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Overview
After Beaver gives fire to ghosts, humans send Mink to recover it. He borrows his grandmother’s knife and visits their dancing house. Offering to fetch washing water, he twice pretends to stumble, extinguishing the two fires. In the darkness he cuts off the chief’s head and covers the neck with dust to delay discovery. Blood eventually soaks through, and the chief’s mother tells the ghosts to buy the head back.
Mink constructs ten houses and has his grandmother make ten outfits. Moving between roofs in different clothes, he makes the visitors think many people live there. His grandmother rejects offered mantles and then bows and arrows. The ghosts mourn, and the trees’ tears become rain. Finally she accepts the offered fire-drill and returns the head; the story marks this as humans’ acquisition of fire. It does not state that returning the head revives the chief.
Three adjoining courtship episodes give different failures. Mink insists he can live with Horsetail and bend beneath passing driftwood, but a branching trunk impales and drowns him. In the next episode he marries a decayed resinous pine, dismissing its warning about sweating. Warm resin sticks him to his spouse; striking and kicking only attach more limbs until the midday heat loosens him. He leaves. Finally he marries Eagle, who already has five young, after claiming he can imitate its flight. Attempting to dive for salmon, he strikes branches and dies. The narrative provides no connecting resurrection between these endings.
In the separate Mouse story he dresses as a distant chief to disguise his poverty while seeking the celebrated dancer as a wife. Mouse recognizes him and refuses. This failed disguise differs from the successful ten-house deception; the collection does not give him universal powers of persuasion.
The longer Woodpecker-and-Eagle sequence supplies further episodes. Mink receives the two searching cousins as children, stages illness and instructs them to carry him to the shore with his harpoon. The narrative then calls him dead, has him speak from his grave, and lets him rise when he learns that one of his two blind wives still mourns him. The women give the travellers protective herbs. Later he helps Woodpecker recover Qut: both enter Thunderbird’s fish-weir as salmon, and Mink directs events by wishing. Woodpecker is eaten, but bones and the other salmon return to the water, where both regain life and take Qut away.
Subsequent episodes make his powers harmful. He changes his younger brother into a fish and strikes him, but the fish speaks to their grandmother when she prepares to cut it. Her recognition defeats his lie. Later the brother is simply said to be alive again, without a narrated restoration. Mink also makes the grandmother appear young and passes her off as his daughter to obtain copper bracelets, a deception eventually detected. Finally he assumes a deer’s form to approach women, assaults one after they begin skinning it, and is mutilated when the women retaliate. The closing stone transformation has an ambiguous masculine pronoun following the reference to the severed organ; this profile does not decide that it denotes Mink’s whole body.
Origins & earliest records
Boas1895, Indianische Sagen von der Nord-Pacifischen Küste Amerikas, III.8,42–44; III.9, Der Nerz,44; III.11, Die Maus,45. The section introduction credits most tales to George Stseélis and his wife without identifying the individual speaker for this item.
Records & interpretation
Complete selected German narrative and original pages read, with18–19 collection introduction. No modern community-wide belief or single pan-regional animal biography inferred. CompleteIII.3 supplies the subsequent depth; final petrification referent remains qualified.
In the literature
“Er ging zum Adler und wollte ihn heirathen.”
III. Sagen vom unteren Fraser River; complete III8 pp.42–44, III9 p.44 and III11 p.45 selected Mink appearances; brief exact German prose p.44 · Boas’s German collected narrative witness; no independent Indigenous-language translation claimed
Mink borrows his grandmother’s knife, enters the ghosts’ household and takes the chief’s head. Appearing from multiple houses in different clothing deceives the visitors into believing that many people live there. His grandmother rejects initial compensation and exchanges the head for a fire-making implement; the source then says that people have fire.
“Er ward in einen Stein verwandelt,”
III. Sagen vom unteren Fraser River; 3. Der Specht und der Adler, complete pp.30–36 and note; brief exact German prose p.36 · Boas’s German collected narrative witness; no independent Indigenous-language translation claimed
Within this complete story, Mink takes the rescuing youths into his household, dies after pretending illness, speaks from the grave and rises again when one of his two wives remarries. Later he helps Woodpecker recover Qut in salmon form. He transforms and strikes his younger brother as a fish; their grandmother recognizes the deception. After failed Frog courtship brings a flood, Mink disguises the grandmother as his daughter to obtain copper ornaments. In the final sexual encounter the women mutilate him and he becomes a rock. His brother is explicitly alive again in that concluding scene.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Indianische Sagen von der Nord-Pacifischen Küste Amerikas
III.8,42–44; III.9, Der Nerz,44; III.11, Die Maus,45. Complete narrative and boundaries, original42–45; collection-level attribution qualified. Further complete III.3,30–36, original pages all checked; unrelated endings and revival gaps retained.
- 02
Indianische Sagen von der Nord-Pacifischen Küste Amerikas — III. Sagen vom unteren Fraser River; complete III8 pp.42–44, III9 p.44 and III11 p.45 selected Mink appearances
Berlin: A. Asher & Co.,1895, actual title imprint verified. Complete selected German episode(s) and attached notes independently read; original18–19 introduction and40–45 pages 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.
Indianische Sagen von der Nord-Pacifischen Küste Amerikas — III. Sagen vom unteren Fraser River; complete III8 pp.42–44, III9 p.44 and III11 p.45 selected Mink appearances
Berlin: A. Asher & Co.,1895, actual title imprint verified. Complete selected German episode(s) and attached notes independently read; original18–19 introduction and40–45 pages inspected.
- Mink borrows his grandmother’s knife, enters the ghosts’ household and takes the chief’s head. Appearing from multiple houses in different clothing deceives the visitors into believing that many people live there. His grandmother rejects initial compensation and exchanges the head for a fire-making implement; the source then says that people have fire.
- Mink marries a horsetail plant after ignoring its warning and is impaled and drowned by passing driftwood. A subsequent marriage to a decayed pine leads to entrapment in melted resin; he escapes when it softens and leaves the wife. Marriage to an Eagle with five young ends when Mink attempts its fishing descent and dies on the tree’s branches.
- During Pelican’s gift feast, Mink disguises himself in chiefly dress to seek Mouse as wife. She recognizes and rejects him, then goes with Thunderbird. Thunderbird’s existing wife is jealous; Mouse’s later taking of stored food causes her expulsion to earth.
No entire volume, original performance or independent Indigenous-language translation inspected. Collection-wide majority attribution is not converted into a definite individual-teller credit. Adjacent III6–7 seen only incidentally, not claimed as new complete coverage.
Primary source witness
Berlin: A. Asher & Co.,1895, actual title imprint verified. Complete selected German III3 narrative30–36 and attached footnote read in retained OCR and every original printed page; collection introduction18–19 also inspected.
- Within this complete story, Mink takes the rescuing youths into his household, dies after pretending illness, speaks from the grave and rises again when one of his two wives remarries. Later he helps Woodpecker recover Qut in salmon form. He transforms and strikes his younger brother as a fish; their grandmother recognizes the deception. After failed Frog courtship brings a flood, Mink disguises the grandmother as his daughter to obtain copper ornaments. In the final sexual encounter the women mutilate him and he becomes a rock. His brother is explicitly alive again in that concluding scene.
III. Sagen vom unteren Fraser River; 3. Der Specht und der Adler, complete pp.30–36 and note
No whole book, original performance or independent Indigenous-language translation inspected. Incidental precedingIII2 not claimed as complete; referenced earlier reports not independently read. Practical cultural procedures and chants excluded.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary textOriginal Boas1895 collected volumeResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
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