Legends of Vancouver | Page 8

and
happiness, which would never return because of this calamity; others
discussed in hushed voices this awesome thing, and for hours their
grave council was broken only by the infant cries of the two boy-babies
in the bark lodge, the hopeless sobs of the young mother, the agonized
moans of the stricken chief--their father.
"'Something dire will happen to the tribe,' said the old men in council.
"'Something dire will happen to him, my husband,' wept the young
mother.
"'Something dire will happen to us all,' echoed the unhappy father.
"Then an ancient medicine-man arose, lifting his arms, outstretching
his palms to hush the lamenting throng. His voice shook with the
weight of many winters, but his eyes were yet keen and mirrored the
clear thought and brain behind them, as the still trout-pools in the
Capilano mirror the mountain tops. His words were masterful, his
gestures commanding, his shoulders erect and kindly. His was a

personality and an inspiration that no one dared dispute, and his
judgment was accepted as the words fell slowly, like a doom.
"'It is the olden law of the Squamish that, lest evil befall the tribe, the
sire of twin children must go afar and alone, into the mountain
fastnesses, there by his isolation and his loneliness to prove himself
stronger than the threatened evil, and thus to beat back the shadow that
would otherwise follow him and all his people. I, therefore, name for
him the length of days that he must spend alone fighting his invisible
enemy. He will know by some great sign in Nature the hour that the
evil is conquered, the hour that his race is saved. He must leave before
this sun sets, taking with him only his strongest bow, his fleetest arrows,
and, going up into the mountain wilderness, remain there ten
days--alone, alone.'
"The masterful voice ceased, the tribe wailed their assent, the father
arose speechless, his drawn face revealing great agony over this
seemingly brief banishment. He took leave of his sobbing wife, of the
two tiny souls that were his sons, grasped his favorite bow and arrows,
and faced the forest like a warrior. But at the end of the ten days he did
not return, nor yet ten weeks, nor yet ten months.
"'He is dead,' wept the mother into the baby ears of her two boys. 'He
could not battle against the evil that threatened; it was stronger than
he--he, so strong, so proud, so brave.'
"'He is dead,' echoed the tribesmen and the tribeswomen. 'Our strong,
brave chief, he is dead.' So they mourned the long year through, but
their chants and their tears but renewed their grief; he did not return to
them.
"Meanwhile, far up the Capilano the banished chief had built his
solitary home; for who can tell what fatal trick of sound, what current
of air, what faltering note in the voice of the medicine-man had
deceived his alert Indian ears? But some unhappy fate had led him to
understand that his solitude must be of ten years' duration, not ten days,
and he had accepted the mandate with the heroism of a stoic. For if he
had refused to do so his belief was that, although the threatened disaster

would be spared him, the evil would fall upon his tribe. Thus was one
more added to the long list of self-forgetting souls whose creed has
been, 'It is fitting that one should suffer for the people.' It was the
world-old heroism of vicarious sacrifice.
"With his hunting-knife the banished Squamish chief stripped the bark
from the firs and cedars, building for himself a lodge beside the
Capilano River, where leaping trout and salmon could be speared by
arrow-heads fastened to deftly shaped, long handles. All through the
salmon-run he smoked and dried the fish with the care of a housewife.
The mountain sheep and goats, and even huge black and cinnamon
bears, fell before his unerring arrows; the fleet-footed deer never
returned to their haunts from their evening drinking at the edge of the
stream--their wild hearts, their agile bodies were stilled when he took
aim. Smoked hams and saddles hung in rows from the cross-poles of
his bark lodge, and the magnificent pelts of animals carpeted his floors,
padded his couch, and clothed his body. He tanned the soft doe-hides,
making leggings, moccasins and shirts, stitching them together with
deer sinew as he had seen his mother do in the long-ago. He gathered
the juicy salmon-berries, their acid a sylvan, healthful change from
meat and fish. Month by month and year by year he sat beside his
lonely camp-fire, waiting for his long term of solitude to end. One
comfort alone was his--he was enduring the disaster, fighting the evil,
that his tribe might go unscathed, that