THE SIWASH ROCK

Unique, and so distinct from its surroundings as to suggest rather the handicraft of man than a whim of Nature, it looms up at the entrance to the Narrows, a symmetrical column of solid grey stone.  There are no similar formations within the range of vision, or indeed within many a day’s paddle up and down the coast.  Amongst all the wonders, the natural beauties that encircle Vancouver, the marvels of mountains, shaped into crouching lions and brooding beavers, the yawning canyons, the stupendous forest firs and cedars, Siwash Rock stands as distinct, as individual, as if dropped from another sphere.

I saw it first in the slanting light of a redly setting August sun; the little tuft of green shrubbery that crests its summit was black against the crimson of sea and sky, and its colossal base of grey stone gleamed like flaming polished granite.

My old tillicum lifted his paddle-blade to point towards it.  “You know the story?” he asked.  I shook my head (experience has taught me his love of silent replies, his moods of legend-telling).  For a time we paddled slowly; the rock detached itself from its background of forest and shore, and it stood forth like a sentinel—­erect, enduring, eternal.

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

“Yes, like some noble-spirited, upright warrior,” 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 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 recollections of numberless articles in yet numberless magazines, all dealing with the recent “fad” of motherhood, but I had to hear from the lip of a Squamish Indian chief the only 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 to remind them, set there by the Deity as a monument to one who kept his own life clean, that cleanliness might be the heritage of the generations to come.

It was “thousands of years ago” (all Indian legends begin in extremely remote times) that a handsome boy chief journeyed in his canoe to the upper coast for the shy little northern girl whom he brought home as his wife.  Boy though he was, the young chief had proved himself to be an excellent warrior, a fearless hunter, and an upright, courageous man among men.  His tribe loved him, his enemies respected him, and the base and mean and cowardly feared him.

The customs and traditions of his ancestors were a positive religion to him, the sayings and the advices of the old people were his creed.  He was conservative in every rite and ritual of his race.  He fought his tribal enemies like the savage that he was.  He sang his war-songs, danced his war-dances, slew his foes, but the little girl-wife from the north he treated with the deference that he gave his own mother, for was she not to be the mother of his warrior son?