A Story of the North Pacific Coast.

E. Pauline Johnson

THE UPCOAST people called her “Hoolool,” which means “The Mouse” in the Chinook tongue. For was she not silent as the small, grey creature that depended on its own bright eyes and busy little feet to secure a living?

The fishermen and prospectors had almost forgotten the time when she had not lived alone with her little son, “Tenas,” for although Big Joe, her husband, had been dead but four years, time travels slowly north of Queen Charlotte Sound, and four years on the “Upper Coast” drag themselves more leisurely than twelve at the mouth of the Fraser River. Big Joe had left her with but three precious possessions–”Tenas,” their boy, the warm, roomy firwood house of the thrifty Pacific Coast Indian build, and the great Totem Pole that loomed outside at its northwestern corner like a guardian of her welfare and the undeniable hallmark of their child’s honorable ancestry and unblemished lineage.

After Big Joe died Hoolool would have been anchorless without that Totem Pole. Its extraordinary carving, its crude but clever coloring, its massed figures of animals, birds and humans, all designed and carved out of the solid trunk of a single tree, meant a thousand times more to her than it did to the travellers who, in their great “Klondike rush,” thronged the decks of the northern-bound steamboats; than it did even to those curio-hunters who despoil the Indian lodges of their ancient wares, leaving their white man’s coin in lieu of old silver bracelets and rare carvings in black slate or finely woven cedar-root baskets.

Many times was she offered money for it, but Hoolool would merely shake her head, and, with a half smile, turn away, giving no reason for her refusal.

“The woman is like a mouse,” those would-be purchasers would say, so “Hoolool” she became, even to her little son, who called her the quaint word as a white child would call its mother a pet name; and she in turn called the little boy “Tenas,” which means “Youngness”–the young spring, the young day, the young moon–and he was all these blessed things to her. But all the old-timers knew well why she would never part with the Totem Pole.

“No use to coax her,” they would tell the curio-hunters. “It is to her what your family crest is to you. Would you sell your crest? ”

So year after year the greedy-eyed collectors would go away empty-handed, their coin in their pockets, and Hoolool’s silent refusal in their memories.

Yet how terribly she really needed their money she alone knew. To be sure, she had her own firewood in the forest that crept almost to her door, and in good seasons the salmon fishing was a great help. She caught and smoked and dried this precious food, stowing it away for use through the long winter months; but life was a continual struggle, and Tenas was yet too young to help her in the battle.

Sometimes when the silver coins were very, very scarce, when her shoulders ached with the cold, and her lips longed for tea and her mouth for bread, when the smoked salmon revolted her, and her thin garments grew thinner, she would go out and stand gazing at the Totem Pole, and think of the great pile of coin that the last “collector” had offered for it–a pile of coin that would fill all her needs until Tenas was old enough to help her, to take his father’s place at the hunting, the fishing, and above all, in the logging camps up the coast.

“I would sell it to-day if they came,” she would murmur. “I would not be strong enough to refuse, to say no.”

Then Tenas, knowing her desperate thoughts, would slip, mouse-like, beside her and say:

“Hoolool, you are looking with love on our great Totem Pole–with love, as you always do. It means that I shall be a great man some day, does it not, Hoolool ?”

Then the treachery of her thoughts would roll across her heart like a crushing weight, and she knew that no thirst for tea, no hunger for flour-bread, no shivering in thin garments, would ever drive her to part with it. For the grotesque, carven thing was the very birthright of her boy. Every figure, hewn with infinite patience by his sire’s, his grandsire’s, his great-grandsire’s, hands meant the very history from which sprang the source of red blood in his young veins, the birth of each generation, its deeds of valor, its achievements, its honors, its undeniable right to the family name.

