Franz Boas’s Kutenai Tales gathers stories told by Kutenai people of the interior Northwest, published by the Smithsonian’s Bureau of American Ethnology as Bulletin 59. Two collecting campaigns produced the texts: Alexander Francis Chamberlain recorded a first set in 1891, and Boas himself gathered another series in the summer of 1914, mostly from elders around St. Eugene Mission in British Columbia. The book prints the tales in Kutenai with facing English translation, then adds abstracts, comparative notes, and a substantial Kutenai-English vocabulary.
“A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired.”
Boas’s preface is unusually candid about method. Chamberlain’s texts are brief, he explains, because they came from a first field expedition—recording long tales takes practice. Boas names his narrators and rates them: Barnaby, about sixty, spoke slowly and distinctly and was “perfectly satisfactory”; Pierre Andrew had good English but could not interpret Kutenai grammar accurately, so his translations run free; Mission Joe’s dictation had to be repeated by Felix Andrew, whose word-by-word interpreting was even weaker. Everything was recorded without translation and rendered afterward with help. All the informants were Upper Kutenai, so Lower Kutenai dialect forms probably vanished from the collection. One small moment says a great deal: Barnaby refused to tell the Mosquito story because it was proper for children, not adults.
The Smithsonian Edition and Its Makers
The volume opens with Google’s standard digitization notice, explaining that the book was scanned from a library copy to make the world’s books discoverable online, that its copyright has expired, and that users should keep their use non-commercial, refrain from automated querying, and preserve the Google attribution. The edition itself is Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 59: Kutenai Tales by Franz Boas, with texts collected by Alexander Francis Chamberlain, printed by the Government Printing Office in Washington. A letter of transmittal from F. W. Hodge, Ethnologist-in-Charge, dated March 5, 1915, forwards the manuscript to Secretary Charles D. Walcott with a recommendation to publish it as Bulletin 59.
Boas’s preface explains the book’s two layers. Chamberlain gathered the earlier texts in 1891 from Paul, who lived near St. Eugene Mission and had spent time among the Blackfeet, and from Michel of the same region; the Lower Kutenai narrator is named as Angi McLaughlin. Those texts are short because they came from Chamberlain’s first field trip, and recording long tales takes practice. Boas’s own series was collected in the summer of 1914. One text came from Pierre Andrew, about thirty-three, whose English was good but whose grasp of Kutenai grammar was weak, so his translation runs free; two from the older, fast-speaking Pierre Nuria, redictated through Pierre Andrew; three from Mission Joe, about sixty, repeated by Felix Andrew, whose word-by-word interpreting was even weaker; one from Felix Andrew himself, recorded by Robert T. Aitken; and the rest from Barnaby, about sixty, who spoke slowly and distinctly and was perfectly satisfactory. Everything was recorded without translation and rendered afterward with the Andrews’ help. All the informants were Upper Kutenai, and Chamberlain’s texts were revised by Upper Kutenai speakers too, so Lower Kutenai forms probably vanished from them. Boas notes that Barnaby refused to tell the Mosquito story because it suited children, not adults, and he thanks Rev. F. E. Lambot and the Sisters of the Government School of St. Eugene.
Contents, Alphabet, and the First Coyote Tales
The table of contents lays out the plan: Part I holds Chamberlain’s 1891 texts, numbers 1–44, with 1–23 told by Paul and 24–31 by Michel; Part II holds Boas’s texts, 45–77, with narrators marked, including a long Ya.uk”e’ika’m cycle; Part III gives abstracts and comparative notes; Part IV a Kutenai-English and English-Kutenai vocabulary. An alphabet section describes the sounds in detail—long, very long, and short vowels, stress accents, high and sinking tones, strongly aspirated surd stops, glottalized fortis consonants, a dl occurring only in the word for butterfly—and notes that primary accent always falls on the penultima.
The tales begin with brief openings. Coyote meets Fox and asks for his blanket, proposing friendship; Fox agrees, and after they pass people and many tents, they race. Coyote then meets Locust and asks for his shirt, offering to carry him as a younger brother; Locust declines the bargain but they become brothers, and Coyote carries him until Grizzly Bear Woman approaches. Set down at a cliff’s edge, Locust frightens her and she falls; Coyote eats her meat and fat. When Grizzly Bear Man comes, Coyote’s turn to scare him fails—he turns himself into a stump—and he saves himself by announcing who he is and offering grease, then asks whether Grizzly Bear has seen an old woman who must have passed that way.
