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Overview

In Moses’s account, a boy sitting on the shore with his father addresses a twinkling star as if it must be cold. The Star hears him and later carries him into the sky. His grieving parents cannot find him. A woman encountered at a smoking mountain tells the father that his son is tied beside the Star’s smoke hole, where fire sparks burn him. She directs him to prepare many arrows, which he shoots into a chain reaching from a mountain to the opening of the sky.

The father climbs with tobacco, red paint and sling-stones. Another adviser tells him to make an image resembling his son. He tests figures of several woods over fire: their cries cease too soon, until yellow cedar provides a convincing substitute. He then meets G’ix’sats’a’ntx, who is splitting wood. Gifts secure this figure’s guidance to the house and advice to wait until its inhabitants sleep.

The father exchanges the wooden image for his child and escapes. Its crying initially deceives the chief, but when it stops, the household discovers the substitution and pursues them. The fleeing father scatters the goods he carries. The pursuers stop for red paint and blue sling-stones; Boas’s footnote connects these colors with the stars. G’ix’sats’a’ntx then receives more tobacco and swells until he blocks the path, preventing the Star people from reaching the fugitives.

Father and son descend the arrow chain, and the father pulls it down behind them. They return home to the mother, ending the story in a completed rescue. The sky community includes a hostile captor and chief, while figures met on the journey give indispensable aid. Their specific relations should not be replaced with a claim that all stars are uniformly malevolent. The crying wooden substitute and swelling helper belong to this version, told by Moses in Boas’s Nass River collection, rather than to every Northwest Coast arrow-chain narrative.

Hears a child’s address from earthCarries a child into the skyHousehold around a fireDeceived temporarily by a wooden imageStar colors linked to scattered giftsRescue via an arrow chain
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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.

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Records & interpretation

Complete English narrative The Stars, pp. 86–93, and named-teller heading read alongside the edition’s introduction p.5. Indigenous-language text is printed, but no independent linguistic retranslation is claimed.

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

    The Stars, complete pp. 86–93; 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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