running down to the shore, they seized him, broke his kayak to pieces,
tore his clothing off him, and beat him badly. Then they took him up
into the village and kept him there all summer, beating and
ill-treating him very often. In the fall one of the men took pity on
him and made him a kayak, and helped him to escape. He went down the
river and arrived at home after a long absence.
During the summer other people had built houses near the home of his
aunt and there was a small village instead of the one lone hut. He
walked among the buildings until he found his aunt's house; but when
he entered, he frightened her very much, for at first glance she
thought it was a skeleton, he had been starved and beaten so long.
When his aunt recognized him and had heard his story, she said, "Oh,
you poor boy! What you must have suffered! I am full of rage at those
cruel villagers. I shall find some way to revenge your wrongs!"
She sat thinking a while and then said to him, "Bring me a piece of a
small log."
He brought the piece of wood and she whittled and rubbed it into the
form of an animal with long teeth and long, sharp claws, and painted
it white on the throat and red on the sides. Then they took the image
to the edge of the stream and placed it in the water.
"Go now," she said to it, "and kill everyone you find in the village
where my boy was beaten."
The image did not move.
She took it out of the water and cried over it, letting her tears
fall upon it; and the warm tears brought it to life and made it feel
sorry for her and the boy. She put it back into the water.
"Now, go and kill the bad people who beat my boy," she said.
At this the image floated across the creek and crawled up on the other
side, where it began to grow, soon becoming a large red bear. It
turned and looked at the woman till she called out, "Go, and spare no
one."
The bear went away and came to the village on the big river, the one
to which the boy had gone. There the first one he met was a man going
for water. This one was quickly torn in pieces, and one after another
of the villagers met the same fate; for the bear stayed near the
village until he had destroyed one-half of the people, and the rest
were so terrified that they began moving away.
Then he swam across the Yukon and went over the tundra to the farther
side of another river, killing everyone he met. For he had become so
bloodthirsty that the least sign of life seemed to fill him with fury
until he had destroyed it.
From there he turned back, and one day came to the place on the river
where he had first come to life. Seeing the people on the opposite
side he became furious, tearing the ground with his claws and
growling, and starting to cross the river to get at them. When the
villagers saw this, they were much frightened, and ran about saying,
"Here is the old woman's dog! We shall all be killed!" "Tell the old
woman to stop her dog!" They had never seen a bear and they thought it
was a dog she had made.
The woman went to meet the bear which did not try to hurt her, but was
passing by her to get at the other people when she caught him by the
hair on the back of his neck.
"Do not hurt these people," she said; "they have been kind to me and
have given me food when I was hungry."
She led the bear into her house, and still holding on to him, she
talked to him kindly.
"You have done my bidding well, and I am pleased with you," she said;
"but you must not overdo it. Hereafter you must injure no one unless
he tries to hurt or injure you."
When she had finished talking, she led him to the door and sent him
away over the tundra. Before she made him there had never been any of
his kind, but since then there have always been red bears.
XXV
THE LAST OF THE THUNDERBIRDS
In ancient times a great many giant eagles or thunderbirds lived in
the mountains; but in later years they had all disappeared except one
single pair which made their home in the mountain top overlooking the
Yukon near Sabotnisky. The top of this mountain was round and the
eagles had hollowed out a great basin on the summit which they used
for a nest. Around the edge of it was a rocky rim from which they
could see far across the broad river, or could look down upon the
village at the base of the mountain on the water's edge.
From their perch on this rocky wall these great birds would soar away,
looking like a cloud in the sky, to seize a reindeer from a passing
herd and bring it to their young. Or, again, they would circle out
with a noise like thunder from their shaking wings, and drop down upon
a fisherman in his kayak on the river, carrying man and boat to the
top of the mountain. There the man would be eaten by the young
thunderbirds, and the kayak would lie bleaching among the bones and
other refuse scattered along the border of the nest. Every fall the
young birds would fly away to the northland, while the old ones would
remain by the mountain.
After many fishermen had been carried away by the birds, there came a
time when only the most daring would venture upon the river. One
summer day a brave young hunter was starting out to look at his fish
traps and he said to his wife, "Don't go outside the house while I am
away, for fear of the birds."
