Emily Pauline Johnson (1861–1913), known by the literary community as either E. Pauline Johnson or Tekahionwake, was a Canadian poet who often performed her poetry onstage. Her mother was English and her father was a member of the Mohawk tribe, and Johnson considered herself Indian above all else. At the time she began her writing career, most Indigenous writers were men who focused on critical essays about history and politics. She, however, cared more about the creative world of fiction and poetry and how it could be used to showcase the lives of Indigenous peoples. She performed her poetry in Canada, the United States, and even in London, and today her work is viewed as a landmark of Indigenous feminism. “The Legend of the Ice Babies” first appeared in 1911 in Mother’s Magazine.
AS YOU JOURNEY across Canada from east to west, and have been absorbed in the beauty of the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes, the prairies, the Rockies, the Selkirks, and finally the fiercely rugged grandeur of the Frazer River, as you are nearing the rim of the gentle Pacific, you will pass through one of the most fruitful valleys in all the Great Dominion. Orchards and vineyards, gardens and blossoming flowers stretch on every side, and in the misty distance there circles a band of bubbling mountains, and great armies of the giant Douglas firs and cedars that only the Western slope could ever give birth to. Through this valley stretches many a lazy arm of the sea, but there are also to be found several beautiful little fresh-water lakes. One in particular is remarkably lovely. It is small, and the shores so precipitous that winds seldom ruffle its clear blue-green waters. The majestic old forest trees, the mosses, the trailing vines, the ferns and bracken crowd so closely down to the margin that they are mirrored in the lake in all their rich coloring and exquisite design. In looking on this secluded beauty one instinctively feels the almost sanctity of purity that can be found only in the undefiled forest lands. Nature has not been molested, and the desecrating hand of man has not yet profaned it. A happy chance had taken me along the shores of this perfect little gem, molded in its rocky setting, and one day when the Klootchman and I sat together on the sands watching the Pacific as it slept under an autumn sun, I spoke to her of the little fresh-water jewel up in the Chilliwack Valley.
“You have seen it?” she asked with great interest. I nodded.
“I am very glad. We Squamish women love it. The mothers love it most. We call it the Lake of the Ice Babies.”
I remarked on the beauty of the name, and then on its oddity. “For,” I said, “surely it does not freeze there!”
“Yes,” she replied, “it always freezes over at least once in the winter, if only for a day. The lake is so still there is no wind now to keep it open from the frost.”
I caught at the word “now.” “Was there ever a wind there?” I ventured, for one must voice his thoughts delicately if one hopes to extract a tradition from my good old reticent Klootchman.
“Yes, once it used to be very stormy, terrible gales would get imprisoned in that cup of the mountains, and they would sweep round and round, lashing up the waters of the lake like a chained wild animal,” she answered. Then she added that ever-present pitiful remark: “But that was long ago—before the white man came.” It has been the redskin’s cry for more than a century, that melancholy “Before the white man came.”
Presently she picked up a handful of silver sand, and while she trailed it leisurely from palm to palm, threading it between her thin, dark fingers, her voice fell into the sonorous monotone, the half whisper, half chant, in which she loved to relate her quaint stories, while I sat beside her sun-bathed and indolent, and listened to the
“There were two of them, two laughing, toddling little children but just released from the bands of their cradle baskets. Girls, both of them, and cousins, of the same age, happy-hearted and playful, and the treasures of their mothers’ lives. It was a warm, soft day of late autumn, a day like this, when not a leaf stirred, not a wave danced, that the wandering band of Squamish encamped in the bluffs about the little lake, and prepared to stay the night. The men cut branches and built a small lodge. The women gathered firewood and cooked venison and grouse, and the children and babies played about, watching their elders, and sometimes replenishing the camp fires. The evening wore on, and with the twilight came a gentle rising wind, that whispered at first through the pines and cedars like a mother singing very softly to her sleeping child. Then the wind-voice grew louder, it began to speak harshly. The song in it died, and the mighty voices of the trees awoke like the war cry of many tribes in battle. The little lake began to heave and toss, then lash itself into a fury; whirlpools circled, waves rose and foamed and fought each other. The gale was shut within the cup of shores and could not release itself.
