Franz Boas’s Kwakiutl Tales gathers oral narratives from Kwakwaka’wakw storytellers of coastal British Columbia, printing the Kwak’wala text facing Boas’s English translation. Issued in the Columbia University Contributions to Anthropology, the volume collects traditions Boas took down on several journeys to the region—most dictated to him directly in the 1890s and in 1900, with a few texts supplied by others. It is a work of documentation as much as a story collection: each tale is credited to a named narrator and clan, and a working anthropologist’s concern with how reliably such material can be written down frames the whole.
Boas explains that purpose plainly. His earlier Kwakiutl texts, published in the Jesup North Pacific Expedition volumes, had been written out largely by one man, George Hunt of Fort Rupert, who spoke the language natively and wrote under Boas’s direction. A single recorder lends a single diction to everything he touches, so Boas went out and collected tales from many other speakers, letting the language and form of Hunt’s versions be checked against independent evidence. The bulk of the volume, he notes, was dictated to him in this way; a handful of tales that could not be obtained in the original are appended at the end. The preface is dated New York, June 1910.
From the Trickster’s Contest to the Flood
How the Volume Was Assembled
The book opens as Volume II of the Columbia University Contributions to Anthropology, edited by Franz Boas and issued jointly by Columbia University Press in New York and E. J. Brill in Leyden, where it was also printed. Boas’s preface explains how the collection came about. On several journeys to British Columbia he had already published, in Volumes III and X of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition publications, a great body of myths written down by George Hunt of Fort Rupert, a native speaker of Kwakiutl, working under Boas’s direction, with the texts phonetically revised by Boas and dictated partly by Hunt and partly by other natives. Because every Jesup text came from a single individual and therefore carried a uniform diction, Boas gathered tales from other natives, during and after the Jesup work, as control material against which the reliability of Hunt’s language and form could be checked. The tales on pages 1 to 243 were all dictated to Boas in this way; a few not obtained in the original are appended at the end. The preface is signed in New York, June 1910. A contents list follows, numbering fifty-two items with titles, clan attributions and page numbers, from the first tale of Q!a’neqe8laku and Xate’tsEn of the Le’gwilda8xu through a closing note on the origin of the sun.
The Contests of Xate’tsEn and Q!a’neqe8laku
The first tale, a tradition of the Qo’m8enoxu clan of the Le’gwilda8xu dictated by Wa’nuk in 1893, sets Kwakiutl text and English translation on facing pages. Xate’tsEn sits in his house when his attendant warns him that a visitor is coming to the beach. He goes out to invite Q!a’neqe8laku in and feeds him dried meat of the double-headed serpent, which contorts his guest’s body; Xate’tsEn checks his attendant’s urging. The two go out, and when Xate’tsEn looks at his salmon-weir Q!a’neqe8laku turns him to stone. Xate’tsEn recovers because he too has supernatural power, warns his guest, and turns him to stone in return—but Q!a’neqe8laku likewise becomes a man again. Each then seizes the other and hurls him upward, transforming him into a flying crane; each time the victim becomes a man again.
Xate’tsEn invites his guest to his playground, and they travel in canoes that are themselves double-headed serpents, the men belted with the same serpents. The playground is slippery with the blood of all who have failed there. Xate’tsEn runs first, straight up without resting at the halfway place, turns, descends and leaps into his canoe. Q!a’neqe8laku runs, nearly reaches the top, slips, loses his belt and sinks in the water. Xate’tsEn upsets his rival’s canoe and declares he has no real power, then waits in vain for him to surface. But Q!a’neqe8laku works mischief on Xate’tsEn’s land: he turns to stone a beaver by the river, then the watchman at the salmon-weir together with his pole, then another watchman. Xate’tsEn is vanquished without ever knowing what was done to him.
SE’nle8, Son of the Sun
The second tale, a Le’gwilda8xu tradition dictated by Malid in 1893, concerns a man at Ye’kwin who said he had come down from above as the son of the Sun, bearing the name SE’nle8 and wearing the sun mask. He searched for good country, found Bar-at-Mouth-of-River, and built his house on the meadow behind the point.
