e Four Men, fearing that the evil heart imprisoned in the stone
would still work destruction, said: "At the end of the trail we
must place so good and great a thing that it will be mightier,
stronger, more powerful than this evil." So they chose from the
nations the kindliest, most benevolent men, men whose hearts were
filled with the love of their fellow-beings, and transformed these
merciful souls into the stately group of "Cathedral Trees."
How well the purpose of the Sagalie Tyee has wrought its effect
through time! The good has predominated, as He planned it to, for
is not the stone hidden in some unknown part of the park where eyes
do not see it and feet do not follow--and do not the thousands
who come to us from the uttermost parts of the world seek that
wondrous beauty spot, and stand awed by the majestic silence, the
almost holiness of that group of giants?
More than any other legend that the Indians about Vancouver have
told me does this tale reveal the love of the coast native for
kindness and his hatred of cruelty. If these tribes really have
ever been a warlike race I cannot think they pride themselves much
on the occupation. If you talk with any of them, and they mention
some man they particularly like or admire, their first qualification
of him is: "He's a kind man." They never say he is brave, or rich,
or successful, or even strong, that characteristic so loved by
the red man. To these coast tribes if a man is "kind" he is
everything. And almost without exception their legends deal with
rewards for tenderness and self-abnegation, and personal and mental
cleanliness.
Call them fairy-tales if you wish to, they all have a reasonableness
that must have originated in some mighty mind, and, better than that,
they all tell of the Indian's faith in the survival of the best
impulses of the human heart, and the ultimate extinction of the
worst.
In talking with my many good tillicums, I find this witch-woman
legend is the most universally known and thoroughly believed in
of all traditions they have honored me by revealing to me.
DEER LAKE
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 ric
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