“In the stir of fitting the camp for the night, and protecting the frail lodge against destruction, the two girl babies were unnoticed, and hand in hand they wandered with halting childish steps to the brink of the shore. Before them the waves arose and fell, frothed and whirled like some playful wild thing, and their little hands longed to grasp the curling eddies, the long lines of combers and breakers. Laughingly the babies slid down the fern-covered banks, and stepped into the shallow waters at the margin, then wandered out over the surface of the lake, frolicking and playing in the tossing waves and whirlpools, but neither little body sank. The small feet skimmed the angry waters like feathers dropped from the wings of some passing bird, for under those dancing innocent feet the Saghalie Tyee had placed the palms of his hands, and the soft baby soles rested and romped in an anchorage greater than the most sheltered harbor in all the vast Pacific coast.
From the shores their mothers watched them, first in an agony of fear, then with wonder, then with reverence.
“ ‘The great Tyee holds them in his hand,’ spoke one with whispered awe.
“ ‘Listen, he speaks.’
“ ‘Will you give these babies to rue, oh, mothers of the Squamish?’ said a voice from above the clouds. ‘To me to keep for you, always as babies, always as laughing, happy little ones, or will you take them back to yourselves and the shore, to have them grow away from their innocence, their childhood; to have them suffer in heart and body as women must ever suffer, to have them grow ill with age, old with pain and years, and then to die, to leave you lonely, and to go where you may not follow and care for them and love them? Which will you, oh, mothers of the Squamish? If you love yourselves best, you shall have your babies again. If you love your babies most, you will give them to me.’
“And the two mothers answered as one voice: ‘Keep them always as babies, always innocent, always happy—take them, oh, Great Tyee, for we love them more than we love ourselves!’
“The winds began to sob lower. The waves ceased swirling, the roar of tempestuous waters calmed to whispers, then lulled into perfect tranquility, but the babies still played and laughed on its blue surface. The hands of the Saghalie Tyee still upheld them.
“That night the lake froze from shore to shore. When morning dawned, the two mothers were ‘wakened by a voice that spoke very gently, but it came from invisible lips, and they knew it to be a message from the Tyee of the Happy Hunting Grounds. ‘The babies are yours forever,’ he said, ‘although I, the Saghalie Tyee of all men, shall keep them in the hollow of my hands. I have bridged the waters with eternal stillness, for their little bodies are young and tender, their little feet too soft for rough waves, their little hands too frail to battle rough winds. No storm shall ever again fret this lake, no gale churn its surface to fury. I have tempered their little world to their baby needs, and they shall live in shelter for all time. Rise, oh, mothers of the Squamish, and look upon your gifts to me, which I shall keep in trust for you forever.’
“The women arose, and creeping to the door of the lodge beheld their babies dancing on the frail, clear ice far out across the lake. They could see the baby smiles, hear the baby laughter, and they knew their mother-hearts would never mourn for their children’s lost innocence, or lost babyhood. And each year since that time, when the first frosts of late autumn touch the little lake with a film of ice, the babies come to play and laugh like elves of the air, upon its shining surface. They have never grown older, never grown less innocent. They are pure as the ice their soft, small feet touch with dancing step, and so they will remain for all time.”
The silver sands were still filtering between her brown fingers as the Klootchman ended the tale, and I still lay watching the sunlight glint on the lazy Pacific, and wondering if it, too, were not the dancing feet of some long-ago children.
“Do people ever see these ice babies now?” I asked dreamily.
“Only those who are nearing the country of the Great Tyee,” she replied. “As one nears that land one becomes again as a little child, one’s eyes grow innocent, one’s heart trusting, one’s life blameless, as they go down the steep shores of age to the quiet, windless, waveless lake where they must rest forever in the hollows of the Great Tyee’s hands, for he has kept these pure Ice babies there for many hundreds of years because he wishes his Indian children to become like them before they cross the lake to the Happy Hunting Grounds on the far shore.”
She was silent for a moment, then added: “I am growing old, Tillicum (friend), perhaps I shall see them—soon.”