Squirrel chief and daughter (Moses’s account)

Overview

Four children in Moses’s Squirrel repeatedly hunt at the foot of a great spruce until only the squirrel chief and his daughter remain. The daughter appears as a white squirrel running around the trunk; when she comes around its other side, one boy sees a young woman. She calls him into her father’s house. The chief feeds him before asking why he killed the community. The boy answers that he did not know they were the chief’s people.

The chief asks him to burn the stored meat and skins when he returns home, promising to make him a shaman. Wearing a dancing apron, bear-claw crown and squirrel skins, the chief sings and uses a rattle. A year passes in this initiation. Meanwhile, the human family has lost the boy. His brother eventually finds a nearly fleshless body hanging in the spruce, and the family brings it home.

Four close friends watch the arranged and covered body while the parents stay elsewhere. After four days and nights, singing accompanies its return to life and the restoration of its flesh. The revived prince then asks the assembled community to burn all the squirrel meat, bones and skins he had collected. They comply, and the squirrel chief rejoices because his own people return to life. The boy’s shamanic name becomes Squirrel.

The complete ending links two restorations rather than making the squirrel chief merely a punisher. The daughter summons the hunter, the chief initiates him, human attendants tend his body, and the destruction of stored remains restores the animal community. This is Moses’s Nisga’a narrative in Boas’s 1902 collection. It differs from Matthias’s Six Hunters, whose squirrel woman rescues hunters and later burns a settlement after further killing; neither ending should be substituted for the other.

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 Squirrel, pp.211–216, read through the restored prince’s final song and name. Moses heading and introduction p.5 retain narrator and recording context.

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

   Squirrel, complete pp.211–216; 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.

1. Primary textBoas 1902 original Nass River collectionResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

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