[Illustration: THE LONE INDIAN]


INDIAN LEGENDS OF VANCOUVER ISLAND

TEXT BY ALFRED CARMICHAEL

ILLUSTRATED BY J. SEMEYN



BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION


The unsophisticated aboriginal of British Columbia is almost a memory
of the past. He leaves no permanent monument, no ruins of former
greatness. His original habitation has long given place to the frame
house of sawn timber, and with the exception of the carvings in black
slate made by the Hydah Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands, and
the stone hammers, spear and arrow points, fashioned in the days
before the coming of the white man, the mementos of his sojourn in
British Columbia are only relics in wood, bark or reeds.

In the Alberni District of Vancouver Island there are two tribes
of Indians, the Seshaht and the Opitchesaht. During the winter
season the Seshahts live in a village which occupies a beautiful
and commanding site on the west bank of the Somass River.

Some thirty years ago when I first knew the Seshahts, they still
celebrated the great Lokwana dance or wolf ritual on the occasion