After he was gone she noticed that the water tub was empty, and took a
bucket to go to the river for water. As she bent over to fill the
vessel a roaring noise like thunder filled the air, and one of the
birds darted down and seized her in its talons. The villagers saw the
bird swoop down, and they wailed aloud in sorrow and terror as they
watched her being carried through the air to the mountain top.
The hunter came home and the villagers gathered about with many
lamentations. "Oh, pitiful! pitiful! your pretty wife was carried away
by the thunderbirds! Too bad! Too bad! By this time she is torn to
pieces and fed to the young demons!"
Not one word did the husband utter. Going into his empty house he took
down his bow and his quiver of war arrows and started toward the
mountain.
"Don't go! Don't go!" cried the villagers; "of what use is it? She is
dead and devoured ere this. You will only add one more to their
victims."
Not a word did the hunter reply. He strode on and on and they watched
him climbing up and up the mountainside till he was lost to view. At
last he gained the rim of the nest and looked in. The old birds were
away, but the fierce young eagles greeted him with shrill cries and
fiery, flashing eyes. The hunter's heart was full of anger and he
quickly bent his bow, loosing the war arrows one after another till
the last one of the hateful birds lay dead in the nest.
With heart still burning for revenge, the hunter hid himself beside a
great rock near the nest and waited for the parent birds. They came.
They saw their young lying dead and bloody in the nest, and their
cries of rage echoed from the cliffs on the farther side of the great
river. They soared up into the air looking for the one who had killed
their young. Quickly they saw the brave hunter beside the great stone,
and the mother bird swooped down upon him, her wings sounding like a
gale in a spruce forest. Swiftly fitting an arrow to the string, as
the eagle came down the hunter sent it deep into her throat. With a
hoarse cry she turned and flew away over the hills far to the north.
The father bird had been circling overhead and came roaring down upon
the hunter, who, at the right moment, crouched close to the ground
behind the stone, and the eagle's sharp claws struck only the hard
rock. As the bird arose, eager to swoop down again, the hunter sprang
from his shelter and drove two heavy war arrows deep under its wing.
Uttering hoarse cries of rage, and spreading his broad wings, the
thunderbird floated away like a cloud in the sky, far into the
northland, and was never seen again.
Having taken blood vengeance, the hunter went down into the nest where
among ribs of old canoes and other bones he found some fragments of
his wife, which he carried to the water's edge and, building a fire,
made food offerings and libations of water such as would be pleasing
to her ghost.
XXVI
RAVEN MAKES AN OCEAN VOYAGE
One day Raven was sitting on a cliff near the sea when he saw a large
whale passing close along the shore.
"I have an idea!" said he. "I'm going to try something new." Then he
called out to the whale, "When you come up again, shut your eyes and
open your mouth wide, and I'll put something in it."
Then he drew down his mask, put his drill for making fire under his
wing, and flew out over the water. Very soon the whale came up again
and did as he had been told. Raven, seeing the wide open mouth, flew
straight down the whale's throat. The whale closed his mouth, gave a
great gulp, and down he went to the bottom of the sea.
Raven stood up, pushed up his beak, and looking about, found himself
at the entrance to a fine room, at one end of which burned a lamp. He
went in and was surprised to see a beautiful young woman sitting
there. The place was clean and dry, the roof being supported by the
whale's spine, while its ribs formed the walls. The lamp was supplied
from a tube that extended along the whale's backbone, from which oil
constantly but slowly dripped into the lamp.
When Raven stepped in, the woman started up in alarm and cried out,
"How came you here? You are the first man who ever came into my
house."
"I came in through the whale's throat," said Raven as politely as he
knew how, for the woman was young and fair to look upon. Moreover, he
had already guessed that she was the _inua_ or spirit of the whale. "I
should like to stay a while."
"As you cannot get out at present, it seems that you will have to
stay. Whether you like it, or whether I like it, you appear to be my
guest, so I must prepare food for you."
She brought food which she served with berries and oil. "These are
berries which I gathered last summer," she said.
For four days he remained there as the guest of the whale's spirit,
and found it a very pleasant experience; but he continually wondered
what the tube was that ran along the roof of the house. Whenever the
spirit woman left the room she said, "You must on no account touch
that tube," and that only served to make him the more curious.