Should Tenas grow to youth, manhood, old age, and have no Totem Pole to point to as a credential of being the honorable son of a long line of honorable sons? Never! She would suffer in silence, like the little grey, hungry Hoolool that scampered across the bare floors of her firwood shack in the chill night hours, but her boy must have his birthright. And so the great pole stood unmoved, baring its grinning figures to the storms, the suns, the grey rains of the Pacific Coast, but by its very presence it was keeping these tempests from entering the heart of the lonely woman at its feet.

It was the year that spring came unusually early, weeks earlier than the oldest Indian recalled its ever having come before. March brought the wild geese honking northward, and great flocks of snow-white swans came daily out of the southern horizon to sail overhead and lose themselves along the Upper Coast, for it was mating and nesting time, and the heat of the south had driven them early from its broad lagoons.

Every evening Tenas would roll himself in his blanket bed, while he chatted about the migrating birds, and longed for the time when he would be a great hunter, able to shoot the game as they flitted southward with their large families in September.

“Then, Hoolool, we will have something better to eat than the smoked salmon,” he would say.

“Yes, little loved one,” she would reply, “and you are growing so fast, so big, that the time will not be long now before you can hunt down the wild birds for your Hoolool to eat, eh, little Spring Eyes? But now you must go to sleep; perhaps you will dream of the great flocks of the fat, young, grey geese you are to get us for food.”

“I’ll tell you if I do; I’ll tell you in the morning if I dream of the little geese,” he would reply, his voice trailing away into dreamland as his eyes blinked themselves to sleep.

“Hoolool, I did dream last night,” he told her one early April day, when he awoke dewy-eyed and bird-like from a long night’s rest. “But it was not of the bands of grey geese; it was of our great Totem Pole.”

“Did it speak to you in your dreams, little April Eyes?” she asked, playfully.

“No-o,” he hesitated, “it did not really speak, but it showed me something strange. Do you think it will come true, Hoolool?” His dark, questioning eyes were pathetic in appeal. He did want it to come true.

“Tell your Hoolool,” she replied indulgently, “and perhaps she can decide if the dream will come true.”

“You know how I longed to dream of the great flocks of young geese flying southward in September,” he said, longingly, his little thin elbows propped each on one of her knees, his small, dark chin in his hands, his wonderful eyes shadowy with the fairy dreams of childhood. “But the flocks I saw were not flying grey geese, that make such fat eating, but around the foot of our Totem Pole I saw flocks and flocks of little tenas Totem Poles, hundreds of them. They were not half as high as I am. They were just baby ones you could take in your hand, Hoolool. Could you take my knife the trader gave me and make me one just like our big one? Only make it little, young–oh, very tenas–that I can carry it about with me. I’ll paint it. Will you make me one, Hoolool?”

The woman sat still, a peculiar stillness that came of half fear, half unutterable relief, and wholly of inspiration. Then she caught up the boy, and her arms clung about him as if they would never release him.

“I know little of the white man’s God,” she murmured, “except that He is good, but I know that the Great Tyee (god) of the West is surely good. One of them has sent you this dream, my little April Eyes.”

“Perhaps the Great Tyee and the white man’s God are the same,” the child said, innocent of expressing a wonderful truth. “You have two names–’Marna’ (mother, in the Chinook) and ‘Hoolool’–yet you are the same. Maybe it’s that way with the two Great Tyees, the white man’s and ours. But why should they send me dreams of flocks of baby Totem Poles?”

“Because Hoolool will make you one to-day, and then flocks and flocks of tenas poles for the men with the silver coins. I cannot sell them our great one, but I can make many small ones like it. Oh! they will buy the little totems, and the great one will stand as the pride of your manhood and the honor of your old age.” Her voice rang with the hope of the future, the confidence of years of difficulty overcome.

“Hoolool of the Totem Pole” E. Pauline Johnson [Tekahionwake] (1862-1913)

From: The Shagganappi. E. Pauline Johnson. Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1913. pp. 101-109.

