The age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1897-1902, 1897-08-22
A SON
OF YEHL
Written for the Age-Herald.

Written for the Age-Herald.
BY calendar clocks it was summer and
| MONDAY in that far northern cline,
where spring is eternal. Bettingham
Bay shimmered refulgent under "a yer-
teal sun that seemingly kept all his
splendor for the valleys on this, all his
heat for the plains on the other snow
covered side of the lordly Cascades.
Blue were the skies and blue were the
waters that mirrored their beauty, they
could enhance not a bit, along with the
saw mills and shanties, the steeples and
spires of Whatcome and Fairhaven, they
could change and could tint until painter
and poet would despair as they gazed
of art and of singing.
Seattle was neither painter nor poet
perhaps there were none in his tribe;
not one of the children of Yehl that could
carve or could sing, or that thought or
that cared for art or for rhyme that
formed aught besides their totem, the
Raven. and that told of his deeds.
1t was not of the hues of the sea or the
sky, nor yet of his tatem, nor the bear
he had slain and whose death had made
him a brave and a hero-a man that
could lift up his voice at night by the
:,
without boasting, that Seattle was
dreaming as he lay in his hyda, rocked by
the waves, close to the shore of Lummi
his beautiful island. Accidents, these of
the wind and the water; of his coming
one day-dawn to Lummi: of thickets too
dense for retreat, when, unwilling, he
came face to face with the bear in his
hunting. Honor the last, that brought
to his lodge neither whale-meat in seas
on, nor the royal Tyee nor the Keta; no
blankets of red and of yellow, no balls
for his gun, no lines for hts fishing, willis
alas! it had puffed him with pride and
undone him. But a short moon had pass
ed since his fall and from richest, he
now of his tribe was the pauper. In an
hour of evil he had harked to the tales
told by the old men of braves, long since
with their fathers, who thought nothing
was good but in giving; and he had lis
| tened to the whispering Kloochmen, say
| ing under their hoods to each other:
"Wait. there is Seattle; some day he, too,
| will do lil1ewise!''
| All this was sweet to the ear, but still
might have passed like the tides that
| race out to the ocean, full of music to
| those who are safe in their lodges, whose
canoes are drawn high in the single;
| for Seattle was wise and was wary had
| not once his brain been bedazed by the
| wine of the pale-face; had he not taken
| the cup that brays with the draining and
| must needs add a pottatch to his record
of horror.
Like the gulls that in myraids gather
in the wake of ships that go seward, so
gathered the Lummi, the bounty to lap
| of this later day Tmon. For more than
| day in his lodge there was riot and
| feasting, and when the last bone had
| been thrown to the ours, Seattle spread
| out his store of household belongings
| all the wealth he had gained or his faith
ers had left him, and besought that each
| guest should take something and forget
| who bestowed it.
When at day-dawn all had returned to
| their lodges, Seattle, the bear-slayer,
| Seattle the rich man, the drunken giver
| of good things, still had his totem, his
birth right, and a sun riven hyda that
no man begrudged him = hese were al,
! that remained from his potatch, and it
| was this that had turned his soul into
darkness, that held him enchanted in
| strong bonds of anguish there, in his
| drifting canoe at war with the beautiful
world all around him.
That day word had been brought to the
| Lummi that hopes were ripe for the