A LEGEND OF TACOMA.
Theodore Winthrop, in his own brilliant way, tells a quaint legend of Tacoma, as related to him by a frowsy Siwash at Nisqually. "Tamanous," among the native Indians of this section, is a vague and half-personified type of the unknown and mysterious forces of Nature. There is the one all-pervading Tamanous, but there are a thousand emanations, each one a tamanous with a small "t." Each Indian has his special tamanous, who thus becomes "the guide, philosopher, and friend" of every Siwash. The tamanous, or totem, types himself as a salmon, a beaver, an elk, a canoe, a fir-tree, and so on indefinitely. In some of its features this legend resembles strongly the immortal story of Rip Van Winkle; it may prove interesting as a study in folk-lore.
"Avarice, O, Boston tyee!" quoth the Siwash, studying me with dusky eyes, "is a mighty passion. Know you that our first circulating medium was shells, a small perforated shell not unlike a very opaque quill toothpick, tapering from the middle, and cut square at both ends. We string it in many strands and hang it around the neck of one we love—namely, each man his own neck. And with this we buy what our hearts desire. Hiaqua, we call it, and he who has most hiaqua is wisest and best of all the dwellers on the Sound.
"Now, in old times there dwelt here an old man, a mighty hunter and fisherman. And he worshipped hiaqua. And always this old man thought deeply and communed with his wisdom, and while he waited for elk or salmon he took advice within himself from his demon—he talked with tamanous. And always his question was, 'How may I put hiaqua in my purse?' But never had Tamanous revealed to him the secret. There loomed Tacoma, so white and glittering that it seemed to stare at him very terribly and mockingly, and to know of his shameful avarice, and how it led him to take from starving women their cherished lip and nose jewels of hiaqua, and give them in return tough scraps of dried elk-meat and salmon. His own peculiar tamanous was the elk. One day he was hunting on the sides of Tacoma, and in that serene silence his tamanous began to talk to his soul. 'Listen!' said tamanous—and then the great secret of untold wealth was revealed to him. He went home and made his preparations, told his old, ill-treated squaw he was going for a long hunt, and started off at eventide. The next night he camped just below the snows of Tacoma, but sunrise and he struck the summit together, for there, tamanous had revealed to him, was hiaqua—hiaqua that should make him the greatest and richest of his tribe. He looked down and saw a hollow covered with snow, save at the centre, where a black lake lay deep in a well of purple rock, and at one end of the lake were three large stones or monuments. Down into the crater sprang the miser, and the morning sunshine followed him. He found the first stone shaped like a salmon head; the second like a kamas root, and the third, to his great joy, was the carven image of an elk's head. This was his own tamanous, and right joyous was he at the omen, so taking his elk-horn pick he began to dig right sturdily at the foot of the monument. At the sound of the very first blow he made, thirteen gigantic otters came out of the black lake and, sitting in a circle, watched him. And at every thirteenth blow they tapped the ground with their tails in concert The miser heeded them not, but labored lustily for hours. At last, overturning a thin scale of rock, he found a square cavity filled to the brim with hiaqua.
"He was a millionaire.
"The otters retired to a respectful distance, recognizing him as a favorite of Tamanous.
"He reveled in the treasure, exulting. Deep as he could plunge his arm, there was still more hiaqua below. It was strung upon elk sinews, fifty shells on a string. But he saw the noon was passed, so he prepared to depart. He loaded himself with countless strings of hiaqua, by fifties and hundreds, so that he could scarcely stagger along. Not a string did he hang on the tamanous of the elk, or the salmon, or the kamas—not one—but turned eagerly toward his long descent. At once all the otters plunged back into the lake and began to beat the waters with their tails; a thick, black mist began to rise threateningly. Terrible are the storms in the mountains—and Tamanous was in this one. Instantly the fierce whirlwind overtook the miser. He was thrown down and flung over icy banks, but he clung to his precious burden. Utter night was around him, and in every crash and thunder of the gale was a growing undertone which he well knew to be the voice of Tamanous. Floating upon this undertone were sharper tamanous voices, shouting and screaming, always sneeringly, 'Ha, ha, hiaqua!—ha, ha, ha!' Whenever the miser attempted to continue his descent the whirlwind caught him and tossed him hither and thither, flinging him into a pinching crevice, burying him to the eyes in a snow drift, throwing him on jagged boulders, or lacerating him on sharp lava jaws. But he held fast to his hiaqua. The blackness grew ever deeper and more crowded with perdition; the din more impish, demoniac, and devilish; the laughter more appalling; and the miser more and more exhausted with vain buffeting. He at last thought to propitiate exasperated Tamanous, and threw away a string of hiaqua. But the storm was renewed blacker, louder, crueler than before. String by string he parted with his treasure, until at the last, sorely wounded, terrified, and weak, with a despairing cry, he cast from him the last vestige of wealth, and sank down insensible.
