Stone and Elderberry Bush (Moses’s account)

Overview

Moses’s brief account gives Stone and Elderberry Bush the capacity to bear children. Elderberry Bush gives birth just before Stone, and that precedence determines the shortness of human life. The account states that people would not die so quickly if Stone’s children had arrived first. It closes with sorrow at the missed alternative, rather than a later quest to reverse the result.

The narrative’s contrast depends on two personified mothers and the ordering of their births. It supplies no contest, dialogue between them, deliberate deception or child-stealing episode. Nor does it describe either mother’s face or limbs. Keeping the pair together preserves the complete relation that makes the story meaningful without expanding its short witness into invented biographies.

Boas labels this text as told by Moses and prints it on page 72 of his 1902 Nass River collection. The introduction places the fieldwork at Kinkolith in 1894. This is a locally attributed Nisga’a witness, not a claim that every Indigenous North American tradition gives the same origin for mortality. The collector’s broad English terminology is not adopted as a universal cultural attribution.

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 narrative The Stone and the Elderberry Bush, pp. 72, 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 Stone and the Elderberry Bush, complete pp. 72; 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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