On the fifth day, when she left the room, he went to the lamp and
caught a drop of the oil which he licked up with his tongue. It tasted
so sweet that he began to catch other drops as fast as they fell. This
soon became too slow to suit him, for he was hungry, so he reached up
and tore a piece from the side of the tube and ate it. As soon as this
was done a great rush of oil poured into the room and put out the
light, while the room itself began to roll wildly about.
This continued for four days, and Raven was nearly dead from
exhaustion and the bruises which he received. Then the room became
still and the whale was dead, for Raven had torn off part of one of
the heart vessels. The _inua_ never came back to the room, and the
whale drifted upon the shore.
Raven now found himself a prisoner and was saying to himself, "Now I
_am_ in a pretty boat! I have enjoyed the trip, but how is one to get
out of a kayak like this?"
Presently he said, "Hark! What is that I hear? As I live, it is
someone walking on the roof of the house!"
And he was right, for two men were walking on top of the dead whale
and calling to their village mates to come and help cut it up. Very
soon there were many people at work cutting a hole through the upper
side of the whale's body.
Raven quickly pulled down his mask, becoming a bird, and crouched
close in the farthest corner. When the hole was large enough, he
watched his chance and while everybody was carrying a load of meat to
the shore, he flew out and alighted on the top of a hill close by
without being noticed.
"Ah, my good fire-drill; I have forgotten it," he exclaimed,
remembering that he had left it behind.
He quickly pushed up his beak and removed his raven coat, becoming a
young man again. He started along the shore toward the whale. The
people working on the dead animal saw a small, dark-colored man in a
strangely made deerskin coat coming toward them, and they looked at
him curiously.
"Ho, you have found a fine, large whale," said he as he drew near. "I
will help you to cut him up."
He rolled up his sleeves and set to work. Very soon a man cutting on
the inside of the whale's body called out, "Ah, see what I have
found! A fire-drill inside a whale!"
At once the wily Raven rolled down his sleeves and quit work, saying,
"That is a bad sign, for my daughter has told me that if a fire-drill
is found in a whale and people try to cut up that whale, many of them
will die. I shall run away before the _inua_ of the whale catches me."
And away he ran.
When he was gone the people looked at one another and said, "Perhaps
he is right; we'd better go too." And away they all ran, each one
trying to rub the oil from his hands as he went.
From his hiding-place Raven looked on and laughed as he saw the people
running away. Then he went back for his raven coat and when he had put
it on and pulled down his beak he flew to the carcass and began to cut
it up and fly with chunks of the flesh to a cave on the shore. He did
not dare go to it as a man lest the villagers should see him and,
discovering the trick he had played them, should come back for the
meat. As he chuckled over the feast in store for him he said, "Thanks,
Ghost of the whale, both for the boat ride and for the feast."
XXVII
THE RED SKELETON
In a village on Cape Prince of Wales, very long ago, there was a poor
orphan boy who had no one to take his part and who was treated badly
by everyone, being made to run here and there at the bidding of all
the villagers.
One snowy night he was told to go out of the kashim to see if the
weather was getting worse. He had no skin boots, and it was so cold
that he did not wish to go, but he was driven out. When he came back
he said, "It has stopped snowing, but it is as cold as ever."
Just to plague him, the men kept sending him out every little while,
until at last he came in saying:
"I saw a ball of fire like the moon coming over the hill to the
north."
The men laughed at him and asked, "Why do you tell us a yarn like
that? Go out again and see if there is not a whale coming over the
hill. You are always seeing things."
He went out, and came in again quickly, saying in agitation, "The red
thing has come nearer and is close to the house."
The men laughed, but the boy hid himself. Almost immediately after
this the men in the kashim saw a fiery figure dancing on the gut-skin
covering over the roof hole, and an instant after a human skeleton
came crawling into the room through the passageway, creeping on its
knees and elbows.
When the skeleton was in the room it made a motion toward the people
which caused them all to fall on their knees and elbows in the same
position as it had. Then, turning about, it crawled out as it had
come, followed by the people, who were forced to go with it. Outside,
the skeleton crept through the snow toward the edge of the village,
followed by all the men, and in a short time every one of them was
dead and the skeleton had vanished.
