Legends of Vancouver
Legends of Vancouver
Free DownloadThese legends (with two or three exceptions) were told to me personally by my honored friend, the late Chief Joe Capilano, of Vancouver, whom I had the privilege of first meeting in London in 1906, when he visited England and was received at Buckingham Palace by their Majesties King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. To the fact that I was able to greet Chief Capilano in the Chinook tongue, while we were both many thousands of miles from home, I owe the friendship and the confidence which he so freely gave me when I came to reside on the Pacific coast. These legends he told me from time to time, just as the mood possessed him, and he frequently remarked that they had never been revealed to any other English-speaking person save myself.
Book Excerpt
he turned insultingly deaf ears to their war cries; he ignored with arrogant indifference their paddle dips that encroached within his own coast waters, and he prepared, as a great Tyee should, to royally entertain his tribesmen in honor of his daughters.
"But seven suns before the great feast, these two maidens came before him, hand clasped in hand.
"'Oh! our father,' they said, 'may we speak?'
"'Speak, my daughters, my girls with the eyes of April, the hearts of June'" (early spring and early summer would be the more accurate Indian phrasing).
"'Some day, Oh! our father, we may mother a man child, who may grow to be just such a powerful Tyee as you are, and for this honor that may some day be ours we have come to crave a favor of you--you, Oh! our father.'
"'It is your privilege at this celebration to receive any favor your hearts may wish,' he replied graciously, placing his fingers beneath their girlish chins. 'The favor is yours before you ask it, my daughters.'
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