Tenticular Gesticulation

Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day

[IMPORTANT UPDATE: I initially credited thes drums to the Haida tribe. I was subsequently contacted by Corey Moraes, the artist, and corrected that they are Tsimshian. My sincere apologies for the original error. As always, any errors are due entirely to my own ignorance, and I welcome any corrections.]

Today being a holiday (and screw that Columbus guy, I'm down with the places celebrating Indigenous Peoples' Day), here are a couple of really cool Tsimshian octopus drums created by artist Corey Moraes:

The Tsimshian are a Pacific Northwest tribe on the the British Columbia mainland, and neighbors of the Haida tribe. Here is a Haida legend called "The Devilfish Daughter" (Devil-fish is an English translation/enterpretation for the Haida word for octopus):

Long ago a native man who was a Shaman hauled his canoe onto the rocks with the intention of finding and killing the Devil-fish. But whilst he was searching, the great monster itself emerged from its hole and dragged the Shaman down into its dark deep den. His forlorn family felt for sure that he was dead and so they paddled mournfully away. The creature that had entrapped the man was a female Devil-fish and she had dragged him into the very deep recesses of the town where her father lived. He was Chief of the Devil-fish.

In time the Shaman and the Devil-fish married.

Many, many years passed and the man started to become home-sick and greatly wished to see his human wife and family. He pleaded with the Chief of the ?Devil-fish to let him go. After some hard thinking his request was granted. The Shaman soon departed and was given a canoe to depart with, so too was his wife, the Devil-fish. The two canoes were magical and sped along without oars.

Soon the enchanted canoes reached the Shaman’s father’s dwellings. They were laden with much wealth from the Devil-fish kingdom which he used as gifts in a great potlatch ceremony and he became a great Chief. After a while his own children finally found him and came to him. They were now adults and he organized a great home-coming feast, in fact, he held five great feasts, one following the other and at every one his human wife and children attended.

Eventually the Devil-fish wife pined more and more for her watery world. Then one day while she and her husband sat in her father-in-law’s house, they began to transform. In a brief moment the Devil-fish wife disappeared through the gaps between the floor planks. Her husband seeing his change form immediately took on his own Devil-fish form and his soft shiny body followed his wife between the floor planks. They both returned to the realm of the Devil-fish and her father.