SISIUTL - THE TWO-HEADED SERPENT:

A Northwest Coast version of the Push-Me-Pull-You.

Sisiutl, the two-headed serpent of the
Pacific Northwest, Wood Carving.

Of all the many portrayals of animals (zoomorphs) in rock art perhaps the most fascinating are the double ended animals known lightheartedly as push-me-pull-yous. One form is this creature that is frequently seen in the art of Northwest Coast peoples is the Sisiutl, a serpent with a head at each end. Sisiutl is often portrayed in paintings and wood carving. He was sometimes believed to be a fearsome ocean creature, a two-headed sea serpent, and was considered to be a mortal enemy of thunderbird.

Klu'bist, ‘Nlaka’pamux pictographs, Stein River Valley
north of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
York, Daly, and Arnett, They Write Their Dream on the
Rock Forever: Rock Writings of the Stein River Valley
of British Columbia, 1993, p. 156.

Klu'bist, ‘Nlaka’pamux pictograph, Stein River Valley
north of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
York, Daly, and Arnett, They Write Their Dream on the
Rock Forever: Rock Writings of the Stein River Valley
of British Columbia, 1993, p. 115.

The Skagit people called it sulwa’us and regarded it highly as a shamanistic spirit and associated it with thunder and the rainbow. The ‘Nlaka’pamux people of the Stein River Valley north of Vancouver in British Columbia call it klu’biist and have recorded it in numerous pictographs at sites in their territory. In the first of the two illustrations this pictograph panel includes two images of klu'biist, one in the upper left, and a smaller one at bottom center. Many of the portrayals show klu’biist as a four-legged creature and native sources stated that it was a snake with a head at each end, but it could grow legs if it wanted to and then looked something like a lizard with a head at each end. Many of them believe that a sighting of klu’biist foretells a death. The ‘Nlaka’pamux people identify klu’biist as an actual creature that lives in their forests – the India Rubber Boa (Charina bottae) found throughout northwestern North America, and the northernmost member of the boa family. These 18“ brown snakes appear to have a head at both ends with a blunt rounded tail that is hard to distinguish from their real head end and looks amazingly like a length of rubber surgical tubing.

India Rubber Boa, from Ernst and Ernst, Snakes
of the United States and Canada, 2003, p. 115.

As a boy at summer camp one year in the Pacific Northwest I found an India Rubber Boa in the woods. Far from being a harbinger of death and disaster, this peaceful creature was content to be wrapped around my arm and hung on for a considerable time, probably enjoying the body warmth. Surprisingly it made no attempt to bite, or even to uncoil and drop off until I later unwrapped it from my arm and released it back in the woods.

There is a particular satisfaction in having personal connection to the source of the mythology that has led to these portrayals in rock art. Perhaps Sisiutl/Klu’biist is really my personal totem creature.

REFERENCES:

York, Annie, Richard Daly, and Chris Arnett
1993 They Write Their Dream on the Rock Forever: Rock Writings of the Stein River Valley of British Columbia, Talonbooks, Vancouver.

Ernst, Carl H., and Evelyn M. Ernst
2003 Snakes of the United States and Canada, Smithsonian Books, Washington and London.

I was just connected with a site that shows video of an India Rubber boa swallowing a mouse. It is at http://www.wildrockies.com/rocky-mountains/rubber-boa-devours-an-already-dead-mouse. I suppose Parental Warning guidelines require me to warn that some viewers may find it disturbing, but it does add an element of real life to my comments above.