A story as sharp as a kn.., p.50
A Story as Sharp as a Knife, page 50
the version told by Kihltlaayga at Ghaw in the spring of 1901, in Swanton
1908a : 495-500). I have not located Gyadiigha ; because of the probable
corruption of this sentence, I am not even sure it is a place name.
22 This is where we learn the protagonist's name - and though Sghiidagits does not say so, it appears to be where the protagonist himself first learns it too.
Nanasimgit is a shortened form of Gunanasimgit, which is the Haida adaptation of the Tsimshian name G_anaxnox Sm'oogyit. This means "spirit-power
headman" or "spirit-power aristocrat." (The literal meaning of sm' oogyit is "real person" or "genuine person." This is the conventional Tsimshian term
for a headman or for any member of the upper class.)
23 Isniigahl is a mountain - I am not sure which one - in the region of Portland Inlet, which leads to the mouth of the Nass. The Haida name may be a corruption of the Nisgha gyisidaawl, "downstream." Sghiidagits calls the son of this mountain (that is to say, the son of the spirit-being who lives in the mountain) Gitgidamttsiixh. I think this name is derived from the Tsimshian
gidig _ aniitsk, meaning Northwest Wind.
24 Tsuga heterophylla, the western hemlock ( qqang in Haida), is one of the dominant trees in the lowland coastal forest. The wood is neither hard enough nor 455
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a story as sharp as a knife
durable enough to find much use in Haida architecture or sculpture, but the
phloem is an important food, the branches are used to gather herring roe,
and the dead trees are a useful source of firewood. A tree that dies before it falls is, of course, especially prized, because the wood is dry the moment it is cut.
25 When Moody and Swanton were working through the transcript of this story and drafting their translation, Moody insisted that the following passage be inserted at this point :
Gyaghangaay qaaji hlghun' uhlaaghani.
Kilgatxhadlaayaghani.
Ll qiijugighugaangang wansuuga.
The housepole had three heads.
It gave the alarm.
It was always watching, they say.
It is certain that Moody had heard the story before, and perhaps he
had been learning to tell it himself. But these lines are not in Sghiidagits's style and do not belong in his version. (See Swanton n.d.2 : 561; 1905b :
340 n 8.)
26 Taadlat Ghadala, "Outruns Trout," is a mythname of the Swallow, who is
said to be the fastest of the birds, just as Plain Old Marten or Crummy Old
Marten (Kkuuxu Ginaagits) is said to be the fastest thing on land. The two
often appear in the myths as a pair. But Sghiidagits said earlier that Plain Old Marten was the one Nanasimgit left in charge of his canoe. This looks like a mistake, though the canoeman may be just a surface person - an unusually
fast surface person - named for the creature of myth who is mentioned here.
"Plain Old Marten" has roughly the same tone as "plain old mink" or "plain
old diamonds." The same diminutive suffix, -gits, appears in Sghiidagits's name as well.
27 The names translated Mainland Mouse and Mainland Weasel are Hlgii—
yuttsin and Hlkumaaksihl. They are found nowhere else in extant classical
Haida literature and are clearly of mainland origin. Wittsiin is Tsimshian for mouse, and maksiil is Tsimshian for weasel. The prefix in both cases probably comes from the Tsimshian diminutive lgu. In myth and daily life alike, the normal Haida words for mouse and weasel are quite different : qagan and ttlalgaa.
28 Swanton n.d.2 : folio 561.
29 Skaay makes sparing use of the particle wiiyadhaw - the southern form corresponding to wiidhaw. Sghiidagits, in this story, says wiidhaw once, and sometimes twice, in almost every narrative sentence, though he never utters the word when he is representing dialogue. Apart from the Nanasimgit trip—
tych, there is only one more page of Haida narrative which Swanton credits
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notes to chapters 5 & 6 (pages 130-143)
to Sghiidagits (Swanton n.d.2 : 601; 1905b : 356). I do not know when this
page was dictated, nor under what conditions, but the style is noticeably
different from that of the Nanasimgit narrative.
