The warlike tribes rejected the word. They nailed the Saviour who came gleaming over the violet sea in the copper canoe, to a tree, and he died there. They took down his body, but, wonder of wonders! it rose from the dead, and appeared to all the tribes, and the risen Saviour preached the same doctrine of righteousness and immortality as before. The legend may have been derived from the preaching of some forest priest in some distant place, for the Catholic missionaries were on the coast of California before 1700.
Picturesque and profoundly romantic and imaginative is the Siwash legend of the two grand old mountains, Rainier and Hood, one in Washington, one in Oregon, with the mighty Columbia rolling between. It is the legend of a stupendous battle royal, between mighty monarchs, and is as well the sequel to the cascades and rocks that break the broad current of the noble stream. The foundation for the legend is probably due to the fact that within the limits of the Indian tradition or history of the past, Mt. Rainier was in active eruption.
Long ago, almost beyond the time when Indian tradition and legend extend the spirits of the mountains fought a long and bloody battle. Rocks were hurled from the summits at the heads of the rival sentinels of the cascades and a great commotion was caused throughout all the land. The Siwash of the Sound say their tradition teaches them that it was the evil and unruly spirits on Mt. Hood that brought about the great battle. They would not keep still but were bent on raising mischief, and they did it. When the great spirits of Rainier could not stand it any longer and could not sleep, they rose in rebellion with a mighty noise that shook the mountains and the sea and began a war on the noisy demons of Mt. Hood. Great rocks were picked up and hurled back and forth, some so heavy that they could not be thrown the great distance and they fell short landing in the mighty Columbia with a great splash and making the earth tremble from their violence. This quieted the spirits of Mt. Hood, since which they have had peace; but the waters were dammed up and the cascades were formed.
CHAPTER XLII
ROMANCE IN REAL LIFE
A long time ago an English whaling bark, after many months of hardship on the voyage, was caught in a heavy gale off Vancouver island coast. After a gallant effort to save the ship and ride out the storm, the captain and crew took to the life-boat, and though a long way from land and with the tempest howling about them, struck bravely out for safety. Nothing was ever heard or seen of the sinking ship. But one of the brave crew reached land to live to tell the awful tale of shipwreck and death which engulfed his companions. It was while trying to make land through the surf of Queen Charlotte sound, that the captain and crew went down. The empty and battered boat was cast upon the shore and with it one half-drowned sailor who, after a time was able to rise from the sand and stagger about.
It was during the stormy winter of 1843, a time long antedating the first general appearance of the settlers. In all the northwest there was scarcely a clearing or hamlet. An occasional white-winged sail dotted the water horizon or came to anchor in some quiet bay or harbor of the Straits of Fuca, or the still less frequented waters of Queen Charlotte sound. Ever and anon a Hudsons Bay company’s trapper or voyager emerged from the bush upon the shore to remain a few days and then would be gone again prosecuting his search after skins. That was all there was to the civilization of the inhospitable northwest. The land all about belonged to the simple children of nature the Indian, the beaver and the bear. Such was the situation when the hero of our story was thrown almost drowned upon the beach of Queen Charlotte sound. Scarcely had the half-drowned mariner reached dry land than he was set upon by a party of Indians and taken prisoner. He was escorted to the village of the head chief and the usual council of war held by the braves to determine his fate. The prisoner knew no word of the Chinook jargon or the King George Indian tongue and could not gain the slightest inkling of the drift of the pow-wow. For a time he felt that he was reserved for a fate ten times worse than death at sea, and he cursed fate that he was not permitted to go down with his companions and leave his bones to whiten and bleach in the cavernous depths of old ocean. But he was not to be burned at the stake, nor killed and eaten. The Indians at the close of their council made no demonstration or dangerous move, and he soon learned that he was to remain a prisoner and slave. His English boat was pulled upon the beach and left to rot away. Time passed on and days run into months and months swelled into years. The sailor soon fell into the style of living of the natives and was adopted into the tribe, learned their strange tongue and customs, sat in their councils, went with them on their long canoe voyages to the south and towards the north, followed them in their hunts for the bear, beaver and elk; engaged in their wars with their enemies, dressed in their simple style, and was in every way save by blood an Indian.
For five long years the prisoner lived with his captors on the shores of Queen Charlotte sound, but there came a time when savage life palled and the longing to see the face of a white man and speak his natural language grew too strong to be shaken off. All the time he had lived with the Indians he had not seen a white person. So in 1848 the sailor whose true name was William Jarman, sought an opportunity to escape from the village of his adopted people. He headed his canoe to the south and quickly and quietly paddled away toward the waters of Puget Sound, hoping to fall in with some trapper on the beach, or mayhap catch a sail in the waters towards which he was going. Without mishap he got as far south as Point Wilson, now Point Wilson light house, near Port Townsend, but had the misfortune here to be overtaken by the very people with whom he had lived so long. Broken and bewildered by his recapture, poor Jarman was escorted back to the village in triumphant glee by his swarthy friends, now turned to foes. The policy of the Indians again proved to be to keep him among them as an unwilling prisoner and for four years more Jarman remained a captive and prisoner. Afraid that he would again attempt to escape the Indians took him to Queen Charlotte island, and he was not permitted to return to the main land. Notwithstanding the close surveillance kept upon him the sailor at the end of four years, a second time managed to get away and this time made good his escape. By the time he reached the Sound on his second escape many settlers had arrived and Jarman found company and protection. Such was his wild and uncouth appearance that his later friends gave him the sobriquet of “Blanket Bill.” He took up his residence on the Sound, lived at Seattle, Port Townsend and Whatcom, or about the settlements which as time passed on grew to those towns. Blanket Bill after his nine years of wonderful life among the savages never could quite get over the habits and peculiarities he had learned, and consequently he became a notorious character among the white settlers on the Sound. He was living up to a very short time ago somewhere in the bounds of Whatcom county.