CHAPTER XLI

LEGEND OF THE CRUCIFIXION

The Siwash have a legendary theory and story of the crucifixion. Hezekial Butterworth picked it up while on one of his vacation jaunts to the west, and tells it very prettily, though it has been told by a score of writers and is one of the first to come to the knowledge of the white man:

Long, long ago, say the Siwashes, in the splendid sunsets of the Whulge, or Puget Sea, there came a canoe of copper sailing, sailing. The painted forest lords and feathered maidens saw it from the bluffs—in the sunrise at times, or in the moonsets, but ever in the red sunsets, sailing, sailing. The gleam of copper in the red sunset is more beautiful than gold; and ever and anon on the blue wave was seen the burnished gleam of the copper canoe. On it came, and the solitary voyager in the copper canoe landed at last on the Whulge, under the crystal dome of Mount Rainier, and he shadowed among the cool firs of the headlands there the boat that flashed out the rays of sunset light.

He called together the tribes. They came in canoes from everywhere. He began to teach and preach. “I come among you as a preacher of righteousness,” he said, or thoughts like these. “All that men can possess in this world, or any other, is righteousness. If a man have that, he is rich, though he be poor, and his soul shall rise, rise, rise, and live forever.

“Oh Siwashes,” he preached, “the unseen power that thinks and causes you to act is the soul. It does not die when the breath vanishes. It goes away with the unseen life and inhabits the life unseen. You have never seen the soul, or life, but death is only the beginning of a longer life, and the soul with righteous longings shall be happy forever.

“But war is wrong—the spear, the arrow, and the spilling of human blood. Man may not kill his brother. The soul was meant for peace.”

He preached these or like doctrines, a beautiful gospel, like the Sermon on the Mount.

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.