"
Turning from Miss Johnson's verse to her prose, there is ample
evidence that, had she applied herself, she would have taken high
rank as a writer of fiction. Her "Legends of Vancouver" is a
remarkable book, in which she relates a number of Coast-Indian
myths and traditions with unerring insight and literary skill.
These legends had a main source in the person of the famous old
Chief, Capilano, who, for the first time, revealed them to her in
Chinook, or in broken English, and, as reproduced in her rich and
harmonious prose, belong emphatically to what has been called "The
literature of power." Bound together, so to speak, in the retentive
memory of the old Chief, they are authentic legends of his people,
and true to the Indian nature. But we find in them, also, something
that transcends history. Indefinable forms, earthly and unearthly,
pass before us in mystical procession, in a world beyond ordinary
conception, in which nothing seems impossible.
The origin of the Indian's myths, East or West, cannot be traced,
and must ever remain a mystery. But, from his immemorial ceremonies
and intense conservatism, we may reasonably infer that many of
them have been handed down from father to son, unchanged, from
the prehistoric past to the present day; a past contemporary,
perhaps, with the mastodon, but certainly far back in the mists of
antiquity.
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