“OLD KATIE”

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 July 1934, Page 10

“OLD KATIE”

SAW STRANGE MARVELS. Saanich Indians, in British Columbia, Canada, were lately plunged in mourning as a result of the death of a princess of their tribe. To many white persons who knew and respected her she was known as “Old Katie.” More than a century has passed since she was born, well-informed natives declare, and during all those decades she has possessed the confidence and regard of the whites as well as her own people. “Old Katie” was born on the Fraser River about the time that James McMillan erected the palisades of old Fort Langley, in 1527, the first outpost of white man’s civilisation on the coast of what is now British Columbia. From this crude beginning she witnessed the unfolding of the history of that province.

As an infant in the lodges of hei ■ people on the Fraser, Katie heard stories of the fierce Yucultas from the North, who preyed on less warlike tribes, and who even defied the power and might df the white strangers who lived within the log fortress. Those white strangers represented the new law —the law of peace and of equity. They had strange weapons of defence and apparently knew no fear —but they were small in number. Each year thousands of native braves came to the Fraser River during the salmon runs, but the 17 men who boasted obedience to a white princess in another country far away were undismayed. Katie saw the civilisation that the white strangers represented become established. She saw the half-dozen log huts within the enclosure give place to larger inhabitations. She saw communities rise and forests disappear to construct buildings larger than any native ceremonial hall. She saw the; swift canoe vanish as the accepted mode of transportation, and great vesesls belching smoke churn through the waters faster than the speed of even a Haida war canoe. Then there was the coming of strange, tire-eating monsters of iron that screeched as they sped swifter than an arrow along shining rails; and again she saw strange animals called horses come to draw wheeled carts, and marvelled at the manner in which such large beasts could be controlled. She saw, too, the horse-drawn vehicles give place to swift-moving, noisy machines that, eliminated distance; and she lived to see man compete in the clouds with the birds in flight. Old Katie, in her century and more of life, had beheld wonders more strange than any necromancer of her race could have imagined at her birth. She had also seen the passing of ageold beliefs in spirit doctors, who held sway Ihrough fear, and had accepted the teachings of the gentle men dressed in black, who taught a story of

Divine love. Among the Indians who came to the Fraser River in the fishing time was a noble of the proud Saanich people. He saw Katie, a comely girl, and, according to her tribal custom, he made

overtures to her parents. So Katie a princess born, became the bride of a young chief, known to the white man| as Chief Jim. She accompanied him to his home in Saanich Inlet —near where white men had come and erected another strange log enclosure called Fort Victoria. ' All these things Katie could recall and often fold her friends of those early days. Particularly did she re-

collect an epoch-making event in 1850, when the Saanich bluets met at Deep Cove and solemnly conveyed their aboriginal land rights ' to the great white chief James Douglas, who represented. the white Queen. She was present, and delighted to tell of the great, occasion. Old Katie saw miracles take place. She was privileged to live for more than 100 years, and in that century she beheld the departure of the glory of her own people and the rise of that of an alien race. There -was tragedy in what she saw, but there was bene- - fits for her and her people as well, for no longer do the Indians live in constant dread of midnight assassination, of the violent death in darkness from the knives of the Yuculta and Haida raiders. Old Katie saw miracles indeed —and now she has been gathered to her fathers.