"It seemed a long slumber to him, but at last he woke. He was upon the very spot whence he started at morning. He felt hungry, and made a hearty breakfast of the chestnut-like bulbs of the kamas root, and took a smoke. Reflecting on the events of yesterday, he became aware of an odd change in his condition. He was not bruised and wounded, as he expected, but very stiff only, and his joints creaked like the creak of a lazy paddle on the rim of a canoe. His hair was matted and reached a yard down his back. 'Tamanous,' thought the old man. But chiefly he was conscious of a mental change. He was calm and content. Hiaqua and wealth seemed to have lost their charm for him. Tacoma, shining like gold and silver and precious stones of gayest lustre, seemed a benign comrade and friend. All the outer world was cheerful, and he thought he had never wakened to a fresher morning. He rose and started on his downward way, but the woods seemed strangely transformed since yesterday; just before sunset he came to the prairie where his lodge used to be; he saw an old squaw near the door crooning a song; she was decked with many strings of hiaqua and costly beads. It was his wife; and she told him he had been gone many, many years—she could not tell how many; that she had remained faithful and constant to him, and distracted her mind from the bitterness of sorrow by trading in kamas and magic herbs, and had thus acquired a genteel competence. But little cared the sage for such things; he, was rejoiced to be at home and at peace, and near his own early gains of hiaqua and treasure buried in a place of security. He imparted whatever he possessed—material treasures or stores of wisdom and experience—freely to all the land. Every dweller came to him for advice how to spear the salmon, chase the elk, or propitiate Tamanous. He became the great medicine man of the Siwashes and a benefactor to his tribe and race. Within a year after he came down from his long nap on the side of Tacoma, a child, my father, was born to him. The sage lived many years, revered and beloved, and on his death-bed told this history to my father as a lesson and a warning. My father dying, told it to me. But I, alas! have no son; I grow old, and lest this wisdom perish from the earth, and Tamanous be again obliged to interpose against avarice, I tell the tale to thee, O Boston tyee. Mayst thou and thy nation not disdain this lesson of an earlier age, but profit by it and be wise!"
So far the Siwash recounted his legend without the palisades of Fort Nisqually, and motioning, in expressive pantomime, at the close, that he was dry with big talk and would gladly "wet his whistle."
The town of Tacoma contains about 15,000 inhabitants, and is in a highly prosperous condition. From here one may start on the grand Alaskan tour, winding up through all the wonders of sound and strait, bay and ocean, to the far North summerland—a trip of most entrancing interest. The return from Tacoma to Portland may be made by either rail or boat.
So much has already been said in preceding pages about Puget Sound that it would seem the subject might be somewhat overdone. But it still remains to be said that justice can never be done to the scenic glories of this beautiful inland sea. The views from different points, and from almost every point on the Sound, are of sublime grandeur. On the east are the Cascade Mountains, ranging from 5,000 to 14,444 feet in height, Mount Rainier for Tacoma, (as it is also called) being of the latter altitude, and only third in height of the mountains of the United States. On the west are the Olympic Mountains, the highest peaks of which reach up to 8,000 feet. Both ranges, brilliantly snow-crowned, are within view at the same time from various points, and the scenery in its entirety, with its continual changefulness and features of sublimity, can not be excelled. Strangers and travelers who have visited every part of the world never leave the deck of the steamers while going through the waters of the Sound country. In noting a single feature, Mount Rainier, Senator George F. Edmunds wrote as follows: "I have been through the Swiss mountains, and am compelled to own that there is no comparison between the finest effects exhibited there and what is seen in approaching this grand and isolated mountain. I would be willing to go 500 miles again to see that scene. The Continent is yet in ignorance of what will be one of the grandest show places, as well as sanitariums. If Switzerland is rightly called the play-ground of Europe, I am satisfied that around the base of Mt. Rainier will become a prominent place of resort, not for America only, but for the world besides, with thousands of sites for building purposes that are nowhere excelled for the grandeur of the view that can be obtained from them, with topographical features that would make the most perfect system of drainage both possible and easy, and with a most agreeable and health-giving climate."
