Franz Boas’s Kathlamet Texts collects oral narratives from a single speaker of a nearly vanished Chinookan dialect, published by the Smithsonian’s Bureau of American Ethnology as a bilingual volume of native text and facing English translation. Boas gathered the material at Bay Center, Washington, in the summers of 1890 and 1891 and again in December 1894, working with Charles Cultee, the one informant able to dictate connected stories. The book holds myths and tales of the lower Columbia River country—trickster cycles, shaman songs, monster-slayers, and accounts of hunting and war—and was meant to stand beside a grammar and dictionary of the Chinookan dialects that Boas projected but did not include here.
What the Storyteller’s World Contains
The volume opens with a short introduction on method and on the man behind the texts. Cultee was, in Boas’s phrase, a veritable storehouse of information: he had lived for years at Cathlamet on the south side of the Columbia above Astoria, where he learned the dialect, and his mixed ancestry—Kathlamet, Xuila’paX, Klatsop, and Timneh—made him the only source for two separate Chinookan dialects. Boas tested his reliability by having two stories repeated after three and a half years and found them closely matching, which he took as evidence that the language Cultee gave was comparatively pure. Conversation between the two men ran through Chinook jargon, and Boas notes that the later dictations show longer, more complex sentences than the earlier ones. A phonetic alphabet follows, marking the palatalized and posterior consonants, the nasalized sounds, and the vowel length that the transcription depends on.
The Book’s Frame and Its Sole Informant
The volume opens as Bulletin 30 of the Smithsonian’s Bureau of American Ethnology, published by the Government Printing Office in 1901 under J. W. Powell’s directorship, and its contents run from a long list of myths—AqasXe’nasXena, Nikciamtca’c, Sun, Swan, Copper, Coyote, Salmon, Elk, the Southwest Winds, Rabbit and Deer, Coyote and Badger, Panther and Lynx, Seal and Crab, Mink, Robin and Salmon-berry, Panther and Owl, The Race—through a body of tales (Tia’pexoacxoae, Emogoñi, the brothers, the war of the ghosts, the TkulXiyogoñ’ikc, the N’isal, the Spirit of Hunger, Winter all the year round) to abstracts and a plate showing a Kathlamet woman. Boas explains in his introduction that the texts were collected in the summers of 1890 and 1891 and in December 1894, and that the dialect survived in only three speakers: Charles Cultee and Samson at Bay Center, Washington, and Mrs. Wilson at Nemah on Shoalwater Bay. Since neither Samson nor Mrs. Wilson could produce connected texts, Cultee became the sole informant—and the only source as well for two Chinookan dialects, having also dictated Chinook texts. To test his accuracy, Boas had two stories repeated after three and a half years and found them closely matching, which confirmed his judgment that Cultee’s language was comparatively pure. Cultee had lived for years at Cathlamet on the south side of the Columbia above Astoria, where he acquired the dialect; his grandparents came from four different tribes, his wife was Chehalis, and he now spoke Chehalis almost exclusively. Boas calls him a veritable storehouse of information whose intelligence eased translation, though conversation passed only through Chinook jargon, and he notes that the later dictations show more complex periods than the earlier ones. The book offers texts and translations only, with a grammar and dictionary to follow; Kathlamet is the Upper Chinook dialect spoken farthest downriver, from Astoria and Grey’s Harbor to Rainier, and Boas lists the tribes that spoke it. A phonetic alphabet follows, marking vowel length and obscurity, palatalized and velar consonants, nasalized sounds, stress, and the contractions that bind final consonants and vowels across word boundaries; it is dated New York, November 1895.
The Woman Who Danced Away Her Child
The first myth, told in 1890, begins with a woman who grows angry at her husband and leaves him, building a small house for herself and her child. He starts singing his shaman’s song and people gather to dance. She goes out in the evening to listen, torn—“I will go. No, I had better not go, else my child might cry”—but at night she washes the child, lays it in the cradle, and slips off to the doorway. She cannot see her husband through the hole, so she enters and dances among the people. Near daylight she remembers: “Oh, my child! perhaps it is crying.” She hurries home to find the child crying, takes it up—and it is a stick. “Perhaps AqasXe’nasXena carried it away.” AqasXe’nasXena has indeed taken the child to the house she shares with the Crane. The boy grows, always carried on her back, until one day she leaves him home and the Crane feeds him trout and tells him the woman is not his mother at all—she stole him, and her name is AqasXe’nasXena. When she returns the boy is angry, and she scolds the Crane for making her nephew sick.
