The Legends of San Francisco | Page 2

lava and hot ashes;

Casting on the troubled waters
Lurid gleams and purple shadows.
By the lake Coyote wandered -
Sat and howled, for he was lonely,


Lonely for a Man to tame him
Into Dog as a companion.
Then
Coyote mixed dry tules
With wet clay and made a figure.
Sun God
came and shone upon it;
Spirit came and blew upon it,
And a Man
was thus created.
Sun God made the Moon to guard him,
And she
stood before his tepee,
Watching while the Sun was sleeping;
But
she loved the Sun and followed
Him into the starry heavens,

Always with her face turned to him.
Still she watched the lonely
tepee,
And her heart was touched with pity
For the lonely man
within it,
So she made a lovely woman,
Gave her constancy, and
sent her
On a moonbeam to his tepee,
As his helpmate and
companion.
Man then multiplied, and flourished,
Building villages
and lording
Over all the other creatures.
On the sunny eastern margin
Of the Bay of San Francisco,
Grew the
village of the Tamals;
Fisher folk they were, and gentle,
Seeking
not for wars of conquest;
Fishing in the purple waters
From their
boats of bark or rawhide;
Wading in the limpid shallows
Seeking
oysters, clams and mussels.
In the course of generations
Piles of
shells of many banquets,
With the ashes of their campfires,
Formed
a mound upon the bay shore.
Shell Mound Park, the people call it,

And they gather in the shadows
Of the ancient oaks for pleasure,

Roasting clams as in the old days
When the Tamals lived upon it.

Gone are now the limpid shallows;
Gone the oysters and the mussels,


And no more are grassy meadows
Dappled with the spreading oak
trees;
For great factories, grim and sordid,
Sprawl in squalid blocks
around it,
And the smoke of forge and furnace
Rise from stacks into
the heavens.
Paleface men with concave glasses,
Learned in lore of printed pages,

Dig into the mounds and gather
Spear and arrow heads and axes,

Broken weapons and utensils
Made of flint, or bone, or seashell.
To the northward, where great boulders
Lie in tumbled piles and
masses,
And a Thousand Oaks are clustered,
And the crags upthrust

their fingers
Through the meadows of the uplands,
Was another
Indian village,
Ancient stronghold of the Tamals.
In the village on the hillside
Men were hunters, brave and fearless,

Skillful with the bow and arrow,
Artful with the snare and deadfall;

Hunting deer and elk and bison
In the open grassy meadows,

Tracking wolf and mountain lion
To their lairs among the redwoods;

Bearing on their backs the trophies
To their camp when night was
falling.
In the village maids and matrons
Dressed the furs and tanned the
buckskin,
Dried the venison, and traded
With the Shell Mound
folks for salmon,
Mussels, clams and abalones,
Ornaments of bone
or seashell,
Weapons chipped from flint or jasper.
From the oaks
they gathered acorns,
And beneath the fragrant bay trees
And the
heavy blooming buckeyes,
Ground the acorns into flour
To be
baked upon the hot-stones.
To this day the smoke of campfires
May be traced in caves, and
crannies
Where the overhanging cliffsides
Gives protection from
the rainstorms.
If you search among the thickets
Of the low
widespreading buckeyes
You will find their ancient mortars
In the
bedrock still remaining -
Mortar holes ground deep, and polished

By the toil of many women
Pounding, grinding with a pestle

Fashioned from a stream-worn boulder.
Gone are all those ancient people,
Perished now for many ages.

Many oaks have grown and withered,
Many buckeyes bloomed and
faded,
Many tribes have fought and conquered,
Lived for many
generations,
Then were driven out by others.
Still the mortar holes
will linger
As our monuments forever."
Fainter grew the voice, still fainter,
Sinking almost to a whisper,

With a hesitating quaver,
As the picture came before her
Of her

disappearing people.
Then I rose and piled more branches
Of the
redwood on the campfire,
And the flames and sparks leaped upward,

Lighting up the mournful forest,
Driving back the eerie shadows.
Long she bowed her head in silence,
Then resumed her rhythmic
speaking.
In the village lived a maiden,
Fairest of all comely
maidens
Ever born among the Tamals;
Fair of face and pure of
spirit,
Kind in thought and quick in service
To the young and old
and helpless;
Ever eager for her duty,
Ever singing at her labor.
When she sat beneath the buckeyes
Grinding acorns in the mortar,

Humming birds came sipping honey
From the heavy scented
blossoms;
Wild birds came and sang their sweetest
Music as they
perched above her;
And the Fairies came to greet her
Dressed as
Butterflies, and fluttered
Round her head and whispered secrets -

Secrets not revealed to others.
Little wonder that the Chieftain,
Young and brave and wise in
counsel,
Loved the maid and wished to take her
As his wife to rule
his people.
But she answered him with sadness,
For she loved the
youth, 'Beloved,
This is not the time for lovers,
But for warriors to
make ready,
For a danger comes upon us.
God has sent a warning
message
By the Fairies, and they whispered
To me as I ground the
acorns
In the mortar 'neath the buckeyes.
Rally all your braves around you,
Sieze your strong bows, fill your
quivers
With the long flintpointed arrows;
Guard the ridges to the
eastward
Ere the foe shall fall upon us.'
To the eastward where Diablo

Rears its peak above the fog banks

Drifting landward from the ocean,
Lived a warlike tribe of people.

Fierce they were, and