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