Chief Pestilence and his daughter (Tate’s account)

Overview

A prince leaves home after his cousin manipulates his wish to marry her, demanding wounds and a humiliating haircut before rejecting him. Of his four companions, only one stays with him. An old woman who already knows his story feeds them and directs him to Chief Pestilence’s house. She warns him to wait for its chief rather than answer the calls of people sitting along its sides. The English title Pestilence is the edition’s designation; the episode does not describe him sending an epidemic.

Following this advice, the prince reaches the chief and his daughter at the rear of the house. The chief puts him into a tub whose water boils by itself, then takes out and arranges his bones on a board. His daughter leaps over them and restores him to life with a changed appearance. A crystal comb lengthens his fiery red hair. The account praises pale skin and particular hair colours as beauty; these are values expressed in this historical telling, not objective standards.

The prince believes he has stayed two days, but two years have passed. Remembering the friend waiting by the brook, he goes with the daughter to look for him and finds only bones. She tells him to carry them back. The chief repeats the boiling and reassembly, and his daughter leaps over the remains four times to revive the friend. The crystal comb gives him the hair length and colour he requests. Both men return home transformed; the prince is compared to a supernatural being rather than explicitly becoming the chief’s successor.

The prince then retaliates against his cousin with the same humiliating demands. Seeking restoration, she travels with her maid to the house, but they answer the side occupants’ calls. Those occupants injure and expel both women; the maid helps her mistress home, where the princess dies. The chief and daughter are not stated to carry out this attack. The closing text attaches the story to coercive marriage customs, a historical narrative claim that should not be treated as an authoritative account of all Tsimshian marriages or as approval of those practices.

Origins & earliest records

Franz Boas, Tsimshian Mythology, based on texts recorded by Henry W. Tate, published in 1916 in the Bureau of American Ethnology’s thirty-first report for 1909–1910. Boas translated Tate’s free interlinear English renderings of his Tsimshian texts. The preface notes Tate’s editorial choices and some influence from published collections; the 1916 volume omits the original-language text.

Records & interpretation

Story 25, The Princess Who Rejected her Cousin, complete pp. 185–192, including closing marriage-custom commentary; preface pp. 31–32.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

1. 01

   Tsimshian Mythology

   Henry W. Tate, recorder; Franz Boas, translator and editor · 1916

   Story 25, The Princess Who Rejected her Cousin, complete pp. 185–192, including closing marriage-custom commentary; preface pp. 31–32.

Family & connections

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References

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1. Primary textBoas/Tate 1916: Chief Pestilence and his daughter (Tate’s account)Research access: 2026-10-05

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