carried the renowned
“Bad Medicine” that every Indian believes
in—medicine that weakened the arm of the warrior
in battle, that caused deformities, that poisoned minds
and characters, that engendered madness, that bred plagues
and epidemics; in short, that was the seed of every
evil that could befall mankind. This witch-woman herself
was immune from death; generations were born and grew
to old age, and died, and other generations arose in
their stead, but the witch-woman went about, her heart
set against her kind, her acts were evil, her purposes
wicked, she broke hearts and bodies and souls; she gloried
in tears, and revelled in unhappiness, and sent them
[Page 75] broadcast wherever she wandered.
And in His high heaven the Sagalie Tyee wept with sorrow
for His afflicted human children. He dared not let her
die, for her spirit would still go on with its evil
doing. In mighty anger He gave command to His Four Men
(always representing the Deity) that they should turn
this witch-woman into a stone and enchain her spirit
in its centre, that the curse of her might be lifted
from the unhappy race.
So the Four Men entered their
giant canoe, and headed, as was their custom, up the
Narrows. As they neared what is now known as Prospect
Point they heard from the heights above them a laugh,
and looking up they beheld the witch-woman jeering defiantly
at them. They landed and, scaling the rocks, pursued
her as she danced away, eluding them like a will-o’-the-wisp
as she called out to them sneeringly:
“Care for yourselves,
oh! men of the Sagalie Tyee, or I shall blight you with
my evil eye. Care for yourselves and do not follow me.”
On and on she danced through the thickest of the wilderness,
on and on they followed until they reached the very
heart of the seagirt neck of land we know as Stanley
Park. Then the tallest, the mightiest of the Four Men,
lifted his hand and cried out: “Oh! woman of the
stony heart, be stone for evermore, and bear forever
a black stain for each one of your evil deeds.”
And as he spoke the witch-woman was transformed into
this stone that tradition says is in the centre of the
park.
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
has a most beautiful conclusion. The Four Men, fearing
[Page 76] 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 nethermost
parts of the world seek that wondrous beauty spot, and
stand awed by the majestic silence, the almost holiness
of that group of giant cedars?
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
tillicums, 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.
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