30 The organic nature of number in Native American philosophy is the subject of an interesting essay by J. Peter Denny (Denny 1986).
notes to chaPter six
1 The three Haida mythtellers identified in Indianische Sagen are "Old Kaigani," Wiha [= Wiiha], and Johnny Swan. Wiha is identified more precisely in Boas's notes as Johnny Wiha of Skidegate. Swan was a Skidegate man as well.
2 Benedict 1935, vol. 1 : xxix.
3 Most of the word lists are now in a single folder of manuscript, Boas n.d.1.
The dictionary, which Boas later gave to Melville Jacobs - in the hope that
he might do more work on Haida - is Boas n.d.4, now in Seattle.
4 For a summary of archaeological research on the Northwest Coast, see
Matson & Coupland 1995.
5 Kkwaayang was born about 1858 and died in 1926. She was known in English
as Isabella. The family name, Yaakw Llaanas, means "those amidships" in a
canoe, from Haida yakw, "middle," but it has further associations. Yaakw in Tsimshian means potlatch, from yaa, "to give away."
6 The early history of the salmon canning industry on the British Columbia
coast is outlined in Blyth 1991. Daxhiigang's daughter's recollections of this time are summarized in Blackman 1982 : 57. For a portrait of Port Essington
seen through the eyes of an adventuring colonial, see R. Geddes Large, The Skeena : River of Destiny (Vancouver : Mitchell Press, 1981) : 28-43.
7 Boas left a fairly detailed account of these sessions, in the form of several letters to his wife (see Rohner 1969 : 223-231).
8 Boas 1927. The book is based on a series of lectures Boas delivered in Oslo in 1925, after Daxhiigang's death.
9 Daxhiigang spoke Chinook Jargon poorly, in Boas's opinion. But the fact
that it was no one's native language did not prevent the Jargon from having
a literature. See Hymes & Zenk, "Narrative Structure in Chinook Jargon"
(1987).
10 Swanton 1905b : 138-146, 186-187, 247-250, 273-276, 316-317, 320, 363;
1908a : 623-624, 755, all reproduced from Boas n.d.2 & n.d.3. Boas wrote to Swanton on 10 February 1906, saying : "I am sorry that you did not let me
see the proofs of the traditions told to me by Edensaw which you printed
in your Bulletin. I had never written them out for publication, and I think I should have made some alterations in the English. I might also have added
a few remarks." [Quoted from Boas's carbon copy, aPsl, Philadelphia.]
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a story as sharp as a knife
11 Many of these drawings - still at the amnh, New York - are reproduced
in Swanton 1905a. They include figures 7 and 8 on Swanton's plate xxi, figures 1-6 on plate xxii, figures 2-4 on plate xxiii, and figure 19 on Swanton's p 144.
12 Boas n.d.2 : 23; compare Swanton 1908a : 755.
13 Facial Paintings of the Indians of Northern British Columbia (Boas 1898a).
Though Boas did not intend it as such, this brief book became entirely a
study of Daxhiigang's painting. It is in fact the first book devoted to the
work of any Native American artist, and the first book devoted to the work
of a Canadian visual artist in any cultural tradition.
14 The annotations on the drawing are as follows.
in boas's hand on the front : Tattooing of Yakwlanas Git' i'ns Skid egate / Q' onaqe'we [ i.e., tattoo design representing a figure used in heraldry by the Yaakw Llaanas, the Gitins of Hlghagilda, and the Qquuna Qiighawaay].
in swanton's hand on the back : 2 Gytins stole this tattooing from
the Q' onaqeowai who in return stole Raven from them. There was nearly a fight over this but they were evened up by counter movements. So each has both.
Edensaw's wife's family Yakwla'nas has it too. This dogfish was a woman. The figure inside is the human form of the other. Dogfish is sister of Nenldasl'as ( see story ) .
Swanton's notes are repeated in more dignified prose, but without additional information, in his Ethnology (Swanton 1905a : 142). The spelling in his notes shows that his source was a speaker of northern Haida - possibly Kihlguulins (Henry Edenshaw), but also possibly Daxhiigang himself.
(Daxhiigang was born in the south but acculturated to northern speech.)
The Gitins of Hlghagilda were a large family amalgamated from (or
divided into) four branches. The dominant branch in the later 19th century
was Na Yuuwans Xhaaydaghaay, the Big House People. The headman of
this family, whose hereditary name was Sghiidagits, served as headman
of Hlghagilda.
