All the Northwest Coast tribes had many stories. Some of these stories had
been borrowed from tribe to tribe, and were told at many different places.
Usually, however, the single tribes had stories that were favorites with
them and really belonged to them. The favorite stories among the Tlingit
and Haida were about the raven, whom they called _yetl_. There were many
stories told of him and his doings. It is difficult sometimes to tell just
what yetl was—whether bird or man. He could take on many forms, and was
usually the friend of the Indians. In the olden time they did not have
fire, daylight, fresh water, or the oolachen fish. It was yetl, the raven,
called also _Nekilstlas_, who got them these good things.
All of these precious things belonged to a great chief who had a lovely
daughter. The raven made love to this maiden. Once when at their house he
pretended to be thirsty and begged her for a drink of water. The girl
brought it to him in a bucket. He drank a little and laid the rest aside.
By and by every one in the house was fast asleep except the raven; he was
watching. He then got up quietly, put on his feather coat, took up the
bucket in his bill and flew away with it. He was in such a hurry that he
spilled the water here and there, and where it fell there have since been
rivers and lakes. Never since that time have the Indians been without
water.
But it was much harder to get the fire. Nekilstlas no longer dared to go
to the chief’s house or to make love to the maiden. He, however, changed
himself into a spruce needle and floated on the water. He was thus got
into the house without any one’s knowing it, and there he changed into a
little boy baby, whom the girl treated like her own son. He stayed there a
long time, waiting his chance. At last, one day, he seized a burning brand
from the fire and flew out of the smoke-hole in the roof with it. He was
so careless that he set fire to many things. At the north end of Vancouver
Island many of the trees are black, almost as if they were burned, and
they say that was done by Nekilstlas when he flew away with the fire.
However that may be, since then the Indians have had fire.
The old chief had the sun and the moon, but he kept them away from the
people, and was very proud to think that he alone had light. Nekilstlas
had to think a long time before he could make a plan to secure these for
the Indians. At last he made himself an imitation sun and put on it
something which made it shine. He then taunted the chief by telling him
that he too had a light. For a time the chief did not believe him. At last
Nekilstlas drew back his feather coat and let a piece of his bogus sun be
seen. The chief believed it, and was so angry that he placed his real sun
and moon in the sky, where they have been lights to the Indians ever
since.
The last of the four possessions which the raven wanted to get from the
old chief for his human friends was the oolachen fish, which yields the
oil of which the Indians are so fond. The shag is a dirty seaside bird
that has the unpleasant habit of vomiting up its food when it is excited.
He was, however, a special friend of the chief, and one of the few whom he
used to invite to eat oolachen with him. One time the shag had been eating
pretty heartily at the chief’s house, and afterward the raven set him and
the sea-gull to fighting. In his excitement the shag threw up the fish he
had eaten. The raven took the scales and smeared himself and his canoe all
over with them. Going then to the chief’s house, he asked if he might come
in and rest, that he was tired out from catching oolachen. The chief
thought at first that he was telling a lie, but when he saw the scales, he
thought there must be other oolachen besides his, and in his rage he
opened the boxes in which he kept them and let them all loose. Since then
the Indians have had abundance of the oolachen to give them the oil they
need.
Besides these stories of the things the raven got for them, there are
others. The raven is not always the friend of men, and sometimes he does
them harm and not good. There is a story of the raven and the fisherman.
This fisherman had much trouble from some one stealing the bait and fish
from his fish-hook. The thief was no one else than the raven. The
fisherman finally put a magic hook on his line and let it down. When the
raven tried to steal from this he was caught. When he had been pulled up
to the surface of the water, he struggled fearfully, by pressing against
the canoe with his feet and his wings. The fisherman, however, was too
strong for him. He pulled so hard that he tore the raven’s beak off, and
then, seizing him, dragged him in shore. When he pulled off the raven’s
beak, the bird turned into a man, but he kept his face so covered up with
his feather garment that only his eyes could be seen. The fisherman could
not make him uncover his face; but one young man who stood by picked up a
handful of dirt and rubbed it into the raven’s eyes. Smarting with pain
and taken by surprise, the raven threw off his mantle, and the men saw who
he was. The raven was so angry, that ever since then ravens and their
friends, the crows, have constantly troubled fishermen.
The Tshimpshian, who live south of the Tlingit, on the mainland, have a
story of the raven. They say that two boys lived in a village. One of them
was the son of a chief. One day the chief’s son said to the other, when
they were playing, “Let us take skins of birds and fly up to heaven.” They
did so, and found things up there quite like this world. They found a
house there, near a pond of water; and in this house lived a chief, who
was a sort of deity. The daughters of this deity caught the two boys and
were finally married to them, although the deity did not like them, and
tried in every way to do them harm. They always escaped, however. They
lived together there for a long time, and at last the wife of the chief’s
son had a little boy baby. One day, when she was playing with the baby,
the little one slipped out of her hands, and fell down, down, from the sky
into the sea. It happened that it was found and saved by the chief, who
was really the baby’s grandfather, though no one knew it at the time. When
the little one had been taken to the village, it would not, for some time,
eat anything. They offered it salmon and berry cake and hemlock bark, but
he would not touch any of them. At last his grandfather said, “Feed him
some fish stomachs.” Then the little fellow began to eat very greedily,
and before he got through he had eaten up all the food that the village
had stored away for use. Then he surprised every one by saying, “Don’t you
know who I am? I am the raven.”
[Illustration.]