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He shall get the first gifts of our great Potlatch. The crowd was delighted. They approved the boy and rejoiced to see the real Potlatch was begun. When the blankets were piled up beside him they reached to the top of Ta-la-pus' head. Then the chief put ten dollars in the boy's hand with the simple words, "I am glad to give it. You won it well, my Tenas Tyee."
Then came the great Squamish chief, saying more welcoming words, and inviting his guests to begin their tribal dances. Ta-la-pus never forgot the brilliant sight that he looked on for the next few hours. Scores of young men and women went through the most graceful figures of beautiful dances, their shell ornaments jingling merrily in perfect time to each twist and turn of their bodies.
They crossed the Straits on a white man's steamer, a wonderful sight to Ta-la-pus, who had never been aboard any larger boat than his father's fishing smack and their own high-bowed, gracefully-curved canoe. In and out among the islands of the great gulf the steamer wound, bringing them nearer, ever nearer to the mainland.
Then one loud clamor arose from the crowd. "Tenas Tyee," "Tenas Tyee," they shouted, and Ta-la-pus knew that he had not failed. But the great Squamish chief was beside him. "Tillicums,"* he said, facing the crowd, "this boy has danced no tribal dance learned from his people or his parents. This is his own dance, which he has made to deserve his name.
He made up his mind that when he was alone in his tent he would practise it, but just now the great Squamish chief was coming towards them with outstretched greeting hands, and presently he was patting little Ta-la-pus on the shoulder, and saying, "Oh, ho, my good Tillicum Mowitch, I am glad you have brought this boy. I have a son of the same size.
At his feet stretched the Straits of Georgia, and far across the mists of the salt Pacific waters he watched the sun rise seemingly out of the mainland that someone had told him stretched eastward thousands of miles, where another ocean, called the Atlantic, washed its far-off shore, for Ta-la-pus lived on Vancouver Island, and all his little life had been spent in wishing and longing to set his small, moccasined feet on that vast mainland that the old men talked of, and the young men visited year in and year out.
Will you dance for us, oh, little Ta-la-pus?" The boy sprang up, every muscle and sinew and nerve on the alert. The moment of his triumph or failure had come. "You have made me, even a boy like me, very welcome, O Great Tyee," he said, standing erect as an arrow, with his slender, dark chin raised manfully. I shall do my best to dance and please you."
He entertains them for days, sometimes for weeks, together, presenting them with innumerable blankets and much money, for it is part of the Indian code of honor that, which one has great possessions, he must divide them with his less fortunate tribesmen. Young Ta-la-pus sat on the highest point of rock that lifted itself on the coast at the edge of his father's Reserve.
He had set foot in the wider world, he had won his name, and now honored it, instead of hating it, as in the old days when his brothers taunted him, for the great Squamish chief, in bidding good-bye to him, had said: "Little Ta-la-pus, remember a name means much to a man. You despised your name, but you have made it great and honorable by your own act, your own courage.
Sometimes these big brothers would tease him and say, "What can you expect? Your name is Ta-la-pus, which means a prairie wolf. What has a prairie wolf to do with crossing great waters? He cannot swim, as some other animals can.
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