George W. Caldwell - The Legends of San Francisco

Published by Good Press, 2021

EAN 4064066181901

Table of Contents

This she told me in the firelight
As I sat beside her campfire,
In a grove of giant redwoods,
On the slope of Tamalpais.
Old she was, and bent and wrinkled,
Lone survivor of the Tamals,
Ancient tribe of Indian people,
Who have left their name and legend
On the mountain they held sacred.
On the ground she sat and brooded,
With a blanket wrapped around her
Sat and gazed into the campfire.
On her bronze and furrowed features,
On her hair of snowy whiteness,
Played the shadows and the firelight.
Long she gazed into the embers,
And I feared I had offended
In the question I had asked her.
Then she spoke in measured accents,
Slowly, with a mournful cadence,
And long intervals of silence.
"You have asked me why my people
Will not climb Mount Tamalpais
Why we hold the mountain sacred.
I am old, and when the Raven
Calls my spirit to the Father,
None will know the ancient story,
Sacred legend of the Tamals.
Therefore, I will tell the story,
I will tell and you shall write it,
Else it will be lost forever;
I will tell it that the paleface
May respect our sacred mountain."
"In the morning of creation
All the world was covered over
With the flood of troubled waters.
Only Beaver and the Turtle
Swam about upon the surface.
Beaver said, 'I'm very weary.'
Turtle said, 'Dive to the bottom.'
Beaver dove and brought up gravel,
Laid it on the back of Turtle;
Dove again and brought a pebble,
Then another and another.
Pebbles grew to rocks and boulders,
As a peak above the waters
Thus was Mount Diablo fashioned.
Beaver sat upon the mountain,
Gazing out across the waters;
Saw a single feather floating;
Feather grew into an Eagle;
Eagle flew and sat by Beaver.
Long they talked about creation,
Counseled, planned, and reconsidered,
Then they moulded clay with tules;
Beaver placed his hair upon it,
Eagle breathed into its nostrils
Thus Coyote was created.
Coyote barked and sat beside them.
Many creatures were created;
Some with hair, and some with feathers;
Some with scales, or shells, or bristles.
Other peaks and mountain ridges
Then appeared above the waters.
Walls of hills were then continued
North and south, to hold the waters
In a mammoth lake, that, filling
All the Sacramento Valley,
Found its outlet to the ocean
Through the Russian River Canyon.
Round the lake the blazing mountains
Spouted lava and hot ashes;
Casting on the troubled waters
Lurid gleams and purple shadows.
By the lake Coyote wandered
Sat and howled, for he was lonely,
Lonely for a Man to tame him
Into Dog as a companion.
Then Coyote mixed dry tules
With wet clay and made a figure.
Sun God came and shone upon it;
Spirit came and blew upon it,
And a Man was thus created.
Sun God made the Moon to guard him,
And she stood before his tepee,
Watching while the Sun was sleeping;
But she loved the Sun and followed
Him into the starry heavens,
Always with her face turned to him.
Still she watched the lonely tepee,
And her heart was touched with pity
For the lonely man within it,
So she made a lovely woman,
Gave her constancy, and sent her
On a moonbeam to his tepee,
As his helpmate and companion.
Man then multiplied, and flourished,
Building villages and lording
Over all the other creatures.
On the sunny eastern margin
Of the Bay of San Francisco,
Grew the village of the Tamals;
Fisher folk they were, and gentle,
Seeking not for wars of conquest;
Fishing in the purple waters
From their boats of bark or rawhide;
Wading in the limpid shallows
Seeking oysters, clams and mussels.
In the course of generations
Piles of shells of many banquets,
With the ashes of their campfires,
Formed a mound upon the bay shore.
Shell Mound Park, the people call it,
And they gather in the shadows
Of the ancient oaks for pleasure,
Roasting clams as in the old days
When the Tamals lived upon it.
Gone are now the limpid shallows;
Gone the oysters and the mussels,
And no more are grassy meadows
Dappled with the spreading oak trees;
For great factories, grim and sordid,
Sprawl in squalid blocks around it,
And the smoke of forge and furnace
Rise from stacks into the heavens.
Paleface men with concave glasses,
Learned in lore of printed pages,
Dig into the mounds and gather
Spear and arrow heads and axes,
Broken weapons and utensils
Made of flint, or bone, or seashell.
To the northward, where great boulders
Lie in tumbled piles and masses,
And a Thousand Oaks are clustered,
And the crags upthrust their fingers
Through the meadows of the uplands,
Was another Indian village,
Ancient stronghold of the Tamals.
In the village on the hillside
Men were hunters, brave and fearless,
Skillful with the bow and arrow,
Artful with the snare and deadfall;
Hunting deer and elk and bison
In the open grassy meadows,
Tracking wolf and mountain lion
To their lairs among the redwoods;
Bearing on their backs the trophies
To their camp when night was falling.
In the village maids and matrons
Dressed the furs and tanned the buckskin,
Dried the venison, and traded
With the Shell Mound folks for salmon,
Mussels, clams and abalones,
Ornaments of bone or seashell,
Weapons chipped from flint or jasper.
From the oaks they gathered acorns,
And beneath the fragrant bay trees
And the heavy blooming buckeyes,
Ground the acorns into flour
To be baked upon the hot-stones.
To this day the smoke of campfires
May be traced in caves, and crannies
Where the overhanging cliffsides
Gives protection from the rainstorms.
If you search among the thickets
Of the low widespreading buckeyes
You will find their ancient mortars
In the bedrock still remaining
Mortar holes ground deep, and polished
By the toil of many women
Pounding, grinding with a pestle
Fashioned from a stream-worn boulder.
Gone are all those ancient people,
Perished now for many ages.
Many oaks have grown and withered,
Many buckeyes bloomed and faded,
Many tribes have fought and conquered,
Lived for many generations,
Then were driven out by others.
Still the mortar holes will linger
As our monuments forever."
Fainter grew the voice, still fainter,
Sinking almost to a whisper,
With a hesitating quaver,
As the picture came before her
Of her disappearing people.
Then I rose and piled more branches
Of the redwood on the campfire,
And the flames and sparks leaped upward,
Lighting up the mournful forest,
Driving back the eerie shadows.
Long she bowed her head in silence,
Then resumed her rhythmic speaking.
In the village lived a maiden,
Fairest of all comely maidens
Ever born among the Tamals;
Fair of face and pure of spirit,
Kind in thought and quick in service
To the young and old and helpless;
Ever eager for her duty,
Ever singing at her labor.
When she sat beneath the buckeyes
Grinding acorns in the mortar,
Humming birds came sipping honey
From the heavy scented blossoms;
Wild birds came and sang their sweetest
Music as they perched above her;
And the Fairies came to greet her
Dressed as Butterflies, and fluttered
Round her head and whispered secrets