Copper-clawed frog (Moses’s account)

Overview

In Moses’s Growing-up-like-one-who-has-a-grandmother, an orphan wins two challenges set by his chief-uncle: he knocks a copper from a tree and kills a white bear. Rival young men claim the achievements, but the boy’s arrow proves his success in the hunt. The ashamed chief moves the settlement away, abandoning his own daughter with the boy and the boy’s grandmother. Their poverty leads the boy to seek food and power beyond the empty village.

At a lake he calls out, and its guardian emerges: a huge frog with long copper claws, a copper mouth, eyes and eyebrows. It pursues him ashore. After narrowly escaping, he prepares a split tree held open across the path. On a second visit he provokes the frog again, leads it into the opening and knocks away the supports. The closing trunk kills it. He then releases and skins the body, retaining the copper claws on the hide.

Wearing the skin with his limbs inside and its chest laced shut, he can walk along the lake bottom and catch fish by hand. He secretly leaves catches outside the house and initially lets the princess believe ravens found them. His range expands downriver into the sea, and the catches grow from trout to salmon and larger marine animals. When she discovers his work, he explains the frog-skin power, and they marry. They have two children and accumulate abundant provisions.

The people who deserted them suffer famine. Visitors discover the stored food, and the young man feeds them and sends gifts. The community returns and recognizes his generosity. At a subsequent distribution his uncle formally gives him the story’s title name. The narrative includes wealth exchange and enslaved people among the distributed possessions; its account of prosperity is not detached from those social relations.

The benefit becomes irreversible. The hunter repeatedly tells his wife that the frog skin is growing difficult to remove. Eventually he stays beneath the sea and no longer comes ashore. He continues sending fish and marine animals for his children, culminating in a whale too large for his wife to carry alone. The ending preserves both enduring provision and family separation. The dead lake guardian and the later human wearer are successive participants in this transformation, not an unexplained single animal identity.

Origins & earliest records

Franz Boas, Tsimshian Texts, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 27 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1902). Recorded at Kinkolith, at the Nass River’s mouth, in November–December 1894. Boas’s introduction, dated June 1899, names Philip, Moses, Chief Mountain and Moody as the collection’s narrators. The volume prints the language it calls Nîsqa’E alongside English translation; individual story headings identify their tellers.

Records & interpretation

Complete English Growing-up-like-one-who-has-a-grandmother, pp.137–168, read through the wife’s concluding explanation. Moses heading and introduction p.5 establish attribution and recording context.

Selected bibliography

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

1. 01

   Tsimshian Texts: Nass River Dialect

   Moses, teller; Franz Boas, recorder and translator · 1902

   Growing-up-like-one-who-has-a-grandmother, complete pp.137–168; named Moses heading and introduction p.5.

Family & connections

A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.

References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

1. Primary textBoas 1902 original Nass River collectionResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

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