Porcupine Hunter and Other Stories: The Original Tsimshian Texts of Henry Tate

Richard W. Parker is an assistant professor of classics at Brock
University in St. Catharines.

Henry Tate, a Tsimshian from Port Simpson, British Columbia, was an
important informant on Tsimshian mythology for the early giant of
anthropology and ethnology Franz Boas. During the 10 years before his
death in 1913, Tate sent Boas some 2000 pages of mythological texts.
Remarkably, Tate wrote the tales in English, and only then added an
interlinear translation into his native tongue, Tsimshian. Boas,
naturally, regarded this material as primarily mythological and cultural
data, and, after very extensive editing of Tate’s nonstandard
spelling, grammar, and syntax, he published it in his Tsimshian
Mythology (1916). Maud argues that, since Tate wrote the stories in
English, the texts can legitimately be regarded as original
compositions; a selection of Tate’s best efforts deserve to be
presented not in the form of Boas’s tidy data, but “with all their
attractive spontaneity, [as] the unpremeditated writing of someone from
an oral tradition diving headlong into a new written medium.”

However, let readers be forewarned about what this entails, for they
will encounter stories told in a very sparse narrative style that does
not flow smoothly, and that displays awkward, nonstandard English, with
distracting orthography (e.g., “thirth” for third, “compassing”
for compassion, “stard” for started). Readers should also be
prepared to be occasionally confused, even annoyed, until they grow
accustomed to Tate’s parole. Maud has taken this minimalist approach
to his editorial duties deliberately, in order to slow the reader down.
Paradoxically, however, he uses the technique of breaking and indenting
lines—in the manner of modern poetry—to retard the reader’s
progress and recapture the meaningful pauses of an unhurried delivery at
the fireside. There are no indications of where Tate might have placed
such pauses.

Readers who have the patience and interest will discover a judicious
and even selection of entertaining and unmistakably authentic stories.
The selection includes fables, myths, morality tales, cosmologies, a
cycle about the trickster Raven, etiologies, and other material; animals
figure prominently in many of the tales. The brief introductions and
notes that accompany each story are necessary and appreciated.