Chief of Heaven's Daughter

The Chief of Heaven's Daughter is the mother of the Raven in the sky-origin telling of the Tsimshian transformer cycle. Going to fetch water, she drinks a cedar leaf into which Txä'msem has transformed himself, conceives, and bears him as a boy — the supernatural infant who cries 'Hama, hama!' for the box of daylight and so brings the light into the world. She is identified in the narratives by kinship rather than by a personal name.

Parentage

• father: Chief of HeavenDaughter of the Chief of Heaven.Boas & Tate, Tsimshian Mythology (1916) (primary)

Children

• Txä'msem

Domains

• sky

Relations

• father: Chief of HeavenDaughter of the Chief of Heaven.Boas & Tate, Tsimshian Mythology (1916) (primary)
• mother of: Txä'msemMother of Txä'msem, conceived by swallowing the cedar leaf.Boas & Tate, Tsimshian Mythology (1916) (primary)

Sources

• existence: Franz Boas & Henry W. Tate, Tsimshian Mythology, 31st Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (1916) (primary); 'The Theft of Light', a Tsimshian retelling of the Boas–Tate text (firstpeople.us) (secondary)