Shaman Isaac Tens
Shaman Isaac Tens is a significant figure in the Gitksan community of British Columbia, recognized for his transformative experiences that led him to become a shaman. At the age of thirty, he undergoes two profound encounters that mark his initiation into the shamanic role. The first occurs during a firewood gathering when an owl swoops down and leads him into a trance-like state, resulting in strange visions and physical sensations that connect him to the natural world. The second experience while trapping animals also puts him in a trance, prompting involuntary chants that reveal his deep connection to his people and their history.
Tens's songs express important cultural themes, such as the interdependence between the Gitksan people and the salmon of the Skeena River, emphasizing how the death of the salmon sustains life for the community. His visions and chants capture essential survival teachings and collective experiences, serving as a bridge between the supernatural and the everyday lives of his people. His role as a shaman is crucial in preserving the oral traditions and cultural memory of the Gitksan, thus reinforcing the significance of shamanism in indigenous societies.
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Shaman Isaac Tens
Author: Traditional Gitksan
Time Period: 1901 CE–1950 CE
Country or Culture: North America
Genre: Folktale
PLOT SUMMARY
When Isaac Tens is thirty years old, he has two experiences that prove he will be a shaman for his community. In the first experience, Tens is up gathering firewood in the hills one evening when an owl swoops down on him. It catches his face with its claws and tries to lift him up. Tens loses consciousness. When he comes to, he notices that he has fallen into snow. His head is covered with ice, and blood is trickling from his mouth.
As Tens makes his way down the hill, still carrying some firewood, he feels the trees are sneaking up on him like snakes. He reaches his father’s house, where two shamans try to restore his health. Tens feels as if flies cover his face and he is adrift in a large whirlpool.
Tens’s second uncanny experience occurs while he is out trapping animals. He catches two otters, kills them, and removes their pelts. Looking for a bear’s den, he sees an owl in a tall cedar. He shoots it and sees it falling into bushes. When he looks for it there, it has disappeared.
Tens walks down, crosses the river, and enters the village of Gitanmaax (Gitenmaks). When he reaches the fishing station, he hears a crowd of people who are apparently pursuing him. Tens runs away from them. Yet when he looks back, there is nobody there but the trees. Again, he loses consciousness and falls down.
Tens regains consciousness with his head covered by a bank of snow. As he walks home, he meets his father. At home, Tens heart beats rapidly and his body trembles. His skin is hot and he hears strange noises. Suddenly, he involuntarily begins to sing chants. He says that he has learned the songs by heart by repeating them.
Tens’s first song is about the death of a salmon that is linked to his own death. Yet the death of the salmon gives life to his people. He and a female robin fly over their village in the sky.
The second song mentions a grizzly hiding in the sky. The bear circles, and the door to Tens’s house swings shut. As fires burn beneath the house, the crowd watches.
In the third song, Tens is up to his knees in the mud of a lake. Shellfish hold him down, cutting his ankles as he dies.
In the fourth song, Tens and a stranger glide along in a canoe. Their boat floats past trees and water to enter a whirlpool.
Tens’s fifth song describes his vision of being stung by beehives, which might be ghosts of bees. Giants and an old woman work him until he swells and listens within the old woman’s dreams.
SIGNIFICANCE
In December 1914, Canadian anthropologist and folklorist Marius Barbeau (1883–1969) began to collect myths, legends, and folktales of the First Nations in the Canadian province of British Columbia. He was supported in this by interpreter William Benyon (1888–1958). Benyon, who was of Welsh and Nisga’a (Nishga) descent, was a hereditary chief of the Gitlaan tribe of the Tsimshian people and fluent in their language, which is closely related to that of the Gitksan (Gitxsan). From 1923 to 1924, Barbeau and Benyon visited the Gitksan people on the upper reaches of the Skeena River. There, they collected indigenous folktales and songs. Gitksan shaman Isaac Tens’s songs, revealed to him during a trance state, form part of their collection.
In 1958, Barbeau published Tens’s songs, together with his account of how he became a shaman. Since then, they have been included in anthologies such as anthropologist David Leeming’s Mythology: Voyage of the Hero (1978) and poet Jerome Rothenberg’s Technicians of the Sacred (1985).
Tens’s songs reverberate with cultural significance for his community. They reveal the shaman’s role as a bridge—not only between the real world and the supernatural, the living and the dead, but also between the past and the present, someone who gives expression to their collective experience through the sharing of songs, stories, and oral traditions. Full of survival tips, the shaman’s tales help preserve the people’s history and culture as well as the people themselves.
The first song establishes the essential connection between the people and the salmon of the Skeena River. The song implies that salmon die to provide food, and thus life, to the people. While Tens identifies with the salmon, he soars along in the sky with a female robin. From there, he surveys the life of his people below. The second song celebrates survival of the people against natural enemies. Dangerous animals such as grizzlies are kept at bay by sturdy dwellings and smart use of fire. In the vision expressed in the third song, the shaman describes a lake’s shellfish, both a food source and a hazard. The fourth song celebrates communal life along the river while also warning of its sudden dangers.
The fifth song reflects on the personal plight of the shaman. By accessing the mind of an elder woman, full of the community’s lore, he proves himself a worthy successor. His task is to keep up the tradition of safeguarding the community’s collective memory.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barbeau, Marius. Medicine-Men of the North Pacific Coast. Ottawa: Dept. of Northern Affairs and National Resources, 1958. Print.
Fee, Margery. “Rewriting Anthropology and Identifications on the North Pacific Coast: The Work of George Hunt, William Benyon, Franz Boas, and Marius Barbeau.” Australian Literary Studies 25.4 (2010): 14–32. Print.
Hunt, Norman Bancroft. Shamanism in North America. Richmond Hill: Firefly, 2003. Print.
Leeming, David Adams. “Isaac Tens.” Mythology: The Voyage of the Hero. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. 79–81. Print.
Rothenberg, Jerome. Technicians of the Sacred. 2nd ed. Berkeley: U of California P, 1985. Print.
Tedlock, Dennis, and Barbara Tedlock. Teachings of the American Earth: Indian Religion and Philosophy. 1975. New York: Liveright, 1992. Print.
Temkin, Owsei. The Falling Sickness. A History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginning of Modern Neurology. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1994. Print.