The subject of the squabble Swanton mentions is, of course, not a particular work of art nor its particular design - which is freely created in each instance by the individual artist. The subject of the dispute is heraldic copyright. Families, and sometimes individuals, claim exclusive rights to use and display, as heraldic crests, any and all works of art in which certain figures are represented. These rights, while jealously guarded, are also sometimes
shared, through gift or sale, with other individuals, or assigned in perpetuity by one family to another.
Daxhiigang, as a member of the Naay Kun Qiighawaay of the Raven side,
claimed no right whatever to the heraldic use of the Dogfish or the Dogfish
Woman, but he was perfectly free as an artist to represent these figures,
and to sell or give away his representations. He was also free to put them
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notes to chapter 6 (pages 143-151)
to use in appropriate contexts : namely, in articles representing his wife and children, all of whom were members of the Yaakw Llaanas.
The importance attached to heraldic use of the Dogfish can be estimated
in part from the large exterior sculptures standing at Qquuna and Hlgha gilda in the 1880s. At Qquuna, four of the 50 poles in the village (two housepoles, one memorial pole, one mortuary pole) carried images of the Dogfish. Three
of the four belonged to members of the Qquuna Qiighawaay. At Hlghagilda,
Dogfish had become the rage. The image appeared on 12 of some 65 poles
then standing. Nine or ten of these belonged to members of the Gitins of
Hlghagilda. Another belonged to a man who was married to a woman of this
family. The last belonged to the only white man living in the town : a retired whaler named Charles Jefferson of Newburyport, Massachusetts, who had
built a Haida house and married one of the village headman's daughters.
At Ttanuu in the same years, only one pole bore the image of the Dogfish.
It was raised in 1879, in memory of a recent headman, both of the village and of the Qquuna Qiighawaay. Other figures were more in fashion at Ttanuu.
One of these (shown in the photos on pp 110-111) was the long-eyed spirit-being of the sea, whom Swanton heard described as the Dogfish Woman's
brother. (The poles of these three villages are catalogued in MacDonald
1983 : 38-54, 78-100.)
15 Swanton 1905b : 70. Swanton knew Giikw by his Christian name, Edward.
16 See Sapir & Swadesh 1939 : 62-67.
17 Beynon n.d. : text 95. A related story, also told by Arthur Lewis, is summarized on p 476 (note 5 to chapter 11).
18 MacDonald (1983 : 40) gives the date as 1898. This is contradicted by the missionary ledger (Crosby et al. n.d.), recording the death of the elder Sghiidagits on 19 October 1892.
19 Houses 13, 14 & 15 in Swanton's list (1905a : 286), corresponding to houses 17, 18 & 19 in MacDonald's (1983 : 48-50).
20 In MacDonald's catalogue, these poles are Skidegate 18x1, 18x2 and 18x3.
The newest can be dated from photographs. It does not appear in Dawson's
photos, made in 1878, and it looks brand new in a photo made by Edward
Dossetter in 1881 (amnh neg 42264, reproduced in MacDonald 1983 : plate
43). The suggestion that the pole was raised in 1881 for a woman who did
not in fact die until 1892 (MacDonald 1983 : 49) seems to be based on a
misunderstanding.
21 The model is now owned by the amnh, is reproduced and discussed in Swanton's Ethnology (Swanton 1905a : 130 & plate vii.2). (Note, however, that in Swanton's discussion, all references to plates vii.1 and vii.2 are reversed.) 22 These are conveniently tabulated in Boas 1916 : 840-845.
23 The letter in which this accusation is made is quoted at length on p 174.
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24 Chafe 1981 is a useful study of differences between Native American ritual language and the language of conversation. Similar differences can be found
between Haida narratives transcribed in 1900 and those recorded in recent
decades. The recent texts are, as a rule, far simpler, shorter, and stylistically more informal or relaxed. For examples, see Eastman & Edwards 1991,
Haldane 1986 and Hamilton 1986. More extensive Haida texts have been
recorded in recent years by John Enrico, Marianne Boelscher and others, but
these remain unpublished. (There is some discussion in Boelscher 1988.) The
rather forlorn state of Haida lyric in the later 20th century is documented
in Enrico & Stuart 1996, but since then Haida song, like Haida dance, has been restored to a thriving artform. The author of all the texts in Eastman & Edwards 1991, incidentally, is Lillian Pettviel. These are the only published Haida texts dictated by a woman.