Mutilation, the Youth Who Killed Chiefs, and the White Man
A leg is cut off and thrown away, then the other; the body is cut to pieces, and the people pitch tents at “Where-they-used-to-sow.” At night a singing figure called Lame Knee is heard; told he is chief, he marries and takes both women. In “The Youth who Killed the Chiefs,” a man kills the son his daughter bears, but an old woman’s second child, a girl, is kept. The chief drives game and gives no meat to his parents-in-law; the hungry old woman bears a son and tells her husband to shoot a buffalo cow early next day and not fear the chief. The chief seizes the cow, the youth rises and kills him, gives the tent to his father, and then travels downriver to towns whose chiefs give no food. Each chief rises at night as a rattlesnake, a grizzly bear, or a buffalo bull, wives turning into the same beasts, and each time the youth strikes them down and calls the people to take the meat. A white man chopping a limb denies he will fall, keeps chopping, and falls. A Frenchman with three daughters makes them promise obedience; at a stump that opens like a door, Grizzly Bear demands a wife. The two elder daughters flee in fear, but the youngest marries him, and though her visiting mother cannot see where he sleeps, morning shows him walking about.
Owl, Trout, Skunk, and the Deluge
Owl carries off crying children in a bark basket with awls; Coyote turns himself into a child, is taken, seals Owl’s eyes with gum thrown in the fire, and throws Owl into the fire—small owls fly out. Coyote steals and sleeps with Trout; at a fishing place he alone breaks the hook, the people make a thick, large hook, and he is pulled from the water, Trout no longer his wife. Skunk fears nothing while Panther fears him; carried in Skunk’s bucket, Panther asks what frightens Skunk and is told whistling. Panther whistles, scares Skunk, breaks the bucket, and flees, but Skunk tracks him, squirts him, climbs the tree by the river, shoots, and kills him. In “The Deluge,” Yawo’nik! takes Chicken Hawk’s wife; Chicken Hawk shoots him, Yawo’nik! drinks all the water, and when the arrow is pulled out the flood rises. People climb mountains; Chicken Hawk sets up his tail, whose four stripes mark the danger, and when one stripe remains the water stops and goes down.
Toad, the Race, the Giant, and the Two Tsa’kap
Toad says Chicken Hawk and Blue Hawk will be husbands; Toad catches Deer, Chicken Hawk kills Toad, and Toad’s parents catch Chicken Hawk, make him poor, and force him to sweat over fire until Blue Hawk restores his younger brother. Frog proposes racing Antelope, the unbeaten runner; Frogs lie down along the course with their clothes, Antelope sets down his, and the Frogs get ahead and take the clothes. A woman with a child meets the Giant who has been killing Indians, claims the child is his younger brother and that she cooks him white; the Giant asks to be cooked, lies in a pit, and dies crying “Iskuku’.”
Duck Kills the Chief
The Ya.uk”e’ika’m cycle closes with a killing that the people read as proof of the hero’s power. The chief, complaining of cold, calls Duck to him; Duck strikes him with his head, and though the chief cries out that something on Duck’s head hurts him, Duck keeps on until the chief lies dead. Three have now fallen to Duck and his uncle—Crane and his wife, and the chief. When the people look, they find Ya.uk”e’ika’m and understand he has come back to life. They explain Duck’s and his parents’ behavior as anger, and they fear the great chief of the town more than before. The narrator declares the telling finished.
Coyote and Dog: The Failed Hunt
Winter finds Coyote in a tent with his wife Dog and their children. Dog chops a stump in which a deer has taken refuge; the falling stump strikes the deer, whose hole breaks, and it bolts. Dog follows it through the snow, seizes its tail, and sends the children—Misqolo’wum and Qlota’ptsek!—to fetch their father. Coyote’s preparations are a comedy of delay: he splits a small tree, breaks a bush, pulls off his hair band, spills and eats the family’s rose hips, makes a bow and two arrows, and only then arrives. He tramps the snow and tells Dog to let go; the deer runs, and both arrows miss, one over and one under. Out of arrows, he pulls off the bowstring, strikes with the bow stave, and puts the string back as a hair band while the deer escapes. Dog, tired and carrying an ax and hammer, returns home to find the rose hips gone; told “Our parent did it,” the family moves camp hungry.