A Celebration of Women Writers May Ockerbloom, Editor

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/johnson/shag/shag-04.html

Ênts!X’s grandmother was Upê’qciuc. She always asked him to go elk hunting. Early every morning he started, but he killed only chipmunks and squirrels; sometimes he killed mice. Oftentimes he went and stayed on a prairie. He shouted: “Come down from the woods, elk! we will fight, we will dance.” Down came the rabbit. “You are the one I have called, your ears are like spoons with long handles.” Then the rabbit cried and went back. Then he called again: “Come down from the woods, elk! we will fight, we will dance.” Down came a deer. “You are the one I have called, your eyes are like huckleberries.” Then the deer cried and went back. He called again: “Come down from the woods, elk! we will fight, we will dance.” Down came a female elk. “You are the one whom I have called!” He called again: “Come down from the woods, elk! we will fight, we will dance.” Then a male elk came down. Now Êntsx danced and sang: “Where shall I go into him? Where shall I go into him? I think I will go into his mouth. No, he will spit and I shall get full of saliva. I think I will go into his nostrils. No he will snort and I shall get full of mucus. I think I will go into his ear. No, he will shake himself and I shall fall down. I think I shall go into his anus. No, he will defecate and I shall get full of excrements.” After some time he entered his anus. Now he cut his stomach to pieces. After a little while the elk fell down and died. Then Êntsx skinned and dissected it. He cut off the hind-legs; he cut off the fore-legs. He cut off the head, the neck, the ribs, and the rump bone. Then he went home. When he came to his grandmother he said: “I killed an elk, grandmother!” “Perhaps it was a mouse.” “No, it has horns, it has horns, it is an elk.” “Then perhaps it was a snail.” “No, no, I killed an elk, an elk.” “Perhaps it was a chipmunk.” “No, no, I killed an elk, an elk.” “Perhaps it was a squirrel.” Then she got tired and they went into the woods. They arrived at the place where the elk lay. Êntsx asked: “What do you want to carry, grandmother? Do you want to carry its head?” “It will pull me down headlong, grandson.” “What do you want to carry, grandmother? Do you want to carry its neck?” “It will pull me down headlong, grandson.” “What do you want to carry, grandmother? Do you want to carry its hind-legs?” “They will pull me down headlong, grandson.” “What do you want to carry, grandmother? Do you want to carry its fore-legs?” “They will pull me down headlong, grandson.” “What do you want to carry, grandmother? Do you want to carry its breast?” “It will pull me down headlong, grandson.” “What do you want to carry, grandmother? Do you want to carry its back?” “It will pull me down headlong, grandson.” “What do you want to carry, grandmother? Do you want to carry its rump bone?” “Tie it tip, tie it up, grandson.” Then he tied it up, she put it up, she raised it on her back. The old woman ran ahead of her grandson, who carried the rest of the elk. They went home. After a little while he came near his grandmother, who had put her load on the ground and pushed it to and fro, singing at the same time.

He reached her and asked: “What are you doing there, grandmother?” “It pulled me down headlong, grandson.” Then she took it again on her back and ran. He went on. Then he saw her again sitting down and pushing her load to and fro and singing. [He asked:] “What are you doing there, grandmother?” “It pulled me down headlong, grandson.” Five times he overtook her, when they reached home.

[Êntsx said:] “Now go and bring some water, grandmother, we will boil the elk.” His grandmother took five buckets and went out. She went a short distance, urinated and filled all the buckets. Then she went home. Her grandson asked her: “Where did you get that water, grandmother?” She named a river. Then he took up another bucket and asked: Where did you get this water, grandmother?” “This I took from the upper fork of Bear creek,” she replied. Thus she named a new creek for each bucket.

Now they boiled the elk. The old woman turned her back toward the fire and made holes in Êntsx’s shell spoons, wooden spoons, and born dishes. When the food was done they took it away from the fire. Êntsx said: “Bring me my shell spoon which I used when I was a child.” “There is a hole in it, grandson.” “Then give me my wooden spoon which I used when I was a child.” “There is a hole in it, grandson.” “Then give me the spoon made of mountain-sheep horn.” “There is a hole in it, grandson.” “Then give me my toy canoes which I used when I was a child.” “There are holes in them, grandson.”

