TSIMSHIAN TEXTS 



Nass River Dialect 



Recorded and translated ])y 

 Franz Boas 



INTRODUCTION 



The following texts were coUeeted in Kinkolith, at the mouth of the 

 Nass river, during the months of November and December, 189-i, 

 while I was engaged in researches under the auspices of the British 

 Association for the Advancement of Science. The principa] object 

 of these investigations was a study of the Athapascan tribe of Port- 

 land canal, and the following texts were collected incidentally only. 

 The ethnologic results of these investigations were published in the 

 reports of the Committee on the Northwestern Tribes of Canada of the 

 British Association for the Advancement of Science.' 



The texts are in the Nass River dialect of the Tsimshian language. 

 The dialect is called bj' the natives Nisqa'E. The texts were obtained 

 from four individuals — Philip, Moses, Chief Mountain, atid Moody. 

 By far the greater number of them are myths of the tribe. Judging 

 from similar myths which I collected in previous years among the Tsim- 

 shian proper," they ai'e only moderately well told. 



Possibly the method of transcribing sounds is not i[uite satisfactory. 

 I have not been able to determine detiniteU' if there are one or two 

 palatized Ts. I consider it probable that there may be two; but in the 

 present texts all the palatized Ts are '-endered by one character. 

 There is also a certain incon-sistency in my perception of the surds and 

 sonants, the fortis, or the surd followed by a hiatus, very often sound- 

 ing similar to the sonant. I have not endeavored to make the spelling 

 throughout consistent, but have rather followed the transcription 

 which seemed to me most appropriate at the time when I wrote the 

 texts down. 



Franz Boas. 



New York, Jiuw, 1899. 



1 Report of the 66th meeting of the Britisli Association for the Advancement of Science. Ipswich, 

 1895, pp. 569-5fi6. 



^Franz Boas, Indianische Sageu vou der no rd-pacitischen Kiiste Ameril;as, Berlin, 1895, pp. 

 272-305. 



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