A Guide to B.C. Indian Myth and Legend. Ralph Maud
first major publication of myths and legends of the Northwest Coast was printed in German in 1895 and has remained untranslated.2 Indianische Sagen von derNord-Pacifische Kiiste Amerikas is a collection of the stories published during 1888-1895 in the two German periodicals hospitable to Boas’s reports, the gatherings from his first four trips to British Columbia, 1886, 1888, 1889, and 1890. The itineraries for these field trips have been conveniently tabulated and summarized in Ronald P. Rohner’s “Franz Boas: Ethnographer on the Northwest Coast” ed. June Helm Pioneers of American Anthropology (1966) pp. 151-247. What is also dismaying is how hurriedly these stories were collected. Outside of his base in Victoria, Boas never spent more than two weeks at any one place, often only a day or two. He worked under severe financial restrictions and faced many obstacles, the chief of which, initially, was his own inexperience. He had been a year with Eskimos in Baffinland (1883-84), and his observations there went far beyond his formal function of geographer, as The Central Eskimo (1888) attests. But the only Indians he had seen before 1886 were the Bella Coola “exhibited” at the Berlin Museum the previous year. Boas had taken the opportunity to do “field” research with this group, and had published on their language and culture.3 As it happened, a couple of these very Bella Coola contacts were in Victoria when he arrived on 18 September 1886, and facilitated his movements among the resident and visiting Indians. Speed was essential; he had budgeted for only three months to do a general reconnaissance of all the coastal tribes. “I am as well known here in Victoria as a mongrel dog,” he wrote of this period. “I look up all kinds of people without modesty or hesitation.”4 We can share his sense of depravity at trying to obtain clean texts in the congested Indian slums, and it is refreshing to read that, after sixteen days of hustling, he has embarked on a boat going north. He spends 6-17 October 1886 in Nawitti at the furthest tip of Vancouver Island. After 18-23 October at Alert Bay, he is back in Victoria for 26 October to 2 November; then off again to Cowichan (4-10 November); Comox (12 November to 2 December); Nanaimo (4-9 December); and ends up with just two days in Vancouver. It is, all in all, a great success. He has vocabularies enough to complete a linguistic map of the B.C. coast; he has packed off enough museum specimens to pay for the trip; and his manuscript of myths and legends “has reached page 326” (Rohner, p. 73). The other three trips which furnished the stories of Indianische Sagen were at a similar pace. The British Association for the Advancement of Science instructed him, through Horatio Hale, not to attempt a thorough study of any one tribe but to compile a general synopsis, i.e. to continue the kind of rushing around he had proved he could do. He was also asked to measure heads and collect skeletal remains, two disagreeable tasks which sapped his energies. It is a wonder that texts of permanent value could be obtained with so much scurrying. Perhaps Boas thought that few had, and left the collection untranslated, except for the following items which he placed in American journals:
(1) “On Certain Songs and Dances of the Kwakiutl of British Columbia” Journal of American Folklore 1 (1888) 49-64, which describes the potlatch Boas attended at Nawitti in 1886 and thus provides useful context (the materials appear in Indian-ische Sagen not so accommodated);
(2) “Notes on the Snanaimuq” American Anthropologist 2 (October 1899) 321-328 contains two tales from the Nanaimo section of Indianische Sagen, presented within the context of a description of tribal customs;
(3) “Salishan Texts” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 34 (January 1895) 31-48—Bella Coola texts with interlinear translation (the Indianische Sagen versions are longer, more sprawling, and may possibly be the same stories obtained through the medium of Chinook jargon);
(4) “Myths and Legends of the Catloltq [Comox] of Vancouver Island” American Antiquarian 10 (1888) 201-211, 366-373.
These are the selections from his earliest field work in myth that Boas offered his English-speaking public. Are they good stories? The question seems almost impertinent. Boas certainly would not claim that they were. Of the Bella Coola sampling, for instance, he states: “the texts are fragmentary and indifferent versions of myths” ("Salishan Texts" p. 31). In his letters home he makes it clear that he is really interested in the language: “The stories themselves are not worth much” (Rohner p. 50). When he says of the Comox stories, “in some ways the myths of the Comox are very interesting, and I am glad I have found so many of them” (Rohner p. 67), it is their pivotal position in the spread of motifs north to south along the coast which makes them interesting to him. The stories themselves are not especially interesting. And after a week at the Nawitti potlatch, Boas can write: “At present I am quite confused by the amount of nonsense to which I must listen” (Rohner p.38). The tidbits that appear in “On Certain Songs and Dances of the Kwakiutl” are quite appetizing, but future readers of Indianische Sagen should be warned that they will not be spared page after page of what Boas himself was very puzzled by.
Boas in 1894
The 1894 season was surely Boas’s best. It was his sixth, and he was lucky, and he had the skills to take advantage of his luck. As far as the British Association for the Advancement of Science was concerned, he was filling in gaps: the Nass River Tsimshian and the Tsetsaut. The ethnology is in his 1895 Report to the British Association; the myths and legends were published separately: “Traditions of the Tsetsaut” Journal of American Folklore 9 (1896) 257-268, and 10 (1897) 35-48; and Tsimshian Texts (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 27, 1902). As far as his other sponsor was concerned, the U.S. National Museum wanted an article from him. He gave them much more, the magnificent Social Organization and Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl, published as pp. 311-738 of the Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution for the Year Ending June 30, 1895 (Washington, D.C. 1897).
These results were achieved by Boas’s willingness now to stick it out in a place until he gets a “break.” When the S.S. Boskowitz arrived in Kinkolith on 10 October 1894, the Tsetsaut he was looking for were all away hunting. Boas sent for the old man of the tribe, with the promise that he would be well paid if he returned. Meanwhile, he busied himself with Tsimshian language and stories, and measuring the physique of the Indians who were available. He waited from 11 October to 24 October, when: “this afternoon, very unexpectedly, the old Tsetsaut appeared. You can imagine how happy I am. Now I can satisfactorily pursue the main work I had in mind for this place” (Rohner p. 163).
My first day with the Tsetsaut was a great disappointment. The man talks so terribly fast that I cannot get any proper material out of him. He may learn to speak more slowly if I insist on it, but I doubt it. I have to try my best, however. I worked the whole afternoon to learn the old habitat of the tribe and its relationship to the neighboring tribes. I am clear about it now, although it is. a very slow process with him. He also gave me two legends and some linguistic material—vocabulary only (Rohner p. 164).
Well, Boas did persist; so that on 1 November he can say with some satisfaction: “It seems that I have learned everything my friend the Tsetsaut knows” (Rohner p. 168). Boas deserves a lot of points for his persistence, and it seems ungracious to take any of those points away from him. But why is his account of this informant, Levi, so uninteresting in his 1895 Report to the British Association, and why do Levi’s stories in the Journal of American Folklore seem dull? We can be sure it wasn’t Levi’s fault. Rohner again gives us the spice. The letters have all the flavour which Boas denied his published reportage. Levi may have been “quite exasperating,” but he wasn’t boring:
I ask him through my interpreter, “How do you say in Tsetsaut: ‘If you don’t come, the bear will run away’?” I could not get him to translate this. He would only say, “The Nass could be asked a thing like this; we Tsetsaut are always there when a bear is to be killed. That’s why we can’t say a thing like this” (Rohner p. 166).
This is the kind of thing Boas unfortunately considered unpublishable.
I also asked him, “What is the name of the cave of the porcupine?” His answer was only, “A white man could not find it anyway and therefore I don’t have to tell you" (Rohner p. 166).
A man who can parry like that is not likely to tell stories as plain as the gruel of the Journal of American Folklore