Similar stylistic shifts are apparent in many postclassical Native American
texts. Carlson 1977 includes examples in Nitinaht and Kwakwala. Phinney
1934 : vii-viii is a brief but insightful discussion, by a native speaker, of the same phenomenon in Nimipu.
25 Details of Swanton's life are recorded in Kroeber 1940, Nichols 1940, Fenton 1959, Steward 1960, and in Swanton's own brief, unpublished autobiography (Swanton n.d.7), from which the quoted passage comes. More recent
scholarship touching on Swanton's career is sometimes a little wide of the
mark. Blanca Schorcht, for example ( History of the Book in Canada, vol. 3
[University of Toronto Press, 2007]: 31) identifies Swanton as one of Boas's "native informants."
26 Yeats 1920 : 298-299. The essay is actually dated 14 October 1914.
27 Swanton 1928 : 30-31.
28 Kroeber 1940 : 1.
29 Farrand (1867-1939) was by training a physician and psychologist, not a
linguist. He published among other things a study of Salish basketry and a
synopsis of the oral literature of the Salish-speaking Quinault. In 1900, at Boas's urging, he tried transcribing texts in Alsea (a language then still spoken by a few survivors on the northern Oregon coast), but he soon gave up. His
work with the Quinault mythteller Bob Pope and with unnamed Chilcotin
and Heiltsuk mythtellers was conducted entirely in English. After a time
he gave up anthropology for administration. His few Alsea texts were later
edited and published by Leo Frachtenberg. (The results of these adventures
appear as Farrand 1900 & 1902; Boas 1916 : 883-888; and Frachtenberg
1917 & 1920.)
30 The initial consonant in the name Q'elti is a voiceless ejective uvular stop, like qq in Haida. The first vowel is a schwa. Stress falls on the second syllable.
31 Boas to his parents, 16 July 1890, in Rohner 1969 : 122.
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notes to chapters 6 & 7 (pages 152-158)
32 Boas's transcriptions from 1890-1894 are indeed the only substantive records of Shoalwater Chinook and Kathlamet. In the century since, the neighboring
oral literatures have been studied very fruitfully by Edward Sapir, Melville Jacobs and Dell Hymes. The results are published in Sapir 1989f, vols. 7-8;
Jacobs 1958-9, 1959, 1960; and Hymes 1981.
33 This was published as Swanton 1900.
34 The bae functioned from 1879 to 1964. Swanton was the first, and for a long time the only, trained ethnologist it employed. Judd 1967 gives additional
detail.
35 Original in the Dept. of Anthropology Archives, amnh, New York.
36 Typed copy in the Dept. of Anthropology Archives, amnh, New York.
(McGee, incidentally, insisted that "W J" was his name, not his initials.)
notes to chaPter seven
1 "Tres cuadros del vino," in Ortega 2004- : vol. 2 : 199 : Los dioses son el sentido superior que las cosas poseen si se les mira en conexion unas con otras. ... Decir que no hay dioses es decir que las cosas no tienen, ademas de su constitucion material, el aroma, el nimbo de una significacion ideal, de un sentido. Es decir que la vida no tiene sentido, que las cosas carecen de conexion.
Velazquez, Ortega goes on to say, "is our painter. He has prepared the
way for our age, freed from gods : a bureaucratic age in which, in place of
Dionysos, we speak merely of alcoholism." But it is possible that Ortega, in the midst of his brilliance, is wrong on one basic point. Velazquez, he says, "is a complete atheist, a great infidel. With his brush, he sends the gods flying." This may be a description less appropriate to what Velazquez actually did than to what his patrons and admirers wished him to do.
2 Compare, for instance, the stone sculpture of the Northwest Coast (Duff
1975) with Polynesian stone sculpture, and the narrative poetry of the Haida with that of the Ainu (translated in Philippi 1979). Needham & Lu 1985 is a wide-ranging, scholarly synopsis of Asian/American cultural resemblances,
