I have read many historians on this event, but to hear the Squamish
version was a novel and absorbing thing. "Yes?" I said--my usual
"leading" word to lure him into channels of tradition.

"Yes," he affirmed. Then, still in a half-whisper, he proceeded to
tell me that it all happened through the agency of a single joint
from the vertebra of a sea-serpent.

In telling me the story of Brockton Point and the valiant boy
who killed the monster, he dwelt lightly on the fact that all
people who approach the vicinity of the creature are palsied,
both mentally and physically--bewitched, in fact--so that their
bones become disjointed and their brains incapable; but to-day he
elaborated upon this peculiarity until I harked back to the boy
of Brockton Point and asked how it was that his body and brain
escaped this affliction.

"He was all good, and had no greed," he replied. "He was proof
against all bad things."

I nodded understandingly, and he proceeded to tell me that all
successful Indian fighters and warriors carried somewhere about
their person a joint of a sea-serpent's vertebra; that the
medicine-men threw "the power" about them so that they were not
personally affected by this little "charm," but that immediately
they approached an enemy the "charm" worked disaster, and victory
was assured to the fortunate possessor of the talisman. There was
one particularly effective joint that had been treasured and
carried by the warriors of a great Squamish family for a century.
These warriors had conquered every foe they encountered, until