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Overview

A widow withholds food from her blind son even after he kills a polar bear by shooting toward the window with his sister’s guidance. His mother conceals the success; the sister secretly feeds him. A loon leads him to a lake and, through repeated dives, restores his sight. Seeing the bear’s skin reveals the deception, and he refuses his mother’s attempts to placate him.

After learning to hunt white whales, he uses his mother to hold the line of a powerful animal and deliberately lets it pull her into the sea. As she repeatedly surfaces and cries out, she changes into a narwhal. The narration supplies this bodily outcome without describing a horn made from her hair. The son and daughter then regret their part in her death and leave the settlement; the complete tale continues through his rescue of his sister from Qitua’jung and their eventual welcome by Iqignang. The transformation is not the narrative’s whole moral conclusion.

Human mother becomes narwhalEarlier loon restores the son’s sightRevenge followed by remorse
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Origins & earliest records

Boas published this witness in The Central Eskimo (1888), a work based chiefly on his Cumberland Sound and Davis Strait travels and supplemented by other travellers' reports. The selected passage does not supply a named speaker or a specific interview date. Its historical spellings and editorial framework remain attributed rather than generalized to every Inuit region.

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Records & interpretation

Boas 1888, Origin of the Narwhal: complete narrative through the siblings’ later shelter and marriages. The footnote points to a fuller Berlin publication; that fuller version has not been read.

Selected bibliography

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

  1. 01

    The Central Eskimo

    Franz Boas · 1888

    Origin of the Narwhal, complete printed narrative and note referring to a fuller Berlin version.

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

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  1. Primary textBoas 1888: Origin of the NarwhalResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

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