or whether Napoleon's
almost magical fighting career attracted the Indian mind to the
exclusion of lesser warriors, I have never yet decided. But the
fact remains that the Indians of our generation are not as familiar
with Bonaparte's name as were their fathers and grandfathers,
so either the predominance of English-speaking settlers or the
thinning of their ancient war-loving blood by modern civilization
and peaceful times must, one or the other, account for the younger
Indian's ignorance of the Emperor of the French.

In telling me the legend of "The Lost Talisman," my good tillicum,
the late Chief Capilano, began the story with the almost amazing
question, Had I ever heard of Napoleon Bonaparte? It was some
moments before I just caught the name, for his English, always
quaint and beautiful, was at times a little halting; but when he
said, by way of explanation, "You know big fighter, Frenchman.
The English they beat him in big battle," I grasped immediately
of whom he spoke.

"What do you know of him?" I asked.

His voice lowered, almost as if he spoke a state secret. "I know
how it is that English they beat him."

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 assur