Tsimshian Shamanic Cosmologies Written on the Rocks

George F. MacDonaldBill Reid Centre for NWC Art StudiesSimon Fraser University

The Coast Tsimshian have inhabited the lower Skeena River and adjacent coast north to mouth of the Nass River for more than 10,000 years. DNA studies have just begun but indicate that while the Coast Tsimshian have been the long term occupants of their currenttraditional territories, other populations entered the Coast Tsimshian gene pool in small numbers. Some were escaping food

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shortages in the interior while others were Tlingit Peoples from the north during an episode between ca. 1600 and 2,000 BME.Two different regions of their traditional territories have produced large numbers of petroglyphs and other stone features that throw light on ecoomic practices mediated by shaman at the first canyon of the Skeena River on the one hand, and on cosmological and mythological concepts in the epicenter oftheir winter villages around this presentation will deal only with the former.

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Rubbing of a panel of images from a rock ledge where the shaman sat to coax the schools of salmon to come through the canyon (according to F. Boas and verified by Kitselas elders). In the lower halfof the panel a shaman with extended tongue and horns is flanked by a bear displaying the internal organ style. At the top right,is another face of a shaman with extended tongue flanked by a bear which employs the ribs and joint marks of a separate style tradition. .

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A team of anthropologists, linguists, archaeologists and ethno-historians under my direction worked with the Kitselas First Nation periodically from1967 to 1978. From their work combined with sustained interaction with Kitselas elders, a rich picture emerged of the role played by the fishing shaman in ensuring the supply of salmon and other species in the river. They operated in a localize area within two mile stretch of the Kitselas Canyon fifteen kilometers north of Terrace, B.C. and used a small island at the head of the canyon as their focus.

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Petroglyph panel on Ringbold Island at the top of the Kitselas Canyonshows two shaman conversing with bears as well as a skull on one side and a head of a Naxnox with one eye extending out of the orbit. It is said to represent the power of the Naxnox to see the shools of salmon as the came up river each year.

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Franz Boas was taken by the clarity of an oral history collected by Tate that detailed the role of the shaman in the First Salmon Ceremony performed on the downstream end of the canyon. In his description (1916) Boas describes how the ceremony was conducted by four shaman who had

caught the first fish and carried it to the four villages at the four corners of the canyon to share small portions with the villagers. Boas and Tate's description was so detailed and complete that I directed a photo essay about the First Salmon Ceremony with the talented actors, costume and set makers at

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the 'Ksan historic village in Hazelton on theupper Skeena River(seen here).

Four shaman hold a corner of a freshly woven mat made to honour the first salmon caught that year as they carry it to the beat of a drum into the feast house of the ranking chief of the village.

We included in the photo shoot the treatmentof the First Salmon caught in the same fashion as the treatment of the captured bearcub during the bear ceremonies among the Ainuand other tribes in northeast Asia. Followingthe Boas description, the chiefs at Ksan embellished the first salmon with eagle down prior to cooking and distributing it.

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First Salmon ceremony re-enactment according to the account they collected from the Kitselas Canyon.

William Beynon, a ranking chief from Lax Kwa'alaams (Port Simpson) who worked over four decades with Marius Barbeau of the National Museum of Canada, added many detailsabout the actiivities of shaman among the Kitselas People. During our project, Kitselaselders, particularly Paul Mason contributed

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rich details about the spots within the canyon that were the abode of supernatural beings who had among their powers, the abdsolute control of both fish and humans within the dangerous liminal spaces within the canyon.

Kitselas historian and chief, Paul Mason on the Gitsaex village site after clearing the vegetation indicating the location of the Salmon House.

The main panel of petroglyphs on Ringbolt Island at the top of the Kitselas Canyon depict shaman conversing with bears in several complex glyphs. The bears are characterized as having long extended tonguesand visible internal organs including the intestines. Faces with pursed lips and concentric circle eyes occur at several

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places along the walls of the canyon where fishing stations occured in the past. These faces are remarkably similar to those found along fish streams throughout Siberia, from the Amur River to the Columbia River in the Continental United States.

Ringbolt Island where the main petroglyph panels are located are indicated by the arrows. The dotted circle is the panel with the shaman and bears

Some Kitselas elders could still recall the distinctive names and specific abodes and powers of more than a dozen such beings within a three kilometer stretch of the

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canyon. Others revealed to our researchers the perception of various classes of beings about how the other beings sharing their world perceived them and each other. For example, the shaman could site on the end of Ringbolt Island and see into the muddy watersof the river within the canyon. They could see below them the schools of salmon moving along the bed of the river, The schools of teaming salmon appeared to the shaman to be crowds of humans moving from one village to another as the Tsimshian did each spring for the eulachon fishery on the Lisims (Nass) River to the north. Boas states that the salmon are also seen as children moving their seasonal residence fromtheir father, the salmon chief of their species, at the mouth of the river, to their mother, one of a series of Creek Women on thebreeding streams off the Skeena. As another layer of perception known to the Kitselas people, the bears who lived in cavesalong the steep banks of the Kitselas Canyon looked down to the river and saw the movements of the human villagers as being schools of salmon on their annual migration to their breading streams upriver.