The Abandoned Child and Scab
An old grandmother wished to share her grandson’s fate, but the tribe refused; she left fire in a mussel-shell and dried salmon for the child, was taken aboard the canoe, and the people departed. The abandoned boy made a fire and wept over his parents’ desertion, then his heart grew strong. He scratched his body and the boils fell off; scratching again, his stomach swelled and a hand emerged, withdrew, and came farther out until a boy jumped from his stomach, leaving the child free of scabs. The boy from the stomach told him he had caused the scabbiness and that it would never return; the father rejoiced, thanked him for a supernatural treasure, and at the child’s request named him Scab.
Scab went to a river where his father’s dead sisters lay in boxes on a point of land. Taking evergreen needles in his shirt-fold, he entered the river mouth, turned right, and wished the needles into steelhead, silver salmon, dog-salmon, spring salmon and finally bull-heads to feed his father’s tribe; halfway across he looked seaward and saw vast splashing—the needles had become salmon. Father and son built a house at the river, and the salmon came in numbers. They tired of spearing, cutting and roasting, and when their stored fish vanished at night Scab told his father not to speak of it. When the house filled again, Scab had his father make a bow and four arrows.
The Dzo’noqlwa and the Recovered Arrows
At night Scab sat outside past midnight and saw a tall man from the woods, the Dzo’noqlwa, and pinched his father’s feet as a signal. The Dzo’noqlwa felt through the hole in the house; Scab waited until his breast showed and shot him in both sides of the breast, two arrows each. The creature retreated into the woods crying out and pushing down trees in anger. In the morning Scab blackened his face, put on a red cedar-bark head-ring, neck-ring and bird-down, and went inland. He found a trail and a pond, where a little Dzo’noqlwa girl came for water; he learned she fetched it for her sick father and told her not to say a strong shaman sat by the water. The girl repeatedly fainted from the weight of his word, and when the Dzo’noqlwa asked what they might pay, Scab said he would take nothing from their house, warning that he was a man of supernatural power despite the snapping door.
Scab chewed hellebore, entered, blew saliva on both sides against the double-headed serpent darting its tongues at the door, and went to the rear where the Dzo’noqlwa lay. He felt the chest, found his arrow, and declared this one had stolen their salmon; he felt all four arrows, sang his sacred song, circled the house four times, and scratched the wound with his nails. The Dzo’noqlwa grew feeble and groaned; Scab took the arrow-end in his teeth, bit, pulled it out and hid it, and the many people never knew he had recovered his arrow.
Great-Inventor Brings Water and Rivers
The myth opens in a world without water, where people drink only the juice of roots. Great-Inventor sets out to find water for his tribe, knowing that a single woman at Bull Harbor possesses it. He finds her asleep, warming her back, and tricks her: he places dung behind her, wakes her with a shove, and complains that her house is soiled and that he wants a drink. She tells him to drink, and he keeps his mouth in the water a long while, claiming each time she protests that he has not yet drunk because his mouth is dusty. All the while he is filling a sea-lion bladder hidden on his person, and when he finishes, her water is gone. He crosses to the inland side in his folding paddle-side canoe and urinates to make rivers—small where he sprinkles, larger elsewhere—circling the world until the work is done after four days. Returning to Crooked-Beach, he invites his tribe, recounts the rivers he has made, and announces that he will take a wife from Salmon to populate them.
The Suitor Hidden in the Fire-Wood
The tribe sets out in the folding canoe, steering southward, and the canoe passes under the sea. Great-Inventor sees the color of Salmon’s smoke and pushes back the trees, leaving one standing whose trunk he whitens. Salmon’s slave comes paddling, sees the whitened tree, and drives his wedge into its base; Great-Inventor bites off the wedge’s point, which has never been blunted since Salmon became a man. The slave laments, and Great-Inventor emerges from the opposite side, restores the broken wedge, and asks whether Salmon’s chief has a daughter who takes walks. The slave says the princess comes first to meet him and will try to carry the heart of the fire-wood on her shoulder, and warns him to take a stone when first cohabiting, since her crotch always bites. Great-Inventor pushes down the tree, wedges it, keeps its heart, and hides inside; the wood is loaded with the heart on top, and he leaves word to travel at daybreak. When the fire-wood gatherer arrives, the princess wades out and takes the top piece containing him, and he cohabits with her, holding white-pine gum in his mouth. She carries the wood in her arms to her room, and by the next day she is pregnant.
