The Mountain that was God | Page 8

and the land they left bare became covered with blue grass and wild flowers--a great sunny country where, before, the dark forest had been. Borrowing a word from the French coureurs des bois who came with the Hudson's Bay Company, the later Indians sometimes called this region "the Big Brul��"; and to this day some Americans call it the same. But for the Big Brul�� the Indians had, from ancient times, another name, connected with their ideas of religion. It was their Saghalie Illahe, the "Land of Peace," Heaven. Our name, "Paradise Valley," {p.031} given to the beautiful open vale on the south slope of the Mountain, is an English equivalent.
Here was the same bar to violence which religion has erected in many lands. The Hebrews had their "Cities of Refuge." The pagan ancients made every altar an asylum. Medi?val Christianity constituted all its churches sanctuaries. Thus, in lawless ages, the hand of vengeance was stayed, and the weak were protected.
[Illustration: Exploring an Ice Cave, Paradise Glacier.]
So, too, the Indian tradition ordained this home of rest and refuge. Indian custom was an eye for an eye, but on gaining this mountain haven the pursued was safe from his pursuer, the slayer might not be touched by his victim's kindred. When he crossed its border, the warrior laid down his arms. Criminals and cowards, too, were often sent here by the chiefs to do penance.
[Illustration: Junction of North and South Tahoma Glaciers, viewed from Indian Henry's. The main ice stream thus formed, seen in the foreground, feeds Tahoma Fork of the Nisqually River. The Northern part of North Tahoma Glacier, seen in the distance beyond the wedge of rocks, feeds a tributary of the Puyallup.]
The mountain divinity, with his under-gods, figures in much of the Siwash {p.032} folklore, and the "Land of Peace" is often heard of. It is through such typical Indian legends as that of Miser, the greedy hiaqua hunter, that we learn how large a place the great Mountain filled in the thought of the aborigines.
[Illustration: Anemones, a familiar mountain flower.]
This myth also explains why no Red Man could ever be persuaded to an ascent beyond the snow line. As to the Greek, so to the Indian the great peaks were sacred. The flames of an eruption, the fall of an avalanche, told of the wrath of the mountain god. The clouds that wrapped the summit of Tacoma spelled mystery and peril. Even so shrewd and intelligent a Siwash as Sluiskin, with all his keenness for "Boston chikamin," the white man's money, refused to accompany Stevens and Van Trump in the first ascent, in 1870; indeed, he gave them up as doomed, and bewailed their certain fate when they defied the Mountain's wrath and started for the summit in spite of his warnings.
[Illustration {p.033}: Copyright 1910, A. H. WAITE. North Tahoma Glacier, flowing out of the huge cleft in the west side, between North and South Peaks. A great rock wedge splits the glacier, turning part of the ice stream northward into the Puyallup, while the other part, on the right pours down to join South Tahoma Glacier. Note how the promontory of rock in the foreground has been rounded and polished by the ice. Compare this view with pages 32 and 37.]
[Illustration {p.034}: Snow Lake in Indian Henry's, surrounded by Alpine firs, which grow close to the snow line. Elevation about 6,000 feet.]
The hero of the Hiaqua Myth is the Indian {p.035} Rip Van Winkle.[2] He dwelt at the foot of Tacoma, and, like Irving's worthy, he was a mighty hunter and fisherman. He knew the secret pools where fish could always be found, and the dark places in the forest, where the elk hid when snows were deepest. But for these things Miser cared not. His lust was all for hiaqua, the Indian shell money.
[Footnote 2: This legend is well told in "Myths and Legends of the Pacific Northwest," a delightful book by Katharine B. Judson of the Seattle Public Library (Chicago, A. C. McClurg & Co.). See also Prof. W. D. Lyman's papers in "Mazama" Vol. 2, and "The Mountaineer," Vol. 2; and Winthrop's "Canoe and Saddle."]
[Illustration: A fair Mountaineer at the timber line. Note her equipment, including shoe calks.]
Now, Miser's totem was Moosmoos, the elk divinity. So Miser tried, even while hunting the elk, to talk with them, in order to learn where hiaqua might be found. One night Moosmoos persuaded him that on top of the Mountain he would find great store of it. Making him two elk-horn picks, and filling his ikta with dried salmon and kinnikinnick, he climbed in two nights and a day to the summit. Here he found three big rocks, one like a camas root, one like a salmon's head, the third like his friendly Moosmoos. Miser saw