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Overview
A prince resisting an arranged marriage meets a beautiful woman near a lake and secretly marries her. She requires fidelity and secrecy; four calls from the shore summon her to take him into her underwater home. For more than two years he returns to his bed before dawn, cold and damp. His companion follows him, copies the call on another night and is admitted below. There he seizes the couple’s little son and carries him to the sleeping prince.
The child creeps through the village, removing people’s eyes and threading them on red-cedar bark. The prince discovers his parents and the other inhabitants dead, while his sister and her newborn survive. He takes his son back to the lake, discards the string of eyes and reproaches the lake woman for letting a stranger take their child. The story does not name the child or say that the mother ordered his violence.
The grieving woman gives her husband gambling sticks and sends him south; he becomes rich through repeated victories. She clothes his sister in a garment of wealth and an ever-new belt, puts the sister’s own infant on her back and sends her northwest. Those who encounter this woman or hear her baby cry become wealthy. This beneficent infant is distinct from the lake woman’s destructive son.
After mourning below the lake, the mother carries her child to the coast and enters the sea. Only at this conclusion does the narrative give her a partly fish, partly woman body and the name Haklula’q. The earlier lake encounters describe a beautiful woman, so her final sea form should not be projected onto every scene. The account connects destructive kinship rupture, travelling wealth and a change of dwelling; it provides no episode of her luring sailors with song.
A separate account titled Haklula’q, story 31, places a floating child between two sea-otter islands. Canoe crews take or attack it, provoking its mother’s storms and whirlpools. Attempts to kill the child repeatedly end in further deaths. A surviving chief eventually builds a yew canoe strong enough to withstand the waves and takes the child onto an island. The mother overturns the island, but the canoe keeps his party afloat. Her child dies during the ensuing confinement.
The survivors later find the mother asleep on the water, seize her by the tail and outrun a whirlpool. She dies when they reach their old village. They display mother and child, then establish new marriages elsewhere; the chief adopts the sea woman as a crest, and sea-otter hunting becomes accessible again. This is a second story with its own deaths and settlement-renewal ending, not an explicitly identified continuation of the former lake wife’s biography. Its mother’s tail does not supply a complete anatomical description.
A third use of the name occurs in The Deluge, story 61. Its opening places an immense whale in the Lake of the Beginning at the source of the Skeena. The animal has fish-like gills and four dorsal fins in a row; the lake rises and floods riverside settlements when it surfaces, then subsides when it descends. A footnote supplies the name Haklula’q. This witness describes a flood-producing lake animal rather than narrating the motherhood or human marriage of the other two accounts. The shared label does not establish one continuous biography or justify combining their different bodies. The remainder of The Deluge follows two brothers and a group of supernatural helpers obtained below the lake.
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 18, Plucking Out Eyes, complete pp. 154–158, including the final naming and sea transformation; collection preface pp. 31–32. Story 31, Haklula’q, complete pp. 221–225 and its comparative note p. 783 also read; both narratives kept distinct. Story 61, The Deluge, complete pp. 346–350; opening whale name in footnote p. 346.
In the literature
“She became a being part fish, part woman,”
18. Plucking Out Eyes, complete pp.154–158; concluding transformation p.158 · Franz Boas, based on Henry W.Tate’s free interlinear rendering, Preface31
The lake woman moves to the sea with her child after the village catastrophe. The narrator introduces this fish-and-woman form only in the final paragraph.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Tsimshian Mythology
Story 18, Plucking Out Eyes, complete pp. 154–158, including the final naming and sea transformation; collection preface pp. 31–32. Story 31, Haklula’q, complete pp. 221–225 and its comparative note p. 783 also read; both narratives kept distinct. Story 61, The Deluge, complete pp. 346–350; opening whale name in footnote p. 346.
- 02
Tsimshian Mythology — 18. Plucking Out Eyes
Washington: Government Printing Office, 1916; Thirty-first Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1909–1910. Complete selected English narrative 18, pp.154–158, independently read; original concluding p.158 visually checked. Preface pp.31–32 translation provenance previously independently inspected.
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.
Located primary passages
Specific passages supporting details in this entry, grouped by their published witness.
Tsimshian Mythology — 18. Plucking Out Eyes
Washington: Government Printing Office, 1916; Thirty-first Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1909–1910. Complete selected English narrative 18, pp.154–158, independently read; original concluding p.158 visually checked. Preface pp.31–32 translation provenance previously independently inspected.
- A prince secretly marries the lake woman and fathers her child. His friend takes the child from her underwater house; the child kills the village inhabitants by removing their eyes. The prince, his sister and her separate newborn survive. The prince returns his child and reproaches the woman. She gives the surviving siblings wealth-bringing gifts and sends them in different directions. After mourning, she takes her own child to the sea. Only the concluding paragraph identifies her as part fish and part woman and names her Haklula’q.
18. Plucking Out Eyes, complete pp.154–158; concluding transformation p.158
No whole-volume claim, independent Tsimshian translation, ritual instructions or identification of an additional individual narrator. Separate Haklula’q accounts 31 and 61 were not read in this bounded section and are not harmonised with narrative 18.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary textBoas/Tate 1916: Plucking Out Eyes and Haklula’qResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
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