Shrews and the Abandoned Son
Coyote’s snowshoes grow heavy with shrews; he shakes them off, throws down a stump, builds a fire, and roasts and eats them. The child Qlota’ptsek! sees him eating and takes it for the deer, since the stump looked red. Dog finds only shrews, not meat, and is told to eat the spread-out shrews with the children while the rest belongs to Coyote. She throws down her pack, says she was hungry, and leaves with Qlota’ptsek!, abandoning Misqolo’wum, who is given to Coyote because he is a boy. Coyote tells him not to cry, saying his mother will return if she finds nothing to eat. They eat shrews and travel on.
The Beaver Ornaments
Coyote breaks beaver dens and dams and takes young Beavers as ear ornaments for his son; the Beavers pretend to be dead, bleeding from the mouth. He gathers many, stops to look for fuel, and leaves. The Beavers jump back into the water, dragging Misqolo’wum into a hole. Coyote hears him call and pulls him out by his protruding legs, knocks down the young Beavers, finds only bloody ground, makes a fire, cooks, gives his son soft fat, then swaps food with him and makes him cry.
The Frozen Son and the Mourning Law
Coyote slips and slides a long distance, then slides again to amuse his son, who only smiles. He finds the boy frozen to death, cries, throws his things away, and decrees that this is what people shall do when relatives die, so the dead will not be put in bad condition.
The Chief’s Tent and the Boast
Coyote enters a tent where a woman sits with her back to the fire and a big-bellied child reads his thoughts aloud; he learns it is a chief’s tent. Dog appears, reveals the child is his grandson, and asks where the child with him is; Coyote falls crying, saying he froze. She says her tent is near. Told the deer drivers will return, he disobeys her and goes to the chief’s tent, where his blanket is thrown at the door and soiled and he is given no meat; his wife scolds him. Next morning people shout “Hu, hu, hu!” and Coyote mimics them, boasting he will kill two bucks and an old grizzly with seven young—nine animals—which frightens the people, who say the town’s people do not carry meat for one another. At the hunt Coyote sits at the head; Sun tells those who go quickly to reach the mountain’s end. Coyote puts flicker feathers on his moccasins and fire starts wherever he steps; he kills the two bucks and seven bears, and when the men pass him empty-handed he asks them to carry meat, but they refuse. He calls his manitoos, who tell him to blow on the game to shrink it; he does, puts it in his belt, and beats them home, where he kicks it into the tent and it becomes big again. In the evening he again avoids the chief’s tent, then goes; after smoking, all go out. Coyote sees his father-in-law’s pretty skin-drying frame, resolves to steal it, says he will sleep there, and takes it under his blanket. He thinks he is far away but wakes at Sun’s tent; Sun tells him that if he wants to leave with it—
The Salmon Woman’s Revenge
The woman returns to her tent and resolves that her brother shall kill Coyote, Fox, and the boy. At a smooth precipice they go ashore; she kicks the canoe hoping to upset it, but fails. They climb a bad place; the friends are at a loss, but Fox has thrown tobacco on it, and they reach the top. There is a tent. Entering, the woman says she brings them all and tells her elder brother to kill them all. A young man lying down arises and goes out; two old women also arise, each takes a dish, and they return carrying buckets of dog manure, which they throw into the fire. All the people cover their heads and lie down; the burning manure makes bad smoke. Fox does the same with his bladder; after some time there is no smoke, and again they have been unable to kill them.
At night an old man tells them there is no salmon and that at night they shall carry torches and then eat. Fox is to paddle, Young Coyote to spear the fish, and the boy to carry the torch; Coyote is to remain in the tent and is warned not to sleep but to watch the fire, lest he be killed. Coyote looks out and is told that if he sees a small fire he should come out, for then they are about to kill one another. Seeing the canoe’s fire grow small, he knows they are about to kill one another. An old person with a hammer stands on each side of the doorway, ready to strike anyone who tries to go out. The boy runs in saying the manitous have killed them. Coyote thinks he will die, since the hammer is of stone, but resolves to fool them: when the old people lift their hammers and stand legs apart to strike, Coyote jumps and then stops quickly, so the old people strike each other on the heads and kill each other.
