Nanasimgit
Haida · mortal · mythic perennial · Recorded classification
Nanasimgit is the hero of one of the most widely told Haida narratives, the story of the woman carried away by killer whales. After his wife Ḵ'uljáad is seized by the killer-whale people and taken to their house beneath the sea, Nanasimgit pursues her: aided above the water by Swallow and Marten, and below it by the geese, heron, and woodcutter he has helped, he descends with the help of an orca to the sea-floor town, frees his wife, and returns home. The tale carries the twin lessons that one must not take from nature without gratitude and that kindness is repaid in need; it remains a favoured subject of Haida carving and retelling.
Domains
- heroism
- the sea
Powers
- to travel into the undersea world and return alive
- to win the help of animals through kindness
Sources
- Nanasimgit is the Haida hero who follows his abducted wife Ḵ'uljáad into the undersea town of the killer-whale people and recovers her.: John R. Swanton, Haida Texts and Myths, Skidegate Dialect (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 29), 1905 (secondary); Robert Bringhurst, A Story as Sharp as a Knife: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World (Douglas & McIntyre), 1999 (secondary)