The Mythology of the Bella Coola Indians
Also known as: Bella Coola Mythology, Nuxalk Mythology
Boas’s 1898 monograph gathers Nuxalk (Bella Coola) narratives—cosmogony, transformer cycles, and animal-human encounter tales—recorded on the central coast of British Columbia. The collection foregrounds figures like Qamaits, Senx, and Raven alongside ritual and shamanic motifs.
Description
Compiled as part of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, this work presents a corpus of Nuxalk narratives with attention to mythic cycles and cosmological structure. Accounts describe a stratified cosmos, creator and transformer powers, and the moral and practical teachings embedded in encounters between humans and animal-persons. Raven stories appear in both culture-hero and trickster registers; other cycles highlight the warfare and world-ordering feats associated with Qamaits and the stewardship of Senx in the gods’ house. Though philological apparatus is limited by the expedition’s timeframe, the collection preserves a significant early record of Nuxalk oral literature and ceremonial imagery.
Historiography
Published in 1898 as Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History (vol. 2, part 2), this is among the earliest printed Nuxalk myth corpora. It derives from fieldwork conducted rapidly during the Jesup North Pacific Expedition and, according to later scholarship, relied heavily on a principal narrator over roughly ten days. Subsequent ethnographies—especially McIlwraith’s mid-20th-century synthesis—contextualized and expanded the corpus. Museum collecting tied to the expedition influenced reception via display of Nuxalk masks and carvings.
Date Notes
Recorded during the Jesup North Pacific Expedition and issued as Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. 2, pt. 2; material was collected intensively over a short period from a principal narrator, per later ethnographic commentary.
Themes
Archetypes
Major Characters
- Qamaits
- Raven
- Thunderbird
Myths
- Raven the Transformer and the Coming of Light
- Origins of Salmon and Cedar
- Flood and World Renewal
- Shamanic Journeys to the Otherworld
Facts
- First issued as Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, volume 2, part 2 (1898).
- Forms part of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition publications.
- Later commentary notes the corpus relied heavily on one principal narrator over roughly ten days.
- Nuxalk cosmology in the text includes upper heaven Atsa'axl and lower heaven Sonx with Nusmeta, the house of the gods.
- Qamaits appears as a powerful world-ordering figure in Nuxalk tradition.
- Senx is associated with governance of the lower heaven and divine household.
- Raven functions as both culture hero and trickster in multiple episodes.
- Expedition collecting linked to the work included Nuxalk masks such as the Four Carpenters, now in museum holdings.
- The work is among the earliest printed records of Nuxalk oral literature.
- Bella Coola is an exonym; Nuxalk is the community’s own name.