Blue Jay
Chinookan · numen · Chinookan traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Blue Jay is the great buffoon of Chinookan storytelling, a noisy, vain, meddling spirit-being who is forever acting on impulse and misunderstanding the world. In the cycle recorded by Boas from Charles Cultee he is the younger brother of the knowledgeable Io'i, whose careful instructions he ignores at every turn. His most famous adventure carries him into the land of the dead, where his sister has gone to live as the wife of a ghost; there he inverts the customs of the dead, laughs at the wrong things, and finally dies himself. As with other Chinookan animal-people, his name is simply the name of the bird, and his loud complaining call is heard as the residue of the reckless character he was in the myth-age.
Domains
- trickery
- the dead
Powers
- bungles every undertaking
- walks into the land of the dead
Relations
- sibling: Io'iIo'i is his elder sister, whose advice he perpetually ignores.Franz Boas, Chinook Texts, BAE Bulletin 20 (1894), 'Blue-Jay and his sister Io'i' (primary)
Sources
- Blue Jay is a foolish, boastful trickster-buffoon and the younger brother of Io'i, and the protagonist of an extended comic cycle in Boas's Chinook Texts.: Franz Boas, Chinook Texts, BAE Bulletin 20 (1894) (primary); Dell Hymes, In Vain I Tried to Tell You (1981), on the Blue-Jay narratives (secondary)