Haida Texts and Myths, Skidegate Dialect

John R. Swanton's Haida Texts and Myths, Skidegate Dialect, published through the Bureau of American Ethnology in the early twentieth century, is a primary linguistic and folkloric record, transcriptions of narratives dictated by Haida storytellers and rendered with Swanton's own translation and dialect notes. Its value as a source is exactly that direct transcription, preserving oral narrative material in the words closest to how it was told to Swanton at the time, work of lasting importance to Haida cultural continuity and to linguistics. Its limit is the era and method of its collection: an early twentieth century ethnologist's transcription and translation choices reflect his own linguistic training and priorities, and contemporary Haida scholars and speakers are the appropriate check on how faithfully any given passage renders the original telling's meaning and register.