The Trial of the Settee and the Resurrection of Food
In the morning his tribe comes ashore, and the girl is told to bring the one lying with her to the fire. She warns him that her father’s settee is used to kill suitors, for it contains squid-bones. He straps a sandstone to his back, meets his tribe entering, and comes out of the room unharmed. Salmon tells his wife to give their son-in-law food, and the mother-in-law sends the younger sisters of Great-Inventor’s wife to play in the water; they become sockeye salmon, are cut and roasted, and the roasted food is set before the company. Great-Inventor pulls out a sockeye’s collar-bone and pushes it behind his ear; after eating, the bones are gathered and thrown into the water, and the salmon jump back to life, all but one lacking a blanket-pin. He then tells the parents they are too stout and that he will cut them without killing them, and he calls his younger brother Duck. He cuts open the duck, removes its intestines, covers it, and the female duck rises so that the duck comes to life. Salmon and his wife lie on the board where the duck was cut, and Great-Inventor cuts them up, ordering the tribe not to touch them for four days and to prepare to go home.
The Salmon Follow the Chieftainess
The crew goes aboard, Great-Inventor carries his wife aboard, and the side-paddles paddle. The various salmon board their canoes to follow their chieftainess, and Great-Inventor’s canoe waits for them, wishing to see the mountains’ face while working. Deer asks to go ahead and is told not to, that they must first see their land’s face. When Great-Inventor discovers land, he tells Deer to go ahead; Deer jumps from one salmon canoe to another and capsizes them all. The salmon begin to jump, and Great-Inventor rises and points to the rivers, naming them and saying, “You will go that way.” And so the salmon go to the rivers made by Great-Inventor.
X’a’nElku and the Hidden Child
A tradition of the Koskimo, dictated by Yagoias in 1900, tells of a people always killed by the Xo’yalas and left few. A man goes to hide his only surviving child, X’a’nElku, when all his other children are dead; there are only three—the man, his wife, and the child. X’a’nElku asks for a bird-arrow, and the notes break off there.
The Birth of Greedy-One
A woman who is a man’s sweetheart pretends to be dead and is placed in a coffin-box taken into the woods; her lover follows and cohabits with her in the coffin. A chief’s slave discovers this and reports to his master, and the chief and slave open the grave-box. The woman shuts her eyes but is only lying; the chief cuts open his “dead wife” with a knife, making her truly dead, and she is found pregnant. He puts her child back into the box and leaves it. The slave later finds the child alive, sitting in the box, and the chief carries it home. The child grows up shooting birds and animals, and speaks to a friend his own size, proposing they go up to the upper world; he gives the friend a bird-mask, and they fly up and sit by the water. The chief’s daughter takes up the bird and keeps it as a pet; the child, named Owaqenit, removes his bird-mask, declares the chief’s daughter his wife, and lies with her. The chief above summons them and spreads the death-mat, intending to kill Owaqenit, but Owaqenit is supernatural and does not die; he eats with his wife. The daughter bears a child and throws it down; a chief’s slave paddling hears crying, finds the child among seaweeds, wraps it in his cape, puts it in the canoe’s stern, and paddles home. The chief is glad, but the child will not eat. An old man asks for two bull-heads, which are brought, and the child eats, finishes, is hungry again, and is fed again; then it stands and eats all the food in its father’s house, then in another house, then all kinds of food in all the houses, until the tribe leaves and the child is alone with nothing to eat.
Greedy-One’s Escapades
Searching for food, Greedy-One finds Crabapple-Owner climbing about, becomes a child again, and is taken as her child; he eats all her food.
