Dzelarhons

Here is my version of Dzelarhons (or Djilaqons, sometimes named the Frog Woman, the Volcano Woman, or the Copper Woman…), an obscure female figure from the folklore of the Haida, a Native American people from the west coast of Canada and the northwestern part of the current United States, who also spread to part of Alaska and the Haida Gwaii archipelago. As it is often the case regarding the world of the North American Natives, the stories featuring this great spirit were generally transmitted orally, and it is therefore difficult to find consistent written sources outside of the works of anthropologists. Nevertheless, her association with frogs and volcanoes is a constant, and a few legends reached us.

According to one of them, Dzelarhons was originally a mortal woman, like most Native American “deities”. Her people, seeking to move to a country with a warmer climate, crossed the Pacific Ocean in six canoes to settle in Haida territory. There, Dzelarhons fell in love with a native man, and asked her uncle Gitrhawn to arrange a marriage. The young woman went to the bridegroom's village, dressed in sea otter fur and shell-trimmed leather, and the marriage was celebrated with great pomp. However, the bride soon realized that she had misjudged her husband's character. On their first night together, he forced her to keep a torch above her head until dawn ; when the torch became too short, the unfortunate woman would protect her arms with her garments, which eventually burned, leaving her completely naked. The next day, the husband disdainfully handed his wife a bearskin to replace her wedding dress. When the other Haidas learned what had happened, they warned the man against Gitrhawn's vengeance. But the husband did as he pleased, and subjected the young woman to this perverse treatment again. When the latter's uncle found out, he came with his people to burn down the Haida village in retaliation, but they could not find Dzelarhons. They only discovered a stone statue carrying a flaming staff, on top of which sat a copper frog from which flowed a stream.
It is recurrently said that Dzelarhons forms a couple with Kaiti, the great spirit of grizzly bears. And in some stories, the latter is identified as the abusive husband of the previous legend.

Dzelarhons generally acts like a great spirit charged with punishing men who are unnecessarily cruel to wildlife (especially amphibians and fish, from both sea and freshwater) by causing volcanoes to erupt.
According to another story, there was a village by the sea, whose inhabitants had become too accustomed to the abundance of gifts the sea offered them, to the point that they had begun to kill animals without eating them afterwards. Among other things, they would seize a salmon, open its back, insert branches soaked in pitch inside, and light them up. Then they would laugh at the spectacle offered by the fish mad with pain, swimming at full speed, and lighting up the waters. This type of sadistic games continued, so much so that one day, the villagers perceived an increasingly intense underground rumbling, before seeing with terror that lava was invading their village. Since the surrounding rivers themselves had been affected by the disaster, few were able to escape.
In an alternative version of this legend, it is Dzelarhons herself (in the form of a copper-skinned frog) who is offended by fishermen, and thus takes revenge on them. In yet another one, her volcanic wrath is provoked by the abduction and sequestration of her children — frogs — by humans, and only the release of the amphibians can appease the volcano. But in some variants, Dzelarhons regrets having taken the lives of innocents along with those of the guilty, and then emerges from the waters to lament and sing a mourning song. Also, there is sometimes mention of a sole survivor of the lava's ravages, named Yelukxinang (sometimes seen as the daughter of the "goddess"). The latter, under the ashes of the eruption, ends up discovering copper in quantity, a gift from Dzelarhons, who appoints her to be the mother of the Eagle clan, and orders her to go and marry a Tsimshian prince (another people, neighbor of the Haidas).

Most of the representations of this great spirit reached us in the form of masks, or more rarely on totems – besides, the frog is a very recurring animal in Haida art, as are the eagle and the bear. Thus, there are masks of women crying and spitting frogs and/or lava. And what's more, despite the obscurity of her legend, Dzelarhons gave her name to a volcano of planet Venus : Dzalarhons Mons.