The Star Husband and the Price of Leaving
A girl is carried off by the stars, and the tale makes clear from the outset that the large stars are young men and the small ones old. She weeps at being taken from her own country and stays there among the star women, who dig roots. They warn her not to break the ground where a tree stands. Curiosity gets the better of her: she wonders what the stars are, digs through the thin ground, and looks down into this world, where she recognizes her relatives walking about. She cries, fashions something to hold her, ties herself to it, and lets herself down to her people. They ask where she has been, and she explains that she married the star after saying she would marry the littlestar—that little one was an old man, while the large stars were young people. The Star notices her absence and searches for her; at night they sleep, and in the morning the girl will not rise. She is found dead, struck down by the Star she left.
Little Sun and the Warpath
The next tale turns to a chief at Chicken Hawk Nest—Crazy Old Woman—who asks who can run fast for war. Little Sun delays until sunset, then goes to Kqawakmituk, where football is being played, arriving with his blanket dragging. He enters the tent of chief Not-sitting-down-Long, the pipe is filled, and he reports the request for warriors: three days to prepare arrow wood and bow staves, with the fourth day for setting out. Asked when he started, he answers “this evening,” proving his speed. He stays overnight, returns at sunset, and reports that the party will meet at Low Hills on the fourth day, led by the chief’s son. They make arrows and bows, go on the warpath, and gather at Low Hills. Scouts see nothing and hunger sets in. Pipe Lighter’s friend remembers instructions; a burl is mistaken for a bear, and Pipe Lighter shoots it, then strikes something soft—a real bear—which falls and is killed. Two other friends similarly spear a charr. At night the last ones smell people; Wolf Hat leads, and a wide trail of warriors marching against the Kutenai is found. The friends Lamb Hat and Raven Hat scout ahead, see a town, are pointed at, and transform—Lamb Hat into a lamb, Raven Hat into a stump—escaping while the people laugh at their mistake. At night the friends lead the party down rough bowlders to surround the enemy; in the morning they blow whistles and fight. Crazy Old Woman’s son, the youth Rattling Claws, follows Not-sitting-down-Long, who stabs Chief Harelip; Rattling Claws counts coup. A lone survivor cries and carries the news home. Returning, Rattling Claws’s brothers claim he counted coup; Not-sitting-down-Long says he made Rattling Claws chief, then speaks badly: “The grizzly bear will never be taken away from him.” They return to Fish Hawk Nest, Rattling Claws walking ahead as chief, and Crazy Old Woman rejoices. Later a fast-running son hunts bighorn sheep; Rattling Claws goes with an elder brother who twice falsely warns of a grizzly, then flees when a real one comes. Thinking he is deceived, Rattling Claws does not heed and is killed. At night Crazy Old Woman learns of it and says the misfortune came from their fighting words.
Pine Cone and the Last Stand
Travelers encamp at Timbered-Hollow, and two friends, Lamb Hat and Wolverene Hat, hunt at Bottle, shoot a mountain goat, roast it, and discuss what they would do if attacked—Lamb Hat would use manitou power to climb the precipice, Wolverene Hat to retreat the way they came. Enemies pursue along a narrow ledge; the two transform into a lamb and a wolverene (carrying the brisket) and escape, and the enemies find only tracks and follow. The friends reach a lake and find Pine Cone, an old man hunting muskrats, who calls them liars. Then the Kuyo’kwe appear in numbers. Pine Cone stays behind; the enemies spare him as old. He sets his blanket on rushes as a decoy, shoots all his arrows without piercing them, and is mocked—but his last pointless arrow kills a Kuyo’kwe. They pursue; he moves his bow on his back so arrows would be thrown off; they strike him down. The Kuyo’kwe cry for their dead and return home. Lamb Hat and his friend return to town, report, and wait; they go to the lake and find Pine Cone and one Kuyo’kwe lying dead, and the lake is now called Pine Cone.
