A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.

Overview

After a wooden sea lion carries travelers to a distant coast in Moses’s account, they see a small man fishing from a large canoe. He dives, clubs halibut underwater and strings them together before surfacing. During another dive, the visitors steal two fish. He notices the loss, finds the strangers and kills the identified thief by striking him against a stone. His small stature therefore does not imply lack of physical power.

The fisher’s community summons the three survivors and gives them food. Its inhabitants are all small compared with their guests. They prepare wooden clubs for an expected war. Many kinds of birds arrive on a nearby open shore, and the people attack them. Flying feathers fill their mouths and noses, killing many combatants. The text explicitly calls this war and says the birds have not come merely to feed.

The three visitors find a different way to fight, killing the birds without clubs and without losing one of their own. Their success pleases the community, which the narrative names G’ilg’ina’mgan. The birds remain for a month before leaving. In gratitude or pity, the people then send the surviving travelers back to their own settlement. The story combines hospitality and aid with the earlier fatal punishment for theft; neither side is uniformly helpless or benevolent.

Boas’s footnote compares the name and episode with a Kwakiutl story and proposes a direction of borrowing. That is the collector’s comparative argument, not a narrator-supplied genealogy or a verified historical migration. This profile retains Moses’s Nisga’a witness and its Kinkolith recording context. It does not treat the fictional community’s stature as a description of an actual Indigenous population.

Underwater halibut fishingStrength despite small statureBird feathers deadly in battleReturn passage granted to visitors
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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.

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Records & interpretation

Complete English The Sea Lion Hunters, pp.108–115, named Moses heading and comparative footnote p.115 read with introduction p.5. Collector’s borrowing proposal kept distinct from the narrative.

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

    The Sea Lion Hunters, complete pp.108–115; Moses heading, collector’s comparison p.115 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

A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.

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