The House at the Sunrise and the Shining Thing
A man bids his wife make ten pairs each of moccasins, rings, and leggings, and travels for months, wearing out his shoes, until he nears the place where the Sun rises. In a great house he finds a girl and stays. One side of the house hangs with arrows, quivers, elkskin and wooden armors, shields, stone axes, bone war clubs, and head ornaments; the other with mountain-goat and elkskin blankets, buffalo and buckskins, and long and short dentalia. Near the doorway hangs a large thing he does not know. Item by item he asks whose it is, and each time the girl answers that it belongs to her father’s mother, or to her grandmother and herself, and will be given away when she is grown—and he thinks he will take it all. The old woman comes home at evening and hangs up something shining that pleases him; he stays a long time and takes the girl. Each morning the old woman vanishes and returns at night with arrows, blankets, and shirts. Homesick, he lies down for two days, and when the old woman offers him everything he refuses until he names the shining thing. His wife protests that people have tried to buy it and her grandmother will not give it away. At last the old woman, tired, hangs it on him with a stone ax and says: “Take it, but take care if you carry it. You wanted it. I wished to love you and I do love you.” Going home, the thing shakes and says, “We shall strike your town.” He loses his senses and destroys his uncle’s town, killing everyone; recovering, he finds his hands full of blood and thinks, “Oh, what a fool I was! The thing I wanted is bad.” He cannot throw it off—it sticks to his flesh—and the same seizure comes again at a second uncle’s town, and again at his own, until he has killed his relatives. Weeping, he hears it speak: “Now do you know me? I tried to prevent you, but you would not listen. Now I will leave you.” Then it takes itself off.
The Swan’s Wife and the Two Dishes
In the Swan myth, told in 1894, a maiden whose father would not sell her is bought by the chief of the Swans. Winter comes, provisions run out, and the Swan’s mother brings food in a double dish—dry broken salmon in one half, pounded salmon bones in the other. The Swan eats the salmon and his wife the bones, evening after evening, for a whole year, until she notices the difference in the sounds of their chewing. Taking his dish one night, she sees dried salmon and thinks: “Oh, he has treated me ill. He gave me bones to eat, and behold, my husband is eating dried salmon! I will go home to my people.” She returns to her parents, tells them her grievance, and lies down ashamed, five nights on one side and five on the other, before she rises.
Coyote’s Tabus and the First Salmon
Instructions on net-fishing follow: the net is laid from the canoe, the salmon’s bellies turned upward, and the fisherman must linger before setting it—Coyote says, “Enough you told me.”
The Panther and the Lynx: Fire and the Grizzly Bears
The elder brother, the Panther, notices smoke that smells unlike their own fire and hurries home to ask the Lynx why. The Lynx lies that he was asleep. The Panther bathes early; swans fly off, and when he sends the Lynx to look, the Lynx reports only a drifting snag. Then the Panther sees the Grizzly Bear coming, tells his brother to hide under a kettle, and the Bear at the door demands to know who stole their grandmother’s fire and asks for the younger brother to eat. The Panther stalls, invites him in, and they fight. When the Panther cries out that the monster will kill him, the Lynx throws off the kettle, seizes an adz, dances, and sings that the monster’s legs are like water lilies. He strikes the Bear’s legs, they throw him down, cut his neck, and haul him out.
The next morning the Panther hunts elk and warns the Lynx not to let the fire go out. The Lynx plays, tends it, plays again, forgets, and finds it dead. He swims to the Grizzly Bear’s house, where the old woman keeps four fires; he steals a firebrand and sets it aside, and she slaps her vulva saying “you ate it.” He replaces it, she looks and finds as many brands as before, and so he fools her, takes one home, and makes a fire. In the evening the Panther returns, they sleep, and the same swan, snag, and Grizzly Bear episode repeats, ending with the Bear killed and hauled out. The Panther warns him again, stays two days, leaves, and the same happens a third and fourth time.
