Senx

Senx is the personified Sun and, in Boas's account, the master of Nusmata, the House of Myths. He is the one deity to whom the Nuxalk addressed direct prayer, invoked as Ta'ata, 'our father,' and Smayakila, 'the sacred one.' The Sun's radiance is figured as his eyelashes, and it was along these that the first ancestors, wearing their animal cloaks, climbed down from the upper world to the mountain tops to found the ancestral villages. Sources differ on whether Senx and Alhkuntam are wholly separate beings or overlapping aspects of the household of the upper world; Boas and McIlwraith keep the Sun and the creator distinct while placing both in the rear of the House of Myths.

Domains

• sun
• prayer

Powers

• carries the sun across the sky
• receives the prayers of the people

Epithets

• Ta'ata — Our FatherBoas, Franz. 1898. The Mythology of the Bella Coola Indians. New York: G.E. Stechert. (primary)
• Smayakila — the Sacred OneBoas, Franz. 1898. The Mythology of the Bella Coola Indians. New York: G.E. Stechert. (primary)

Relations

• companion: AlhkuntamBoas, Franz. 1898. The Mythology of the Bella Coola Indians. New York: G.E. Stechert. (primary)

Sources

• Senx, the Sun, is the master of the House of Myths and the deity to whom the Bella Coola prayed; his bynames are Ta'ata ('our father') and Smayakila ('the sacred one').: Boas, Franz. 1898. The Mythology of the Bella Coola Indians. Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History 2(2). New York: G.E. Stechert. (primary)
• The first ancestors descended from the upper world to the mountain tops along the eyelashes of the sun.: Nuxalk Nation. 'Culture and Language.' nuxalknation.ca (accessed 2020). (secondary)