Txa’msEm (Moses and Philip’s Nass River accounts)

Overview

Moses’s opening episodes in Boas’s Txa’msEm and Logobola’ give the future daylight thief an unsettling birth. A chieftainess pretends to die so that she can meet her lover in her grave box. After discovery, both are killed. Her child survives the real death, emerges from her body and grows in the box, receiving a name translated Sucking-intestines. Children discover him taking their arrows, and the chief’s family captures and raises him. He later wears a bird skin and travels toward the opening of the sky with a companion dressed as a woodpecker.

In the sky he becomes a cedar leaf, is swallowed in drinking water by a chief’s daughter, and is born again as her son. His persistent cries obtain the box containing daylight. After gaining freedom to play with it, he steals it and escapes through the sky opening. Boas explicitly judges that the teller has combined two narratives at this point. That is the collector’s interpretation, not a reason to silently replace Moses’s sequence with another supposedly definitive version.

The printed sequence itself alternates assertions of daylight and continuing darkness. When ghost fishers refuse his request for a share, Moses’s account has him break the daylight box and reveal their floating boxes. Philip’s separately marked alternatives, 2a and 5a, give another leaf conception and theft; the thief then only opens the box briefly, capsizes the ghosts’ box-canoes, closes it again, and leaves them fishing. These endings are preserved as alternatives rather than harmonised.

Philip also tells the rivalry with the figure called his brother, Logobola’. The latter controls fog and withholds water, making Txa’msEm plead. In an archery contest over the Nass and Skeena rivers, Txa’msEm instructs his crow grandchildren to replace Logobola’s successful arrow with his own. Logobola’ recognises the deception but concedes. The outcome assigns returning olachen to the Nass and fat salmon to the Skeena, before the pair separate toward sunrise and the ocean. The first sequence occupies pp.7–24.

The separately headed third sequence, pp.34–71, broadens this character well beyond a beneficent daylight bringer. Philip’s episodes1–17 repeatedly show hunger, failed imitation and violence: Txa’msEm cannot reproduce hosts’ gifts of bodily grease, fish roe and summoned berries; he tricks trusted animal hosts to obtain their food, but unseen people and Smoke-hole resist his thefts. His mutilated jaw can be recovered and reattached, while deaths during failed food-catching tricks are followed by renewed activity. Moses’s episodes18–20 and alternative3a continue the appetite, a food-stealing stump and the mistaken identification of leaves as a fine blanket. These are separately attributed episodes, not a single consistent moral biography.

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 Txa’msEm and Logobola’, pp.7–24, including alternatives2a/5a. Heading assigns1–5 to Moses and6–8,2a,5a to Philip; p.12 collector footnote comments on combination of narratives. Complete second and third English sequences, pp.25–71, also read; their headings retain separate episode attributions.

Selected bibliography

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

1. 01

   Tsimshian Texts: Nass River Dialect

   Moses and Philip, tellers; Franz Boas, recorder and translator · 1902

   Txa’msEm and Logobola’, pp.7–24; explicit subsection attribution in heading, p.12 editorial note, introduction p.5.

2. 02

   Tsimshian Texts: later Txa’msEm sequences

   Philip and Moses, tellers; Franz Boas, recorder and translator · 1902

   Complete second25–34 and third34–71 sequences; each heading assigns numbered episodes to tellers. Third1–17Philip,18–20/3aMoses.

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

A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.