“Have they all holes?” he said. Then he took the boiling food and poured it over his grandmother,. She was scalded and her legs and arms became doubled up. Then he rolled her up in the elk skin, threw her into the river and she drifted down to a place where Winter Robin and Blue-Jay were fishing with a dipnet.

Robin saw an elk skin drifting down and said: “Ah! an elk comes down to me.” Then Blue-Jay said: “Robin, do you hear? they call us?” Then Robin said: “Ah! an elk comes down to me.” Then Blue-Jay said: “Ah! hahahaha.” Five times Robin said: “An elk comes down to me.” Then Blue-Jay understood what he said and called himself: “Ah! an elk comes down to me.” “Where does it come?” [Blue-Jay pointed out.] “Here, here, here” [pointing in all directions because he did not see it]. Then they saw the elk and took it. They put it into their canoe [and saw that] it was tied up. They unfastened the strings and [out came] their aunt. “Oh, behold our aunt!” “How shall we wail for her, Robin?” Then Robin sung: “O Êntsx, Êntsx, he killed her, he killed her, our aunt, our aunt.” “That is a good song,” said Blue-Jay. Now they went home, and when they came near their town they began to wail. Oh, the poor ones, how they do wail?” said the people. They sang: “Êntsx, Êntsx, he killed her, he killed her, our aunt, our aunt.” They landed and the people went down to see them. Then they carried the body of Upê’qciuc up to the house. They tried to cure her. After a while she recovered. Then they asked her: “What [?].” She named [a bird]. “She named the eldest one,” said Blue-Jay. “Pull his canoes into the water.” Again they asked her. She named Robin. “She named the eldest one,” said Blue-Jay. She named all the people. Last of all she named Blue-Jay. Now they launched his canoes and they went to make war upon Ênts!x. Two canoes full of people went.

They went a long distance and met two people asleep, a man and a woman. Blue-Jay went ashore. He took the man by his hair in his right hand and he took the woman in his left. Then he took them to his canoe and made them his slaves. When they traveled along these two persons were dancing [in Blue-Jay's canoe]. The latter said: “Robin! These two persons were our grandfather’s slaves; they always carried me on the, back and led you by the hand. They were our great-great-grandfather’s slaves.” “Iä-a, they are only your slaves. Do you think that I do not know my slaves?” replied Robin. “Pshaw! he is older than I am and does not remember it!” Now the two persons danced and sang: “Near the trees we always dance, watlala guyu, guyu, guyu, guyu.”

Then Blue-Jay said: “They always say: ‘Close to the trees, close to the trees’”. “Iä” replied Robin, “thus they will run away from you.” And indeed so it happened. [When they got a little farther they came to] a tree which hung over the water. [The man and the woman] jumped up and escaped by running [over the tree]. Blue-Jay ran in pursuit. He came inland. Then he called anah, anah. When he came back to the canoe his legs were full of blood [and he said to his brother Robin]: “Why did you not go inland? They nearly killed me. That man took hold of my head and the woman struck my legs.” [Robin laughed and replied:] “Iä, they were the squirrel and chipmunk whom you caught.”

