Legends of Vancouver | ||
The Tulameen Trail
DID you ever "holiday" through the valley lands of the Dry Belt? Ever spend days and days in a swinging, swaying coach, behind a four-in-hand, when "Curly" or "Nicola Ned" held the ribbons, and tooled his knowing little leaders and wheelers down those horrifying mountain trails that wind like russet skeins of cobweb through the heights and depths of the Okanagan, the Nicola and the Similkameen countries? If so, you have listened to the call of the Skookum Chuck, as the Chinook speakers call the rollicking, tumbling streams that sing their way through the canyons with a music so dulcet, so insistent, that for many moons the echo of it lingers in your listening ears, and you will, through all the years to come, hear the voices of those mountain rivers calling you to return.
But the most haunting of all the melodies
is the warbling laughter of the Tulameen; its delicate note is far more powerful, more farreaching than the throaty thunders of Niagara. That is why the Indians of the Nicola country still cling to their old-time story that the Tulameen carries the spirit of a young girl enmeshed in the wonders of its winding course; a spirit that can never free itself from the canyons, to rise above the heights and follow its fellows to the Happy Hunting Grounds, but which is contented to entwine its laughter, its sobs, its lonely whispers, its still lonelier call for companionship, with the wild music of the waters that sing forever beneath the western stars.
As your horses plod up and up the almost perpendicular trail that leads out of the Nicola Valley to the summit, a paradise of beauty outspreads at your feet; the color is indescribable in words, the atmosphere thrills you. Youth and the pulse of rioting blood are yours again, until, as you near the heights, you become strangely calmed by the voiceless silence
It was in one of the terrible battles that raged between the valley tribes before the white man's footprints were seen along these
But on the older man's side were experience and two other wary, strategic brains to help him, while on the younger was but the advantage of splendid youth and unconquerable persistence. But at every pitched battle, at every skirmish, at every single-handed conflict the younger man gained little by little, the older man lost step by step. The experience of age was gradually but inevitably giving way to the strength and enthusiasm of youth. Then one day they met face to face and alone — the old war-scarred chief, the young battle-inspired brave. It was an unequal combat, and at the close of a brief but violent struggle the younger had brought the older to his knees. Standing over him with up-poised knife the Tulameen brave laughed sneeringly, and said:
"Would you, my enemy, have this victory as your own? If so, I give it to you; but in return for my submission I demand of you -your daughter."
For an instant the old chief looked in wonderment at his conqueror; he thought of his daughter only as a child who played about the forest trails or sat obediently beside her mother in the lodge, stitching her little moccasins or weaving her little baskets.
"My daughter!" he answered sternly. "My daughter — who is barely out of her own cradle basket — give her to you, whose hands are blood-dyed with the killing of a score of my tribe? You ask for this thing?"
"I do not ask it," replied the young brave. "I demand it; I have seen the girl and I shall have her."
The old chief sprang to his feet and spat out his refusal. "Keep your victory, and I keep my girl-child," though he knew he was not only defying his enemy, but defying death as well.
The Tulameen laughed lightly, easily. "I shall not kill the sire of my wife," he taunted. "One more battle must we have, but your girl-child will come to me."
Then he took his victorious way up the trail, while the old chief walked with slow and springless step down into the canyon.
The next morning the chief's daughter was loitering along the heights, listening to the singing river, and sometimes leaning over the precipice to watch its curling eddies and dancing waterfalls. Suddenly she heard a slight rustle, as though some passing bird's wing had clipt the air. Then at her feet there fell a slender, delicately shaped arrow. It fell with spent force, and her Indian woodcraft told her it had been shot to her, not at her. She started like a wild animal. Then her quick eye caught the outline of a handsome, erect figure that stood on the heights across the river. She did not know him as her father's enemy. She only saw him to be young, stalwart and of extraordinary, manly beauty. The spirit of youth and of a certain savage coquetry awoke within her. Quickly she fitted one of her own dainty arrows to the bow string and sent it winging across the narrow canyon; it fell, spent, at his feet, and he knew she had shot it to him, not at him.
Next morning, woman-like, she crept noiselessly to the brink of the heights. Would she see him again — that handsome brave? Would he speed another arrow to her? She had not yet emerged from the tangle of forest before it fell, its faint-winged flight heralding its
The following morning before leaving the ledge she fastened the tassel of ermine tails in her straight, black hair. Would he see them? But no arrow fell at her feet that day, but a clearer message was there on the brink of the precipice. He himself awaited her coming -he who had never left her thoughts since that first arrow came to her from his bow-string. His eyes burned with warm fires, as she approached, but his lips said simply: "I have crossed the Tulameen River." Together they stood, side by side, and looked down at the depths before them, watching in silence the little torrent rollicking and roystering over its boulders and crags.
"That is my country," he said, looking across the river. "This is the country of your father, and of your brothers; they are my enemies. I return to my own shore tonight. Will you come with me?"
She looked up into his handsome young face. So this was her father's foe — the dreaded Tulameen!
"Will you come?" he repeated.
"I will come," she whispered.
It was in the dark of the moon and through the kindly night he led her far up the rocky shores to the narrow belt of quiet waters, where they crossed in silence into his own country. A week, a month, a long golden summer, slipped by, but the insulted old chief and his enraged sons failed to find her.
Then one morning as the lovers walked together on the heights above the far upper reaches of the river, even the ever-watchful eyes of the Tulameen failed to detect the lurking enemy. Across the narrow canyon crouched and crept the two outwitted brothers of the girl-wife at his side; their arrows were on their bow-strings, their hearts on fire with hatred and vengeance. Like two evilwinged birds of prey those arrows sped across the laughing river, but before they found their
It was many a moon before his avenging hand succeeded in slaying the old chief and those two hated sons of his. But when this was finally done the handsome young Tulameen left his people, his tribe, his country, and went into the far north. "For," he said, as he sang his farewell war song, "my heart lies dead in the Tulameen River."
* * * * *
But the spirit of his girl-wife still sings through the canyon, its song blending with the music of that sweetest-voiced river in all the great valleys of the Dry Belt. That is why this laughter, the sobbing murmur of the beautiful Tulameen will haunt for evermore the ear that has once listened to its song.
Legends of Vancouver | ||