The Princess Brought Home and the Serpent Slain
The four attendants of Inviter brought the princess down to the water, and when she stepped aboard her great husband’s canoe the people of Wealth-coming-up tied a rope to the large house and towed it along behind. They came soon to Cut-Beach, where the numerous tribe lifted the house by its corners and set it on the ground in the middle of the village site, finishing it by evening. The tribe rejoiced that their chief now lived with his wife, and Wealth-coming-up kept giving feasts.
After long living at Cut-Beach, Wealth-coming-up felt a wish to walk inland. He saw a double-headed serpent, bit the end of his tongue, drew blood, and spat it on the serpent and on his cane. Then he struck the man in the middle of the serpent between the eyes and split it in two; the serpent died. He took its intestines and scales, buried the intestines at the foot of a hill, and pulled one end to the rear of the village. As they stretched out he spoke to them, saying they would be water for future generations, never ceasing to run even in a dry summer, and a little river began to run. His supernatural quality was again present in him.
Transformed into a Rock
Word came that Q!a’neqe8laku was coming to set everything right. Wealth-coming-up told his tribe that when the Lord came he would ask to be transformed into a rock, an island in the water, to be seen by later generations. One attendant asked to be transformed too, but to be placed under him lest he remain on the rock. After a long time Q!a’neqe8laku came and was invited by Wealth-coming-up, who asked to be turned into a rock in the water at the river, to be prayed to by later generations. The Lord called him to the water; Wealth-coming-up went ahead, his attendant behind, Q!a’neqe8laku behind them both. Upstream of the water-drawing place the attendant lay face down and Wealth-coming-up sat on his back; as soon as he sat he was transformed into rock. The tribe prayed to Q!a’neqe8laku, frightened by what was done to their chief.
The Death and Return of Potlatch-Giver
A second tradition tells how the ancestors of the Divided tribe went to Cave to gather herring-spawn, their chief being Potlatch-Giver. At Cave a high hill falls steeply to the sea, and the chief, being a shaman, purified himself and stood constantly on a dangerous narrow place at the precipice. His four attendants grew angry and plotted to kill him, one saying they would follow and push him down. In the morning Potlatch-Giver went again to the dangerous place; the warrior attendant walked along the rock and pushed him down, and he fell and died. The tribe hid him below.
After four days an Owl came, crying, “O friend Potlatch-Giver! arise and try this owl mask of Gwegwaa’8yaswa’.” He arose and was given the owl mask; the Owl told him to put it on, for people when dead always come to him. It fitted him, but when told to try to fly he only turned over. The Owl said he was a bad hand at flying, told him to take off the mask, said he would always be buried at Cave, and drove him away. Potlatch-Giver went back to where he had been hidden and was dead.
After four days he heard a voice inviting him for Spouting-at-Mouth-of-River. He arose, followed the man, was taken to the beach and aboard a war-canoe, and paddled to the other side of a point, where he saw many houses and was met. A small hunting-canoe was brought; aboard it, it became a killer-whale. Told to spout, he failed four times, only falling flat or moving on his back, and gave up. One man said he was Spouting-at-Mouth-of-River, to whom the common dead of all tribes come; being a bad hand, he should go back to his grave at Cave. Four young men carried him back.
After four days he heard a voice inviting him for Place-of-staying-away. He arose, followed, saw a canoe, and went aboard; the man pushed off and paddled toward Steel-Head-Salmon-Body. Arriving, he saw many houses and much noise and was met by many men. At the house door one man warned him to take care not to turn his face toward the naked women when they called, else he would not return home; to walk to the right side and sit in the rear, and not eat what they gave him. They entered; the naked women, really white-skinned, pulled at him in vain, and warned, he walked to the rear. They tried to give him food; he said he was not hungry and was not urged. Soon a noise arose outside; three men came in with water dripping from their necks. Two men at once embraced two women and cohabited, but one passed and sat by Potlatch-Giver. Asked what brought him, the man said their canoe had upset at Ocean-Place, and Potlatch-Giver recognized him as the prince of Ha’nkwasogwElaxu, chief of the Ocean tribe. He warned him not to eat.
