LEGENDS OF VANCOUVER

  
   

  

point towards it. “You know the story?” he
asked. I shook my head (experience had
taught me his love of silent replies, his moods
of legend-telling). For a time we paddled
slowly; the rock detached itself from its back-
ground of forest and shore, and it stood forth
like a sentine1—erect, enduring, eternal.

“Do you think it stands straight—like a
man?” he asked.

“Yes, like some noble-spirited, upright war-
rior,” I replied.

“It is a man,” he said, “and a warrior man,
too; a man who fought for everything that
was noble and upright.”

“What do you regard as everything that is
noble and upright, Chief?” I asked, curious as E
to his ideas. I shall not forget the reply: it ‘
was but two words—astounding, amazing
words. He said simply:

"‘Clean fatherhood.”

Through my mind raced tumultuous recol-
lections of numberless articles in yet number-
less magazines, all dealing with the recent
“fad” of motherhood, but I had to hear from
the lips of a Squamish Indian Chief the only 1""
treatise on the nobility of “clean fatherhood” "
that I have yet unearthed. And this treatise
has been an Indian legend for centuries; and
lest they forget how all-important those two
little words must ever be, Siwash Rock stands

 
    
      
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 

 

IO