They traveled on. They went a long distance and met one man who was sitting in his canoe. He fished with a dipnet. Blue-Jay said: “My nephew, you have a pretty canoe.” “I borrowed it.” “My nephew, you have a pretty paddle.” “I borrowed it.” “My nephew, you have a pretty bailer.” “I borrowed it.” “My nephew, you have a pretty dip-net.” “I borrowed it.” “My nephew, you have a pretty mat in your canoe.” “I borrowed it.” [Then Blue-Jay got angry and said:] “Do you borrow everything?” He took hold of his head and threw him into his canoe. He said: “Give me that rope and I will tie him.” [The man whom he had caught replied:] “I shall scratch your ropes to pieces.” [Then Blue-Jay said:] “Give me a rope of spruce limbs.” “I shall scratch it to pieces.” “What shall I take to tie him with? Give me strings of dentalia. “I shall scratch them to pieces. “Ha, ha, ha,” he cried then; “sea-grass, sea-grass!” “Give me sea-grass, give me sea-grass, quick Robin.” Now he tied the hands and the feet of that man. Then he threw him into the water. The water began to boil where they had thrown him down. [Blue-jay cried:] “O, my nephew, he scolds. I killed my nephew.” [Robin remarked:] “Iä, he is laughing at you here.” “Pshaw, a man does not laugh when he is thrown into the water” [said Blue-Jay].

Now the people went on, and after awhile they saw a person who held arrows in his hands. [He said:] “Tell me the news, Blue-Jay!” “I have nothing to tell you, only that I threw my relative down there into the water.” “I am the one,” said that person. “Iä,” cried Robin, “that is the one whom you threw into the water.”

They went on to Ênts!x’s house. They surrounded it and set it on fire. When it began to burn Ênts!x flew out through a knothole. When the, whole house was burnt, Blue-Jay found a [mink's] head. “Oh that is Ênts!x’s head!” he shouted. But Robin said: be went out already.” Now the people went home and left Ênts!x.

Chinook Texts, by Franz Boas; U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin no. 20; US Government Printing Office; [1894] and is now in the public domain.

When a hunter has killed a male elk far away, then twelve men go to fetch it. When he has killed a female elk, eight go to fetch it. When a hunter has killed two elks, many people go to fetch it. When he has killed many, then it is dried in the woods [it is not carried away]. The people go home when it is dry, and the hunter distributes the meat among all the people.

A menstruating woman must not take the head of an elk. Women do not eat the tongue; only men eat it. They do not break the bones of the forelegs. These are carried faraway, else a menstruating woman might see them. When such a woman eats the feet and hoofs, the hunter will be unlucky. When she steps over an elk’s head, she will be sick with dropsy. Just so a girl who has just reached maturity. She does not look at an elk, else she will be sick with dropsy. When a hunter is unsuccessful, his child must not go near the water. When it goes near water, it will fall sick and die at once. When he goes hunting, his wife and children sit motionless. His wife must not go anywhere. When his children make noise, one of them will fall sick if the hunter is unsuccessful.

Chinook Texts, by Franz Boas; U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin no. 20; US Government Printing Office; [1894] and is now in the public domain.

A youth was in the habit of setting traps. He always killed bears. One year he had set his traps [as usual], and when he went to look after them [he heard] a woman crying in a trap. He reached her. Her hand was caught in the trap. She was a pretty woman. Her hair was brown, her feet and her hands were tattooed. He opened the trap and took her hand out of it. She said to him: “You will excel all the people. You have caught even me in your trap. You will be a great hunter.” The youth said: “I shall carry you to our town.” Thus he spoke to his supernatural helper. “I shall show you to the Indians.” Now he carried her home. His relatives saw her and all died. He died also.

After many years another boy saw her. He had no father and no mother. He was poor. He was a small boy. She said to him: “When you have grown a little larger, you will excel all hunters. I did not tell the first Indian [not to show me] and behold, he showed me to the people. When you go elk hunting carry only a stick in your hand and paint that stick.” The boy grew up and became a youth. Then he sang: “I did not tell him thus, the first one, and behold, he showed me to the Indians.I did not tell him thus, the first one. Behold!”

