The Mountain that was 'God' / Being a Little Book About the Great Peak Which the Indians Named 'Tacoma' but Which is Officially Called 'Rainier'

by John H. Williams

The Marmot, whose shrill whistle is often heard among the crags.

Stolid and uninspired as he seemed to the whites, the Indian of the Sound was not without his touch of poetry. He had that imaginative curiosity which marked the native American everywhere. He was ever peering into the causes of things, and seeing the supernatural in the world around him.[1]

View from Beljica, showing the deeply indented west side of the Mountain. Beginning at extreme right, the glaciers are, successively: Kautz, South Tahoma, North Tahoma and Puyallup. In the left foreground is the canyon of Tahoma Fork of the Nisqually, which is fed by the Tahoma glaciers.

Mountain Pine, one of the last outposts of the forest below the line of eternal snow.
Copyright, 1897, By E. S. Curtis.

To the great Snow Mountain the Indians made frequent pilgrimages, for they thought this king of the primeval wild a divinity to be reckoned with. They dreaded its anger, seen in the storms about its head, the thunder of its avalanches, and the volcanic flashes of which their traditions told. They courted its favor, symbolized in the wild flowers that bloomed on its slope, and the tall grass that fed the mowich, or deer.