Many years ago along the eastern shores of Tslaa-wat Inlet (now known as .Indian Arm.) a terrible plague came into the villages and destroyed the people. One woman and her tiny infant son were now alone in her cabin for all the others had died. Knowing that soon she, too, would join the others, she gathered her last remaining strength to do what she could for her infant.
Carefully she wrapped him in a Squo-quith (cedar bark cloth) so at least the chill of night would not come to his tiny body so soon. And with this, her last earthly task complete, she laid wearily down on her bed of boughs and sometime through the dark night the Spirit of Peace came to her calling her on into the land beyond.
The dawn broke grey and cold, for this was early spring. The tiny baby boy slept quietly in his warm wrapped blanket. But soon there was movement outside. Wolves, drawn by the scent of death were beginning to prowl through the village of the dead.
Coming to the cabin where the baby lay, an old she wolf went up to the bundle and sniffed at it in curiosity. It had a warm baby scent, and having pups of her own she picked the tiny boy up in her mouth and carefully carried him to her den in the woods. Putting him gently down with her own litter she laid down for a nap while the puppies fed on her milk.
Hunting together, he and the she wolf would stalk a deer and when she saw the quarry she would look at him and wait. Then he would bring it down with his arrow. How anyone could kill a deer without touching it was too much for the she wolf to understand, but to her this foster son was the greatest of all hunters and how he performed these miracles was just his special kind of magic, and that was good enough.
As the years passed by he became lonely for his own kind and one day he sat by the shore with his wolf mother and tried in his own way to tell her he must go and search for his own mate. Somehow the she wolf understood, for she knew that it had to be, for the law of nature is .to each his own kind,. and the sad day of parting had come.
The boy stroked her head gently, and said, .My dearest friend, you have devoted your life to me and now I will go.. .For a time we will be lonely, but it will get better and you and all your kind will be honoured by my people.. .And all the tribes in this inlet will keep your likeness and name as their crest for all time..
With a last fond look of understanding he turned and walked quickly into the forest. The she wolf watched him go and then slowly turned and trotted along the shore, remembering so well the happy days the two had spent together along the game trails of the Tsla-a-wat.
The boy travelled many weeks back over the mountains to the east, finally coming to Indian bands far inland. And from one of these he took a wife and returned to the waters of Tsla-a-wat. From these two people centuries ago the tribes, as we know them today, began. They are the .Wolf tribe. of the Tsla-a-wat, and the wolf packs of the head water river are the ancestors of the she wolf of long ago. Little wonder the warm bond that still exists today between these people and the gray silent wolves of the Valley.
A Tsla-a-wat Legend