He also sang: “If the orphan boy remembers what is told of olden times, If the orphan boy remembers what is told of olden times, He shall excel all others.” The people helped him singing. An old man was brought there who came to listen. He had been a hunter. He listened to the singer and said: “Oh, help our boy sing; he saw a supernatural being. He saw the hunter spirit.” He sang five days. Cedar bark was dyed red and put on him. A stick was painted red and given to him. Then he went up the river. He went a long distance. He sang when he was going into the woods. Now he drove the elks [toward the water]. His relatives had remained in the town. One of them said: “An elk is coming down to the water.” They took their arrows. Another one came; again one and again one came. They counted them, but when they had counted seventy they lost the number. The old man said: “Let the elks alone; do not shoot them; perhaps the boy who sings is driving these elks.” They stood near the water and the opening was quite full of them. Then the boy came down singing. He took that stick and pointed seaward to the water. The elks stood there a short while and then they swam seaward. When the boy came to the sea he shouted, and all the elks died. Now he called the wind to blow landward and a northerly wind arose. The elks drifted ashore, and the beach in front of the town was full of them. Now his relatives went down to the beach. They cut up only the fat ones. The lean ones were skinned merely. Then the houses of his relatives became full. Now, whenever he went to hunt elk, he carried only a stick, and shouted. As soon as an elk met him it died. He excelled all hunters,

Few white men ventured inland, a century ago, in the days of the first Chief Capilano, when the spoils of the mighty Fraser River poured into copper-colored hands, but did not find their way to the remotest corners of the earth, as in our times, when the gold from its sources, the salmon from its mouth, the timber from its shores are world-known riches.

The fisherman’s craft, the hunter’s cunning were plied where now cities and industries, trade and commerce, buying and selling hold sway. In those days the moccasined foot awoke no echo in the forest trails. Primitive weapons, arms, implements, and utensils were the only means of the Indians’ food-getting. His livelihood depended upon his own personal prowess, his skill in woodcraft and water lore. And, as this is a story of an elk-bone spear, the reader must first be in sympathy with the fact that this rude instrument, deftly fashioned, was of priceless value to the first Capilano, to whom it had come through three generations of ancestors, all of whom had been experienced hunters and dexterous fishermen.

Capilano himself was without a rival as a spearsman. He knew the moods of the Fraser River, the habits of its thronging tenants, as no other man has ever known them before or since. He knew every isle and inlet along the coast, every boulder, the sand-bars, the still pools, the temper of the tides. He knew the spawning grounds, the secret streams that fed the larger rivers, the outlets of rock-bound lakes, the turns and tricks of swirling rapids. He knew the haunts of bird and beast and fish and fowl, and was master of the arts and artifice that man must use when matching his brain against the eluding wiles of the untamed creatures of the wilderness.

Once only did his cunning fail him, once only did Nature baffle him with her mysterious fabric of waterways and land lures. It was when he was led to the mouth of the unknown river, which has evaded discovery through all the centuries, but which – so say the Indians — still sings on its way through some buried channel that leads from the lake to the sea.

He had been sealing along the shores of what is now known as Point Grey. His canoe had gradually crept inland, skirting up the coast to the mouth of False Creek. Here he encountered a very king of seals, a colossal creature that gladdened the hunter’s eyes as game worthy of his skill. For this particular prize he would cast the elk-bone spear. It had never failed his sire, his grandsire, his greatgrandsire. He knew it would not fail him now. A long, pliable, cedar-fiber rope lay in his canoe. Many expert fingers had woven and plaited that rope, had beaten and oiled it until it was soft and flexible as a serpent. This he attached to the spearhead, and with deft, unerring aim cast it at the king seal. The weapon struck home.

The gigantic creature shuddered and, with a cry like a hurt child, it plunged down into the sea. With the rapidity and strength of a giant fish it scudded inland with the rising tide, while Capilano paid out the rope its entire length, and, as it stretched taut, felt the canoe leap forward, propelled by the mighty strength of the creature which lashed the waters into whirlpools, as though it was possessed with the power and properties of a whale.