The Editorial Frame: Animal Society and the Cycles
Boas argues that a defining trait of Kutenai folk tales is the systematic development of animal society. Frog is grandmother of Muskrat, the Chipmunks, and Doe; her brother Owl is hostile to her grandchildren. The fish Kl’klo’m is Doe’s grandfather, though his relation to Frog is unstated. The Chipmunks are Fisher’s wives; Chicken Hawk’s wife is Gro’e; Coyote’s wife is Dog, and their children are Misqoto’wum and Q’lota’ptsek’. Coyote’s brothers are Moose and Kingfisher. Doe alone marries various people—White Stone (their child Ya.uk’e’ikam), Wolf, and Lynx (whose sons are Sun and Moon)—though it is uncertain whether the same Doe is meant each time. Other animals live in the same village as friends or enemies. Kutenai and Okanagon tales are welded into connected groups, unlike the disconnected Shuswap and Thompson tales, though less markedly than among the Navaho and probably Ute.
One cycle centers on the creation of the Sun: Rabbit hides his sister Doe in Frog’s tent; Lynx marries her; their two sons, after the couple are deserted, come to where the sun is being made. A second part concerns Ya.uk’e’ikam’s origin and exploits—obtaining arrow wood, the arrow straightener, sinew, flint, and bow stave—then traveling with Coyote past dangers (the fat, the giant, thunderbirds). Finally the sons of Lynx are accepted as Sun. Ya.uk’e’ikam is drowned for his powers, resuscitated by fish, kills the chief, and goes to the east end of the world. A second cycle concerns war against the sky: Nalmu’qtse’s tracks form rivers; Muskrat kills his sister-in-law and escapes to the sky; the animals build an arrow chain that Wolverene tears; they kill the thunderbird and fly down; the Woodpeckers meet Nalmu’qtse, disobey his warnings, and Flicker and Duck are swallowed by a water monster, later killed by Fox. Nalmu’qtse then rises, touches the sky, falls, and dies. Boas also summarizes the Okanagon version recorded by Albert S.
A World Where Animals Are Relatives and Neighbors
What distinguishes these tales, as Boas argues in his analytical section, is the systematic building of an animal society. Frog is grandmother to Muskrat, the Chipmunks, and Doe; her brother Owl is hostile to her grandchildren. The Chipmunks are Fisher’s wives, Chicken Hawk’s wife is Grouse, Coyote’s wife is Dog, and their children are Misqoto’wum and Q’lota’ptsek’. Coyote’s brothers are Moose and Kingfisher. Doe alone marries variously—White Stone, Wolf, Lynx—and it is not always certain the same Doe is meant. These creatures live in villages as friends or enemies, and the tales weld them into connected groups, more so than among the neighboring Shuswap and Thompson but less tightly than among the Navaho.
Coyote dominates the collection as trickster, benefactor, and fool at once. He seals Owl’s eyes with gum and burns him; he races a duck through a hole in a canoe; he turns himself into an old woman to dance with two girls and steals back his own eyes. Yet he also remakes the Deer—pulling its teeth, giving it a tail, teaching children to shout “Hohowu!” when meat comes home—so that future generations will have food. The same figure who decrees mourning customs after his son freezes is the one who, told not to look back, looks back and nearly dooms his companions. Around him cluster the great cycles: the making of the Sun and Moon, the deluge stopped by Chicken Hawk’s striped tail, the war against the sky, and the long Ya.uk”e’ika’m cycle, in which Gray Stone bursts through Grizzly Bear’s body to kill him and Frog is tricked into smashing her own flat stone.
Why the Book Still Matters
The collection preserves a narrative world that existed nowhere else in print, and it preserves it twice over—in the original language and in translation—at a moment when Boas was helping invent the very idea of salvage ethnography. The comparative notes trace motifs across Assiniboin, Tlingit, Cree, Shuswap, and dozens of other traditions, treating Kutenai stories as literature to be compared rather than curiosities to be filed. The vocabulary at the back, glossing “horse” as “elk dog” and King George as “the Canadian,” records a language adapting to new things. For readers today the book is both a story collection and a document of how such collections were made—complete with its editor’s honest doubts about his interpreters.
