Tlé’esa (Boas’s Kamloops account)

Overview

Boas opens his Kamloops collection with four brothers preparing to travel. Their mother throws a supernatural substance over them to make them strong. It reaches the three younger sons but misses the eldest, Tlé’esa, who immediately becomes a dog. She warns them of the dangers ahead. Although he continues to use speech, a spear, staff and hammer, the account explicitly presents him as a dog during the later climbing contest; it gives no intervening restoration to human form.

Following the South Thompson country, he wedges apart the closing rocks of the woodchucks’ dwelling and kills the dangerous occupants, declaring that they will henceforth feed people instead of killing them. He overcomes a singing woman’s attacking rattlesnakes with cones gathered beforehand. His brothers repeatedly take the rewards while he is still fighting: the best meat, the woman, tobacco, mountain-goat fat and, later, eagle feathers. His repeated success does not turn the journey into an account of consistently grateful companions.

At the house of bears and Coyote, his brothers cover him with stone knives and leave him tethered outside. A bear kills each younger brother in a pole-climbing contest. Tlé’esa cuts his tether, climbs against the bears and cuts down four opponents. He assembles his brothers’ remains and leaps over them, restoring them to life. Elsewhere he protects his chest with a flat stone against a murderous rabbit’s kick and survives being swallowed by a huge river-straddling elk, killing it from within before his brothers cut him out.

The travellers meet Tkumenaälst, whom their falling rocks cannot harm. This stranger feeds them from a tiny basket that refills after each spoonful, then surpasses them in driving his head into rock. In the eagle episode, Tlé’esa braces his staff against a cliff and spits red and white paint to mimic fatal injuries. Taken to the nest as presumed prey, he intimidates the young birds, kills their mother with his hammer and makes the young carry him down. His brothers again seize the feathers.

The final encounter brings the brothers to a girl dancing across the Fraser River. They sit watching her and remain until they turn into stones. The text does not describe a subsequent revival, nor does it explicitly blame the girl or explain a punishment. This ending belongs to the collected narrative and is not presented as a verified geological account.

The section is headed as Shuswap stories collected at Kamloops. Boas’s preface says that this group reached him through an elderly French-Indigenous intermediary, whom he does not name there. The printed German account is thus mediated; the individual teller of Tlé’esa is not supplied, and the 1895 volume date is not assigned as the date of an oral performance.

Origins & earliest records

Franz Boas, Indianische Sagen von der Nord-Pacifischen Küste Amerikas (Berlin1895), I: Sagen der Shushwap, Gesammelt in Kamloops, no1 Tlé’esa,1–4. Preface describes the collection’s intermediary without naming this individual storyteller.

Records & interpretation

Complete German story1–4 and its notes read. Original printed1 and4 inspected for the name, opening dog transformation and final stones. Boas’s preface and title read; no first oral date or biological identification of the supernatural beings asserted.

In the literature

Selected bibliography

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

1. 01

   Indianische Sagen von der Nord-Pacifischen Küste Amerikas

   Franz Boas; Kamloops Shuswap narrator not individually named · 1895

   SectionI no1 Tlé’esa,1–4, complete tale and notes; preface describes an unnamed French-Indigenous intermediary for the Shuswap collection. No equation with another region’s Coyote cycle.

2. 02

   Indianische Sagen von der Nord-Pacifischen Küste Amerikas — I. Shushwap, Kamloops; 1. Tlé’esa, complete pp.1–4 and notes

   Franz Boas · 1895

   Berlin: A. Asher & Co.,1895; actual title-page imprint visually checked in retained original microform PDF. German collected narrative, not an independent modern translation.

Family & connections

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Located primary passages

Specific passages supporting details in this entry, grouped by their published witness.

References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

1. Primary textOriginal Boas1895 collected volumeResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

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