Some of the villagers had been absent when the spook came, and when
they returned they found dead people lying all about on the cold
ground. Entering the kashim, they found the orphan boy, who told them
how the people had been killed.
They followed the tracks of the skeleton through the snow, and were
led up the side of the mountain till they came to an ancient grave,
where the tracks ended.
It was the grave of the boy's father.
XXVIII
THE MARMOT AND THE RAVEN
Once when a Raven was flying over some reefs near the shore of the
sea, he was seen by some Sea-birds that were perched on the rocks.
They began to revile him, calling him disagreeable names: "Oh, you
offal eater! Oh, you carrion eater! Oh, you black one!" until the
Raven turned and flew away, crying, "_Gnak, gnak, gnak_! why do they
call me such names?"
He flew far away across the great water until he came to a mountain on
the other side, where he stopped. Just in front of him he saw a marmot
hole. He said to himself, "If it is a disgrace to eat dead animals I
will eat only live ones. I will become a murderer."
He stood in front of the hole watching, and very soon the marmot came
home, bringing some food. Marmot said to Raven, "Please stand aside;
you are right in front of my door."
"It is not my intention to stand aside," said Raven. "They called me a
carrion eater, and I will show that I am not, for I will eat you."
"If you are going to eat me, you ought to be willing to do me a
favor," replied Marmot. "I have heard that you are a very fine dancer,
and I long to see you dance before I die. If you dance as beautifully
as they say, I shall be willing to die when once I have seen it. If
you will dance I will sing, and then you may eat me."
This pleased Raven so much that he began to dance and Marmot pretended
to go into ecstasies about it.
"Oh, Raven, Raven, Raven, how well you dance!" he sang. "Oh, Raven,
Raven, Raven, how well you dance!"
By and by they stopped to rest and Marmot said, "I am very much
delighted with your dancing. Do shut your eyes and dance your best
just once more, while I sing."
Raven closed his eyes and hopped clumsily about while Marmot sang,
"Oh, Raven, Raven, Raven, what a graceful dancer! Oh, Raven, Raven,
Raven, what a fool you are!" And with a quick run, Marmot darted
between Raven's legs and was safe in his hole.
There he turned, putting out the tip of his nose and laughing
mockingly as he said, "_Chi-kik-kik, chi-kik-kik, chi-kik-kik_! You
are the greatest fool I ever met. What a ridiculous figure you made
while dancing; I could scarcely sing for laughing. Look at me, and see
how fat I am. Don't you wish you could eat me?"
And he tormented Raven till the latter flew away in a rage.
XXIX
ORIGIN OF THE WINDS
In a village on the lower Yukon lived a man and his wife who had no
children. One day the woman said to her husband, "Far out on the
tundra there grows a solitary tree. Go to that and bring back a piece
of the trunk, and make a doll from it. Then it will seem that we have
a child."
The man went out of the house and saw a long track of bright light
like that made by the moon shining on snow, leading off across the
tundra in the direction he had been told to take. It was the Milky
Way. Along this path he traveled far away until he saw before him a
beautiful object shining in the bright light. Going up to it, he found
it was the tree of which he came in search. The tree was small, so he
took his hunting-knife, cut off a part of the trunk, and carried the
fragment home.
He sat down in the house and carved out from the wood an image of a
small boy, and his wife made two suits of clothing for it and dressed
it in one of them, "saving the other to put on when he had soiled the
first," she said.
"Now, Father, make your little boy a set of toy dishes," she said.
"I see no use in all this trouble. We will be no better off than we
were in the first place," said the man.
"Why, yes, we are already better off," said the wife. "Before we had
the doll we had nothing to talk about except ourselves. Now we have
the doll to talk about and to amuse us."
To please her the husband made the toy dishes, and she placed the doll
in the seat of honor on the bench opposite the door, with the dishes
full of food and water before it.
When the couple had gone to bed that night the room was very dark and
they heard several low, whistling sounds.
"Do you hear that? It is the doll," said the woman, shaking her
husband till he awakened.
They got up at once and, making a light, saw that the Doll had eaten
the food and drunk the water, and that its eyes were moving. The woman
caught it up with delight and fondled and played with it for a long
time. When she became tired she put it back on the bench and they went
to bed again.