Surpassing and the Alder-Tree People
Surpassing heard voices across the salmon-weir calling for him to have mercy and pull them out. He found a man stuck back-first to an alder-tree, along with four men and women. He pulled the man off easily, then asked the two men and two women to roll stones together to make salmon-traps, each getting his own trap. Surpassing purified himself in the river, then started taking the four alder-tree persons to his house. He left to find blankets for them and encountered an old man and his wife, who rose and danced silently when they saw him. Asked why they danced, the old man said they thought he had lost his way in the woods. Surpassing asked his name; he replied “Walking-over-All,” and his wife “Born-to-walk-fast-alone.” Surpassing said he was not their son but Surpassing, who came from the upper world to the mountain Right-on-Top. The old man said Surpassing should be their nephew; Surpassing was glad and left.
He lassoed and skinned a deer, clubbed and skinned many geese, and went home. An alder-tree man asked what the geese said; Surpassing asked him to tell, and the man reported they said, “The good chief Surpassing is making a salmon-trap.” Surpassing laughed and explained they meant he alone came down from the upper world to make right everything wrong in the lower world. He gave the deer-skin and goose-skin to his tribe for blankets, then questioned the old couple, who said they had four boys and four girls who died. They had eaten clams at Ge’g”
Power, Transformation, and the Making of Crests
What holds these stories together is a particular understanding of supernatural power, or nau’alaku: it is not a moral quality but a capacity, and it shows itself in the ability to transform, to survive, to come back. Two rivals test each other by turning one another to stone and back again, by throwing each other skyward to become cranes; the one who slips on the blood-slicked playground is not exposed as evil but as lacking, and he takes his revenge by quietly petrifying his host’s watchmen. Scab, the child cut from his dead mother’s body, is a shaman before he is a man: he shoots the cannibal giant, then “cures” him by drawing the arrows back out of his chest, and is paid with a wife and the water of life. Great-Inventor steals water in a sea-lion bladder, urinates the rivers of the world, and wins a salmon wife by hiding inside a log. Over and over the tales treat transformation as ordinary fact—people become birds, salmon, stone, mountains—and treat the resulting landmarks as the record of what happened.
The same logic governs the origin of crests, names, and dances, which is what much of the collection is really about. Families possess their privileges because an ancestor met a spirit, married one, or stole something from one: a hunter taken beneath the sea returns with a house whose door-beams are sea-lions; a chief’s successor buys a copper called Causing-Destitution and is killed for it; Shelter turns gull eggs into men and shells into women and so founds a tribe, then secures the war dance and the stone pile-driver from a stranger on a riverbank. The stories are charters. They explain why one lineage owns a mask, a song, a winter dance, or a fishing place, and they are told with the precision of title deeds.
A Trickster’s Appetites and a Father’s Shame
The collection’s humor collects around Mink, Born-to-be-the-Sun, who is foolish in exactly the ways people are. He marries Kelp and nearly drowns embracing her; he marries Frog-Woman and is deafened by the croaking he insisted on; he strikes Diorite-Woman in the face and bloodies his own hand. He gorges on sea-eggs, is beaten dead by his in-laws, and revives with a sleepy “I slept very long.” His wife finally paddles away while he dives, and he sits on the rocks eating sea-eggs, untroubled, having finished with wives. Set against this comedy are stories of real cruelty and grief: a chief cuts the child from his murdered wife’s body and leaves it in the grave-box; Ha’da-Woman’s father, given a dish of oil that never empties, eats until the floor overflows and is driven out in shame; Ya’x’stlal, struck by his father for being lazy, walks into the mountains at night to die and instead finds his power. The tone shifts without warning, and that range is part of what the volume preserves.
What the Record Was For
The book’s importance lies less in any single plot than in its method. By printing the Kwak’wala beside the translation and naming every narrator, Boas made the tales checkable—a reader can see whose version this is and in what words it was told. That was the point of gathering them from many throats rather than one. The result is a body of material that later students of Northwest Coast oral literature have returned to constantly, and a portrait of a narrative tradition in which myth, law, property, and entertainment are not separate things. The stories end as they began, with power moving through the world: a chief asks to be turned to stone so that later generations will pray to him, and the Lord of the tales grants it.