Up the stretch of False Creek the man and monster drove their course, where a century hence great city bridges were to over-arch the waters. They strove and struggled each for the mastery, neither of them weakened, neither of them faltered — the one dragging, the other driving. In the end it was to be a matching of brute and human wits, not forces. As they neared the point where now Main Street bridge flings its shadow across the waters, the brute leaped high into the air, then plunged headlong into the depths. The impact ripped the rope from Capilano’s hands. It rattled across the gunwale.

Hestood staring at the spot where it had disappeared – the brute had been victorious. At low tide the Indian made search. No trace of his game, of his precious elk-bone spear, of his cedar-fiber rope, could be found. With the loss of the latter he firmly believed his luck as a hunter would be gone. Sohe patrolled the mouth of False Creek for many moons. His graceful, high-bowed canoe rarely touched other waters, but the seal king had disappeared. Often he thought long strands of drifting sea grasses were his lost cedar-fiber rope. With other spears, with other cedar-fibers, with paddle blade and cunning traps he dislodged the weeds from their moorings, but they slipped their slimy lengths through his eager hands: his best spear with its attendant coil was gone.

The following year he was sealing again off the coast of Point Grey, and one night after sunset he observed the red reflection from the west, which seemed to transfer itself to the eastern skies. Far into the night dashes of flaming scarlet pulsed far beyond the head of False Creek. The color rose and fell like a beckoning hand, and, Indian-like, he immediately attached some portentous meaning to the unusual sight. That it was some omen he never doubted, so he paddled inland, beached his canoe, and took the trail towards the little group of lakes that crowd themselves into the area that lies between the present cities of Vancouver and New Westminster. But long before he reached the shores of Deer Lake he discovered that the beckoning hand was in reality flame. The little body of water was surrounded by forest fires. One avenue alone stood open. It was a group of giant trees that as yet the flames had not reached. As he neared the point he saw a great moving mass of living things leaving the lake and hurrying northward through this one egress. He stood, listening, intently watching with alert eyes; the swirl of myriad’s of little traveling feet caught his quick ear — the moving mass was an immense colony of beaver. Thousands upon thousands of them. Scores of baby beavers staggered along, following their mothers; scores of older beavers that had felled trees and built dams through many seasons; a countless army of trekking fur beavers, all under the generalship of a wise old leader, who, as king of the colony, advanced some few yards ahead of his battalions. Out of the waters through the forest towards the country to the north they journeyed. Wandering hunters said they saw them cross Burrard Inlet at the Second Narrows, heading inland as they reached the farther shore. But where that mighty army of royal little Canadians set up their new colony, no man knows. Not even the astuteness of the first Capilano ever discovered their destination. Only one thing was certain, Deer Lake knew them no more.

After their passing, the Indian retraced their trail to the water’s edge. In the red glare of the encircling fires he saw what he at first thought was some dead and dethroned king beaver on the shore. A huge carcass lay half in, half out, of the lake. Approaching it he saw the wasted body of a giant seal. There could never be two seals of that marvelous size. His intuition now grasped the meaning of the omen of the beckoning flame that had called him from the far coasts of Point Grey. He stooped above his dead conqueror and found, embedded in its decaying flesh, the elkbone spear of his forefathers, and trailing away at the water’s rim was a long flexible cedar-fiber rope.

As he extracted this treasured heirloom he felt the “power,” that men of magic possess, creep up his sinewy arms. It entered his heart, his blood, his brain. For a long time he sat and chanted songs that only great medicine men may sing, and, as the hours drifted by, the heat of the forest fires subsided, the flames diminished into smoldering blackness. At daybreak the forest fire was dead, but its beckoning fingers had served their purpose. The magic elk-bone spear had come back to its own.

Until the day of his death the first Capilano searched for the unknown river up which the seal traveled from False Creek to Deer Lake, but its channel is a secret that even Indian eyes have not seen. But although those of the Suquamish tribe tell and believe that the river still sings through its hidden trail that leads from Deer Lake to the sea, its course is as unknown, its channel is as hopelessly lost as the brave little army of beavers that a century ago marshaled their forces and traveled up into the great lone north.