Only the strongest Bear remains, and they stay five nights. The Panther warns the Lynx that this one is truly strong; the Lynx promises not to go away but soon forgets. At the Bear’s house the old woman lays the fire down and takes it up; he does not dare take it, but when she lays it down again he jumps, grabs it, runs, swims across, and just makes a fire when his brother returns. The Panther threatens to throw him to the Bear, then says “Take care.” Early the Panther bathes and ties his hair; swans fly away; the Lynx again reports only a snag. The Panther identifies the Grizzly Bear and tells him to hide under the kettle; the Bear demands the fire-taker and the younger brother. The Panther is silent and afraid, then says no one would give up his own younger brother and invites the Bear in. They fight; the Panther tires and calls the Lynx, who throws off the kettle, takes the adz, dances singing of water lilies, and bites the Bear’s leg; they kill the last one. The Lynx swims across and burns the old woman’s house. The next morning the Panther says he will leave the Lynx, who shall live on the creeks and catch silver-side salmon; because the Lynx is bad he leaves him, and when the Panther kills an elk the Lynx will eat it. The Panther goes away.
Seal and Crab
The Crab and her elder sister the Seal are hungry; the Crab cries, and the Seal proposes they bathe. At the water the Crab feels cold and goes up; the Seal dives several times and kills two large salmon. The Seal tells the Crab to fetch the small salmon; the Crab finds them, hangs them on her finger, says how small they are, and they break her finger—then the next, until all her fingers break. She goes up crying and tells her sister she broke all her fingers. The Seal takes the fingers and puts them on her, carries up the salmon, and they cut and roast them. The Crab says she will eat the heads, tails, roe, stomachs, hearts, and livers; when done she eats two hearts and one liver and is satiated. The Seal urges her to eat more, then eats all the salmon herself. The sister closes the house, even the smallest holes, and tells the Crab not to go outside for two days. The Seal forgets to look after her, hears her shouting, looks, and finds her gone. She listens and hears her sister shouting downriver where Blue-jay defecated at his town. The Crab sings: “My sister and I eat what is swimming in the sea.”
The people are hungry; it is winter; they ready themselves and go aboard one canoe. The Seal meets her younger sister on top of a tree and tells her to come down; the Crab comes down, the Seal strikes her, and they go home. At home the Seal tells the Crab to hide; the Seal hides in a cache, but the Crab’s face stays visible behind the plank near the fire. The people land and search for the Seal but find only the Crab; they strike her nape and a salmon heart falls from her mouth; again another heart; a third time a liver; they slap repeatedly but she vomits only two hearts and one liver. They try to find the Seal; Blue-jay becomes tired and goes to defecate; they dig up the cache and find the Seal, take her by the head and bend it down.
Mink and the Forbidden Lake Name
Mink repeatedly asks his elder brother the name of the place where they sleep. The brother refuses, saying it is forbidden to speak it, especially in winter, lest a lone rainy spell come. Mink begs him to whisper it. The brother finally whispers that the lake is named Ta’ix. Mink shouts the name as loud as he can. The brother grows angry, calls him bad, and has him gather many sticks to sit on. Mink gathers only a few and lies down. Rain noise is heard, a freshet comes, and in the morning Mink has disappeared, drifting away with the water. The elder brother goes downriver crying, comes to a jam, searches, and finds Mink between the logs with his stomach full of water. He blows on him and Mink recovers. Mink says he slept and that “that fellow” waked him and he will shoot him; the brother replies that Mink was dead and drifted.
