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Updated: June 3, 2025
He looked most incredulous, and I was led to enquire what his own people of the Squamish thought of this discussed problem. "It is no pride to us," he said decidedly, "nor yet is it disgrace of rabbits; but it is a fearsome thing a sign of coming evil to the father, and, worse than that, of coming disaster to the tribe."
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.
"'It is the olden law of the Squamish that lest evil befall the tribe the sire of twin children must go afar and alone into the mountain fastnesses, there by his isolation and his loneliness to prove himself stronger than the threatened evil, and thus to beat back the shadow that would otherwise follow him and all his people.
"What was this calamity, Chief?" I asked, amazed at his knowledge of the great historical soldier and strategist. The chief's voice again lowered to a whisper his face was almost rigid with intentness as he replied: "He lost the Squamish charm lost it just before one great fight with the English people."
After a while little Ta-la-pus fell asleep, and when he awoke, dawn was just breaking. Someone had covered him with a beautiful, white, new blanket, and as his young eyes opened they looked straight into the kindly face of the great Squamish chief. "The dancers are tired, and we shall all sleep until the sun reaches midday, but my guests cry for one more dance before sunrise.
All the men aboard spoke Russian, save two thin, dark, agile sailors, who kept aloof from the crew and conversed in another language. These two came ashore with part of the crew and talked in French with a wandering Hudson's Bay trapper, who often lodged with the Squamish people.
"I suppose you heard of him from Quebec, through, perhaps, some of the French priests," I remarked. "No, no," he contradicted hurriedly. "Not from East; we hear it from over the Pacific, from the place they call Russia." But who conveyed the news or by what means it came he could not further enlighten me. But a strange thing happened to the Squamish family about this time.
"Tradition is so indefinite about their movements subsequent to sailing out of the Inlet, that even the ever-romantic and vividly colored imaginations of the Squamish people have never supplied the details of this beautifully childish, yet strangely historical fairy tale.
There was one particularly effective joint that had been treasured and carried by the warriors of a great Squamish family for a century. These warriors had conquered every foe they encountered, until the talisman had become so renowned that the totem-pole of their entire "clan" was remodelled, and the new one crested by the figure of a single joint of a sea-serpent's vertebra.
At the base of this shaft the Squamish chief crouched when the storm-cloud broke and bellowed through the ranges, and on its summit the Thunder-bird perched, its gigantic wings threshing the air into booming sounds, into splitting terrors, like the crash of a giant cedar hurtling down the mountain-side.
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