In the morning when they got up the Doll was gone. They looked for it
all around the house, but could not find it. Then they went outside,
and there were its tracks leading away from the door. They followed
the tracks to the creek and along the bank to a place outside the
village, where they ended; for from this place the Doll had gone up
the Milky Way on the path of light upon which the man had gone to find
the tree.
Doll traveled along the bright path till he came to the edge of day,
where the sky comes down to the earth and walls in the light. Close
beside him, in the east, he saw a skin cover fastened over a hole in
the sky wall. The skin was bulging inward as if some strong force on
the other side were pushing it.
"It is very quiet here. I think a little wind would make it livelier,"
said the Doll, drawing his knife and cutting the cover loose on one
side of the hole. At once a strong wind blew through, every now and
then bringing with it a live reindeer. Looking through the hole, Doll
saw beyond the wall another world like the earth. He drew the cover
over the hole again.
"Do not blow too hard," he said to the wind. "Sometimes blow hard,
sometimes light, and sometimes do not blow at all."
[Illustration: A GALE SWEPT IN BRINGING REINDEER, TREES AND BUSHES]
Then he got upon the sky wall and walked along till he came to the
southeast. Here another opening was covered like the first, and the
covering was bulging inward. When he cut this covering loose a gale
swept in bringing reindeer, trees, and bushes. He quickly covered the
hole and said to the gale, "You are too strong. Sometimes blow hard,
sometimes light, and sometimes do not blow at all. The people on earth
will want variety."
Again walking along the sky wall he came to a hole in the south, and
when this covering was cut a hot wind came rushing in carrying rain
and spray from the great sea lying beyond the sky-hole on that side.
Doll closed this opening and talked to the wind as before.
Then he passed on to the west where there was another hole which
admitted heavy rainstorms, with sleet and spray from the ocean. When
he had closed this and given the wind its instructions he went on to
the northwest. There, when he cut away the covering, a cold blast came
rushing in, bringing snow and ice, so that he was chilled to the bone
and half frozen, and he made haste to close the hole as he had the
others.
He started to go along the sky wall to the north, but the cold became
more and more severe until at last he was obliged to leave the wall
and make a circuit to the southward, going back to the north only when
he came opposite the opening. There the cold was so intense that he
waited some time before he could muster courage to cut the cover away.
When he did so, a fearful blast rushed in, carrying great masses of
snow and ice, strewing it over the entire plain of the earth. It was
so bitter that he closed the hole very quickly, and told the wind from
that direction to come only in the middle of the winter so that the
people might not be taken unawares, and might be prepared for it.
From there he hastened down to warmer climes in the middle of the
earth plain, where, looking up, he saw that the sky was supported by
long, slender, arching poles, like those of a conical lodge, but made
of some beautiful material unknown to him. Journeying on, he finally
came to the village from which he started and went into his own home.
Doll lived in this village for a very long time; for when the foster
parents who had made him died, he was taken by other people of the
village and so lived on for many generations, until he finally died.
Since his death parents have made dolls for their children in
imitation of the Doll who first opened the wind-holes of the sky and
regulated all the six winds of earth.
XXX
RAVEN AND THE GEESE
For a long time Raven lived alone, but finally became tired of it and
decided to take a wife. It was late in the fall and he noticed that
the birds were going south in large flocks. He flew away and stopped
directly in the path taken by geese and other wild fowl on their way
to the land of summer.
As he sat there he saw a pretty young goose coming near. He hid his
face by looking at his feet, so that she would not know but that he
was a black goose, and called out, "Who wishes me for a husband? I am
a very nice person."
The goose flew on without heeding him and he looked after her and
sighed. Soon after a black brant passed, and Raven cried out as
before, but the brant flew on. Again he waited and this time a duck
passed near, and when Raven cried out she turned her head a little.
"Oh, I shall succeed this time," thought Raven, and his heart beat
fast with hope. But the duck passed on, and Raven stood waiting with
bowed head.
Very soon a family of white-front geese came along, consisting of the
parents with four sons and a sister. Raven cried out, "Who wishes me
for a husband? I am a fine hunter and am young and handsome."