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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.
"Perhaps the Great Tyee and the white man's God are the same," the child said, innocent of expressing a wonderful truth. 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 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?"
Hoolool of the Totem Pole A Story of the North Pacific Coast 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?
After Big Joe died Hoolool would have been anchorless without that Totem Pole.
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. One of them has sent you this dream, my little April Eyes."
"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."
"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?
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.
"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.
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