They come to the Panther’s wife and stay there. An old man, a relative of the woman, is teased constantly by Mink. The Panther’s wife gives birth. The old man proposes they get wood; they cross the water and make a fire at the foot of a fir tree. The tree falls toward the water; the old man tells Mink to run toward the water, and the fir falls in that line and breaks apart. The old man thinks he has killed Mink, piles the bark, and finds Mink has already piled wood in the canoe. The old man calls him “little rascal”; Mink replies the old man is strong, not he. The old man puts Mink in the wedge basket on top of the wood with stones below. In mid-bay the old man shakes the canoe; Mink falls into the water and sinks. The old man thinks he has killed him, comes home, and sees a person walking who looks like Mink.
The Youth and His Friend, and the Coming of Emogoa’lEkc
The Kathlamet text closes a story of two friends with a scene of violence that turns into something stranger. The friend is shot again and again—surrounded in four rows, then five, struck five times—and runs into the water, diving deep while the nets above him do not shake and the arrows drift on the surface. The people go home. The youth tells them that if they leave him alone they may always see him and watch him shoot at targets. His friend weeps a long time, then sees him standing there; the friend says his heart is tired. They shoot at targets once more, and people come partly in canoes, take arrows, and surround them. The friend is shot again until he is full of arrows, runs seaward, is harpooned, and comes up far from shore. He says he will never see him again and will remain a monster; the people cry and cut their hair. The friend cries five days, then sees him again: he is not dead, he lives in a house like theirs, he is named Emogoa’lEkc, and whoever sees him will become a chief. He tells him to stop crying.
The Brothers and the House of Coals
A country called Nagio’na holds five men and one woman. Each October they go to Ne’tEl to dry salmon, and for five years the youngest brother receives only salmon tails. As a youth he asks to be left behind at their great house, fourteen fathoms long, and they leave him. Bird skins hang inside; a brother brings the tail pieces, finds him gone, and hangs them up. The youth returns, thinks the tails were brought to see him, and hangs them near the door, then skins birds from the beach all year. Three strings of tails hang uneaten, and he says such refuse is given only to dogs. A visitor finds him singing shaman’s songs on his bed, his face changed, and gets no answer five times. The eldest brother resolves to go home; they hear birds eating in the house, birds fly out to sea, the house fills with feathers, and the youngest has vanished into a supernatural being. They burn the house, saying later generations who sweep it will find coals, then cry and move far away. A footnote explains that a person seeking a supernatural helper sweeps the place called “The House of the Brothers” and may find coals as a sign of success.
The War of the Ghosts
At Lgu’laq two young men hunt seals and hear war cries in the fog. They hide behind a log; five men in a canoe ask them to join a war party up the river. One says he has no arrows, though arrows lie in the canoe; the other declines, fearing death and that his relatives will not know where he went. His companion goes. At midnight he returns and reports that his relative left with the warriors. The party reaches beyond Kalama and fights; the companion is shot and carried into the canoe, and someone says, “Quick, let us go home; that Indian has been shot.” He thinks they are ghosts and feels no sickness, though told he was hit. At Lgu’laq he makes a fire, tells everything, grows quiet near daylight, and falls; something black comes from his mouth, blood from his anus, his face contorts, and he dies. The people cry. A second version at Monticello repeats the pattern—two friends, fog, the ghosts, the wound unfelt until daylight, the black substance like salal berries—and the friend lives because he did not go with the ghosts.
The Chief’s Son and the Thunderbird’s Whale
At Nqjula’was a chief named Po’XpuX throws male infants into the water but raises females; he is bad, killing a wife for a slight mistake. A woman bears a boy; the chief is told it is a girl and lets it grow, and the mother is killed. The child wears a coat but is male; the grandmother raises him, they move far away, and he bathes in all the lakes. One night she sends him to a lake near the house, where he feels something slippery like a young fish, tries to catch it, and it escapes. He pulls grass, puts it on his chest, catches and holds it fast, and carries it ashore thinking it a young fish, meaning to show his grandmother; near the house it falls and he cannot find it. He fetches pitch wood and tells her, but she doubts him, saying the lake dries in summer and no creek leads from it. He asks her to help search; they light the pitch wood and find long dentalia lying where it fell—two of them that long—and the trail of dentalia leads to the lake. They take rush and spruce-root baskets, carry all the dentalia home, make holes below the bed, and store them. After two nights the grandmother goes to ask for sinew to string the long dentalia, saying her grandson’s blanket is torn, and they give her sinew.