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Children were kept away from the rivers during the fish runs as their souls would readily follow the fish upriver resulting in the death of the child from soul loss, the most common cause of death. Children were especially warned away from the bridge acrossthe river near the village of Gitladzok, or Fortress of the Canyon that prevented tradersand other intruders from the coast passing through the canyon without paying tribute to the ranking chief. One of the classic variants of the "Prince ofSalmon" legends known throughout the coast was often referred to as "Old Moldy Nose". Itwas recorded by Boas from Kitselas people working at the canneries at Port Esssington in 1899. It starts with the admonition that dried salmon should never be stored in a bentwood box for more than one year lest their nose becomes mouldy.A matriarch of Gitladzok village ignored the warning and her nephew disappeared from the river bank. It seems he was met there by a chief and men in a canoe who took him to the mouth of the Skeena where they entered a house emblazoned with paintings of Sockeye salmon. After each meal, the boy missed

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putting some leftover part of the fish, eyes,ribs,vertebrae etc. into the fire to be reincarnated. Disfigured children missing those parts were seen each morning after eachfeast and the boy was instructed as to the proper way of eating salmon to ensure their perfect reincarnation to continue feeding thevillagers with each run.At he first salmon ceremony following his disappearance (four years in some accounts) when the symbollic "Chief of the Salmon" had his belly cut open, his nephew emerged alive and taught the people the lesson he had learned. The image of the shaman who had clubbed the first salmon holding the boy became the prerogative of Chief Gaum of Gitladzok and was carved on the house posts at the rear of his house.

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Kitselas people at a celebration, possibly a funeral, at the old village site of Gitladzok. The man who caught and clubbed the salmon holding the prince is seen in the background leaning on this fishclub.

Shaman on the Skeena and Nass Rivers and the coast between adopted the bear as their supernatural signature. The Haida on the other hand affiliated themselves with Killer whales, and the Tlingit with octopus.

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The manikin above displays the regalia of a shaman of the Skeena Riveer including a crown of grizzly bear claws surmounted by a bundle of trimmed eagle quills and holding a plain globular rattle. (Canadian Museum of Civilization).

The shaman at the Kitselas Canyon undertook journeys in search of lost souls or schools of salmon in magical canoes guided by the spirit helpers, the bears.

Shaman wearing a grizzly bear claw crown in a magical canoe with bears to guide his way to other worlds. Nisga'a Museum, Laxaltzap.

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Another set of shaman paraphenalia that was collected at Kitselas Canyon is now in the Museum of Anthropology at UBC. It originally had several carved effigies of salmon that were used by the shaman in his performance of the First Salmon Ceremony.

The winter villages of the Ten Tribes of the Coast Tsimshian who had their summer fishing villages on the Skeena River below the Kitselas Canyon were located for more than five thousand years in the sheltered harbour at modern day Prince Rupert. After the blockade of the harbour and occupation of theIslands in Chatham Sound to southern Pitt Island by Tlingit from Southeast Alaska, the Tsimshian who returned to the harbour clustered their villages closely together on both sides of Metlakatla Pass for their mutual defense. Throughout the pass are hundreds of petroglyphs culminating in some

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remarkable ones that are well recorded in Tsimshian oral history.

At the center of the harbour, at a village site belonging to the ----- tribe are a series of petroglyphs and pictographs. The petroglyph and pictograph styles have separate traditions and distributions on the Northwest Coast and do not occur together anywhere else in Tsimshian territory. The pictographs include the ouline of coppers(Hayetsk) in hematite. The petroglyphs portray.......

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A large block of quartzite that is part of the bedrock at Robertson Point was associated with the primordial form of the culture-hero, Raven whose feathers were all white. As he escaped with the sun in

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his beak through the smoke hole of his sky father's house, his feathers were blackened by the soot from the fireplace.

On another small island near the quartz symbol of Raven is the life-sized imprint of a man that is said to derive from a later episode of the Raven cycle of myths. It was claimed by a Tsimshian historian speaking to William Beynon that it belonged before contact to -------- but it may have had otherowners over the centuries. It was probably made soon after the reoccupation of the Prince Rupert Harbour by the Nine Tribes of the Coast Tsimshian around 400 BCE.

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The Man That Fell From Heaven in the center of the Prince Rupert Harbour

The episode of the Raven Cycle of myths to which this is carving claimed to relate (H.I.Smith, 191?) refers to the dilema faced by Raven and his brother, Lagabola, as they were expelled from the upperworld for their atttempts to steal the sun, the moon and stars and fresh water. Lagabula who dropped from heaven first, decided to soften his fall by landing on a bed of kelp floating on the waters of the Prince Rupert Harbour. He sank through the kelp and was never seen again. Raven learned

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from his brother's experience to choose a more resistant landing spot. However he misjudged the fact that he still sank a bit into the bedrock of the harbour. He discovered he was fused into the rock and hadto await the arrival of a small shore bird with a sharp beak that could peck at the rockuntil Raven was freed.

From this point, Claude Levis Strauss has followed Raven on his journeys up the Skeena River, across the headwaters to the Nass River and down that river to the coast. SomeTsimshian elders claim that on reaching salt water again, Raven took his repose at Lax Kwa'alaams where he is seen in the profile ofislands just offshore in Chatham Sound. Levis Strauss title his study, "The Myth of Azidwal" which also denotes Raven. At each stop on his journey into the interior and back to the coast, Raven teaches various skills to mankind, such as using the toastingstick to cook Salmon or making a urine bowl on the banks of a village near Fishery Bay. Levy Strauss' classic study of a myth cyclecontributed significantly to the current interest in ethno-geography.

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