d Stevens, son of the first governor of
Washington, who had distinguished himself in the Civil War, and was
then living at Olympia as a Federal revenue officer. Each of these
pioneers on the summit has published an interesting account of how
they got there, General Stevens in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for
November, 1876, and Mr. Van Trump in the second volume of _Mazama_. In
Stevens's article, "The Ascent of Takhoma," his acquaintance with the
Indians of the early territorial period, gives weight to this note:

Tak-ho-ma or Ta-ho-ma among the Yakimas, Klickitats, Puyallups,
Nisquallys and allied tribes is the generic term for mountain,
used precisely as we use the word "Mount," as Takhoma Wynatchie,
or Mount Wynatchie. But they all designate Rainier simply as
Takhoma, or The Mountain, just as the mountain men used to call
it "Old He."

Sluiskin, an Indian celebrity whom they employed as a guide, led the
young men the longest and hardest way, taking them over the Tatoosh
mountains instead of directly up the Nisqually and Paradise canyons.
From the summit of that range, they at last looked across the Paradise
valley, and beheld the great peak "directly in front, filling up the
whole view with an indescribable aspect of magnitude {p.121} and
grandeur." Below them lay "long green ridges projected from the snow
belt, with deep valleys between, each at its upper end forming the bed
of a glacier."

[Illustration: The Mountaineers building trail on the lateral moraine
of Carbon Glacier. Without such trails, the "tenderfoot" would fare
badly.]

Descending from the Tatoosh, the explorers camped near a waterfall
which they named Sluiskin Falls, in honor of their guide. Sluiskin now
endeavored, in a long oration, to dissuade them from their folly.
Avalanches and winds, he said, would sweep them from the peak, and
even if they should reach the summit, the awful being dwelling there
would surely punish their sacrilege. Finding his oratory vain, he
chanted a dismal dirge till late in the night, and next morning took
solemn leave of them.

[Illustration: The Mountaineers lunching in a crevasse on White
Glacier, 13,000 feet above the sea, on their ascent in 1909. Even
Little Tahoma, on the left, is far below.]

Stevens describes their ascent by the now familiar path, over Cowlitz
Cleaver and past Gibraltar. From the top of that "vast, square rock
embedded in the side of the Mountain," they turned west