Legends of Vancouver | Page 6

and plunged
back into the sea. He must swim, swim, swim through this hour when
his fatherhood was coming upon him. It was the law that he must be
clean, spotlessly clean, so that when his child looked out upon the
world it would have the chance to live its own life clean. If he did not

swim hour upon hour his child would come to an unclean father. He
must give his child a chance in life; he must not hamper it by his own
uncleanliness at its birth. It was the tribal law--the law of vicarious
purity.
As he swam joyously to and fro, a canoe bearing four men headed up
the Narrows. These men were giants in stature, and the stroke of their
paddles made huge eddies that boiled like the seething tides.
"Out from our course!" they cried as his lithe, copper-colored body
arose and fell with his splendid stroke. He laughed at them, giants
though they were, and answered that he could not cease his swimming
at their demand.
"But you shall cease!" they commanded. "We are the men [agents] of
the Sagalie Tyee [God], and we command you ashore out of our way!"
(I find in all these Coast Indian legends that the Deity is represented by
four men, usually paddling an immense canoe.)
He ceased swimming, and, lifting his head, defied them. "I shall not
stop, nor yet go ashore," he declared, striking out once more to the
middle of the channel.
"Do you dare disobey us," they cried--"we, the men of the Sagalie Tyee?
We can turn you into a fish, or a tree, or a stone for this; do you dare
disobey the Great Tyee?"
"I dare anything for the cleanliness and purity of my coming child. I
dare even the Sagalie Tyee Himself, but my child must be born to a
spotless life."
The four men were astounded. They consulted together, lighted their
pipes, and sat in council. Never had they, the men of the Sagalie Tyee,
been defied before. Now, for the sake of a little unborn child, they were
ignored, disobeyed, almost despised. The lithe young copper-colored
body still disported itself in the cool waters; superstition held that
should their canoe, or even their paddle-blades, touch a human being,
their marvellous power would be lost. The handsome young chief

swam directly in their course. They dared not run him down; if so, they
would become as other men. While they yet counselled what to do,
there floated from out the forest a faint, strange, compelling sound.
They listened, and the young chief ceased his stroke as he listened also.
The faint sound drifted out across the waters once more. It was the cry
of a little, little child. Then one of the four men, he that steered the
canoe, the strongest and tallest of them all, arose, and, standing erect,
stretched out his arms towards the rising sun and chanted, not a curse
on the young chief's disobedience, but a promise of everlasting days
and freedom from death.
"Because you have defied all things that come in your path we promise
this to you," he chanted; "you have defied what interferes with your
child's chance for a clean life, you have lived as you wish your son to
live, you have defied us when we would have stopped your swimming
and hampered your child's future. You have placed that child's future
before all things, and for this the Sagalie Tyee commands us to make
you forever a pattern for your tribe. You shall never die, but you shall
stand through all the thousands of years to come, where all eyes can see
you. You shall live, live, live as an indestructible monument to Clean
Fatherhood."
The four men lifted their paddles and the handsome young chief swam
inshore; as his feet touched the line where sea and land met he was
transformed into stone.
Then the four men said, "His wife and child must ever be near him;
they shall not die, but live also." And they, too, were turned into stone.
If you penetrate the hollows in the woods near Siwash Rock you will
find a large rock and a smaller one beside it. They are the shy little
bride-wife from the north, with her hour-old baby beside her. And from
the uttermost parts of the world vessels come daily throbbing and
sailing up the Narrows. From far trans-Pacific ports, from the frozen
North, from the lands of the Southern Cross, they pass and repass the
living rock that was there before their hulls were shaped, that will be
there when their very names are forgotten, when their crews and their
captains have taken their long last voyage, when their merchandise has

rotted, and their owners are known no more.