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Overview
Moses’s Grizzly Bear begins with hunters seeking food during winter scarcity. A mother grizzly and her two cubs occupy a den beyond an icy mountain approach. She kills hunters who reach the den. Another man falls within reach, but intimate contact changes her response: she asks him to marry her and tells the cubs to make the fire burn for their new father. The narrative makes a dangerous animal encounter the beginning of a marriage, without first changing the bear into an ordinary human woman.
Years later the man longs for his parents, his first wife, his child and his sister. The grizzly accompanies him home. The sister fears her appearance, and the parents are frightened by her large paws, but the husband brings her in and the household serves her food. She asks to hold his child and later meets the human wife. The text distinguishes the woman’s child from the grizzly’s own cubs, who remain in the mountain den.
The two wives gather berries together. The human woman uses a bag; the bear eats hers and later produces them into dishes from her body. Guests who see this hesitate to eat the bear’s offering and take it home instead, where their wives consume it. She subsequently empties a salmon trap before daylight, brings the catch home and directs her father-in-law to distribute it. Both wives also dry substantial stores of fish.
A young man who finds the trap empty insults her, connecting his exclusion from the catch with her earlier bodily method of serving berries. She kills him, remembers her cubs and leaves for the mountain. Her husband follows despite her repeated warning to return home. When he refuses because he loves her, she kills him too. The ending ruptures the household rather than reconciling bear and human ways of living.
The complete Nisga’a witness was told by Moses and printed by Boas in 1902. It combines lethal behavior with marriage, care and food distribution. It does not establish a general rule that every bear spouse in Northwest Coast traditions behaves this way, nor should its family be merged with Tate’s distinct Black-Bear household.
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 The Grizzly Bear, pp.200–210, including the husband’s death and bear’s departure, read with named Moses heading and introduction p.5.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
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Tsimshian Texts: Nass River Dialect
The Grizzly Bear, complete pp.200–210; 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.
- Primary textBoas 1902 original Nass River collectionResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
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