Stone-Ribs
Haida · demigod · mythic perennial · Recorded classification
Stone-Ribs is a supernatural hero of the southern Haida, born of a woman at Tlkadan in the Ninstints (Sg̱ang Gwaay) country. His central exploit is the killing of Qagawai, a five-finned killer whale that had been destroying people; having taken its skin, he travelled all around Haida Gwaii beneath the water, defeating the Ocean-People and collecting their skins so that he could take on their shapes at will. His story is one of the linked narratives Swanton recorded together with that of Sacred-One-Standing-and-Moving, and it is a favoured subject of Haida argillite carving.
Domains
- heroism
- the sea
Powers
- to put on the skins and take the forms of ocean beings
- to overcome the monsters and beings of the sea
Relations
- slayer of: Killer Whale BeingsStone-Ribs killed the man-destroying five-finned killer whale Qagawai, one of the killer-whale beings, and took its skin.John R. Swanton, Haida Texts and Myths, Skidegate Dialect (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 29), 1905 (secondary)
Sources
- Stone-Ribs is a Haida supernatural hero who slew the five-finned killer whale Qagawai and travelled the seas overcoming and assuming the forms of the Ocean-People.: John R. Swanton, Haida Texts and Myths, Skidegate Dialect (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 29), 1905 (secondary); Marius Barbeau, Haida Myths Illustrated in Argillite Carvings (National Museum of Canada Bulletin 127), 1953 (secondary)