The boy grows large and becomes a warrior who inherits a supernatural helper. He sees the Thunderbird, which becomes his helper and gives him one whale for food, given to “that Indian.” At night the Thunderbird thunders and Waqjawiya’s, son of Po’XpuX, is startled, saying the Thunderbird has greatly frightened him and may send him something, as it long ago promised a whale when he wished to eat one. Next morning it is calm; at sunrise a person sees something shining in the middle of the prairie and reports it, and people go out, declaring it a monster as huge as a house. A man from the coast living in his wife’s village recognizes it as a whale. The people cut it, though part are afraid. The chief makes a potlatch: he digs a long ditch, lays planks on top, covers them with dirt, makes a door at the entrance, and people dance inside, disappearing underground and emerging at the door; people from all around come. He becomes a chief and Po’XpuX becomes insignificant. His town was far away, and he was ancestor of the people of N’qjolft’was, named Waqjawiya’s.
Pe’lpel and the Youth of the La’qxaLema
A strong man at North river named Pe’LpeL made the Willapah. When people caught sturgeon in gill nets near flood tide, he told his people to go to them and took what they caught, also taking the gill nets of part of them, repeatedly, and they did not take revenge. When he caught a sturgeon he squeezed it and it broke to pieces; when he was seen coming, all ran home, and if one was slow he overtook him and took his catch. A boy grew up on the South fork of the Willapah among the La’qxaLEma; they sent him up the mountains to bathe in ponds, and he twisted young hemlock, vine maple, and spruce trees; he became a youth.
Tricksters, Monsters, and the Rules of Living
The collection’s imaginative center is a set of figures who are at once comic and dangerous. Coyote appears throughout as a hungry schemer: he tricks the Badger into breaking wind so that Sturgeon, Beaver, Seal, and Porpoise fall dead and become food, and in another cycle he murders his own brother, eats him, and then weeps with hunger when the supply runs out. The Raccoon is a thief and a bully who pours boiling pitch over the Grizzly Bear’s face and fills his grandmother’s mouth with thorny haws until she grows wings and becomes the Partridge. Against these small scoundrels stand the great predators—the Panther and the Lynx, whose household comedy turns on the Lynx’s repeated failure to guard the fire and the Panther’s weary warnings, and the Owl, who steals meat for a hidden wife and fights the Panther in the sky until their heads fall biting and the woman must sort red flesh from green with a stick.
Boas’s informant does not separate natural history from law. The Salmon myth explains why the first salmon must be honored, and the net-fishing instructions attached to the Coyote story turn into a list of taboos: no murderer, no menstruating woman, no widower, no one who handles the dead may eat salmon, and a single louse on a net will empty it. The story of the boy who plays with his excrement and brings a killing freeze ends with the people buying him from his parents and setting him on the ice, and with the chief who walks to a warm country and returns with ripe strawberries in his leggings. The girl who goes up Saddle mountain while she is newly matured is taken by the Thunderbird, and the tale closes by explaining why no such girl is ever allowed on that trail again. Narrative here is etiology: the stories account for the shape of the world and for the customs that keep people alive in it.
A Record Made at the Edge of Loss
Boas is explicit that the dialect was spoken by only three people when he worked, and that only one of them could tell a story from beginning to end. The book is therefore both a work of folklore and a salvage operation, and its methods are visible on every page: the interlinear transcription, the careful notation of stress and vowel length, the two versions of the same tale printed years apart so that a reader can compare them. Cultee’s own family history enters the volume as well, in the tales of his grandfather’s shaman songs and his grandfather’s journey to the country of the ghosts, so that the informant is not merely a source but a subject. The ethnographic account of sea-lion hunting, with its burning of canoe hulls and its two hundred fathoms of harpoon line singing through the water, sits beside the myths as a record of practice rather than belief. What remains is a body of stories told in a language with almost no remaining speakers, set down with a philologist’s patience and a storyteller’s ear, and left for later readers to hear.