A more enthusiastic writer says: "Puget Sound scenery is the grandest scenery in the world. One has here in combination the sublimity of Switzerland, the picturesqueness of the Rhine, the rugged beauty of Norway, the breezy variety of the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence, or the Hebrides of the North Sea, the soft, rich-toned skies of Italy, the pastoral landscape of England, with velvet meadows and magnificent groves, massed with floral bloom, and the blending tints and bold color of the New England Indian summer. Features with which nothing within the vision of another city can be placed in comparison are the Olympic range of mountains in front of Seattle, and the sublime snow peaks of the Rainier, Baker, Adams, and St. Helens, with their glaciers and robes of eternal white, and the great falls of the Snoqualmie, 280 feet high, near by."
The geography and topography of this sheet are alone a wonder and a study. Glance upon the map. The elements of earth and water seem to have struggled for dominion one over the other. The Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Gulf of Georgia to the south narrow into Admiralty Inlet; the inlet penetrates the very heart of the Territory, cutting the land into most grotesque shapes, circling and twisting into a hundred minor inlets, into which flow a hundred rivers, fed in their turn by myriads of smaller creeks and bayous—a veritable network of lakes, streams, peninsulas, and islands which, with the mountain ranges backing the landscapes on either hand, can not fail to be picturesque in the extreme. Here on the placid bosom of this inland sea, the pleasure seeker can enjoy all the delights and exhilarating influences of ocean travel without its inconveniences. No sea sickness, no proneness to reflect on "to be or not to be," but, amid the bracing breezes, the steady, easy glide of the commodious steamer over pleasant waters, takes him through scenes as fair as the poet's brightest dreams. This "Mediterranean of the Pacific" throughout its length and breadth is adorned with heavily-wooded and fantastically-formed islands. The giant firs are the tallest and straightest in the world. Here the "Great Eastern" came for her masts, and here thousands of ships obtain their spars yearly.
To repeat, the scenery is indeed something unsurpassed. A ride over these placid waters, in and out, around rocky headlands, among woody mountains, along beautiful beaches and graceful tongues of velvety meadows—all 'neath the shadows of towering, snow-clad peaks, is a delight worth days of travel to experience. It enraptures the artist and enthuses even ordinarily prosy folks. There is no single feature wanting to make of such places as Tacoma, Seattle, and Port Townsend, the most delightful and agreeable watering places in the world. Surrounded by magnificent and picturesque scenery, with beautiful drives and lovely bays for yachting purposes, with splendid fishing and sport of every description to be had, with a climate that would charm a misanthrope, why should they not become the favorite resorts on the Great West Coast? These facts led to the building of the magnificent Hotel Tacoma, at a cost of a quarter of a million dollars. Other such caravansaries will follow, and in time Puget Sound will be famous the world over for its incomparable attractions for the health and pleasure seeker.
The average traveler has but a faint idea of the wonderful resources of this grand empire. Puget Sound has about 1,800 miles of shore line, and all along this long stretch is one vast and almost unbroken forest of enormous trees. The forests are so vast that, although the saw-mills have been ripping 500,000,000 feet of lumber out of them every year for the past ten years, the spaces made by these inroads seem no more than garden patches. An official estimate places the amount of standing timber in that area at 500,000,000,000 feet, or a thousand years' supply, even at the enormous rate the timber is now being felled and sawed.
In the vicinity of Olympia, the capital of Washington, are a number of popular resorts for sportsmen and campers—beautiful lakes filled with voracious trout, and streams alive with the speckled mountain beauties. The forests abound in bear and deer, while grouse, pheasants, quail, and water-fowl afford fine sport to the hunter of small game.