Tsimshian

(map)

All people except for a few were destroyed by a flood, which was sent by heaven to punish man's ill behavior. Later, people were devastated by fire. The earth had no mountains or trees before the flood. Leqa created them after the deluge.

Frazer, 1919, 319.

Long ago the waters swelled. A few people escaped to the tops of high mountains, but more were saved in their canoes. They were scattered and, when the waters went down, they landed and settled in various spots. Thus Indians are spread all over the country, but their common songs and customs show that they are one people.

Frazer, 1919, 320.

One day, some hunters who lived on Skeena River went east and came to a great lake called Lake Of The Beginning. When they reached there, the lake rose and overflowed. The waters ran down the Skeena River, and almost all the villages on the river were swept away. The water of the lake rose because a great whale came to the surface. It had gills like a fish and four fins in a row along its back. When the great whale went down, the waters subsided.

The next year, two brothers from the same village went to the Lake Of The Beginning to get supernatural power. The elder brother went in to the bottom of the lake. The water rose and the great whale appeared as before, and the Skeena River flooded again. The younger brother watched from the shore.

The older man saw a large house at the bottom of the lake. He entered; a large fire was burning in the middle of the house, but no one was there. He sat and waited. Suddenly the door opened and a flash of lightning came in. This happened four times; then it began to hail. After this, Grizzly Bear came from a screen at the rear of the house.

Grizzly Bear came to the man and said, "Open my back." The man did so, and Grizzly Bear became a carved box. Thunderbird came from behind the screen and said, "Put me in the box." The man did so, and Thunderbird became a drum. Living Eyes, a Cuttlefish, and a large animal called Mouth At Each End came, and the man put each in the box. Then the man started for home. Grizzly Bear came with him and said, "Your name shall be Mouth At Each End."

The man had been in the depths of the Lake Of The Beginning for a long time. His brother had sat at the foot of a spruce tree for twenty days, and he had died of starvation. Martens came and ate all his flesh.

Mouth At Each End cried upon finding his brother's skeleton. Using his supernatural power, he restored the flesh with earth, made sinews from small roots, and rubbed the body with moss to make skin. He danced around his brother and made him alive again. He made his brother a shaman and gave him the name Devoured By Martins. Mouth At Each End caught the martens which had eaten his brother and put them into him, and he gave his brother a vessel of blood to be his supernatural power.

They returned home with Grizzly Bear, and Mouth At Each End was able to cure all kinds of diseases. But all the supernatural powers in the mountains heard of his power and wanted to kill him. Mouth At Each End was able to defeat all of them until two shamans came in a canoe and killed him. Devoured By Martins sent his supernatural helpers, Blood and Martens, and killed the shamans.

Devoured By Martens conquered all the supernatural powers. In a time of famine, he taught his people to catch halibut. They built a new village by the sea then and did not return up Skeena River.

Franz Boas, Tsimshian Mythology, Thirty-first Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1909-1910 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1916), 346-350.