MYTHS AND LEGENDS
OF ALASKA

[Pg v]

PREFACE

LONG ago, even before the days of the animal people,the world was only a great ocean whereinwas no land nor any living thing except a greatBird. The Bird, after a long, long time, flew down tothe surface of the water and dipped his great blackwings into the flood. The earth arose out of the waters.So began the creation. While the land was still soft,the first man burst from the pod of the beach pea andlooked out upon the endless plain behind him and thegray salt sea before him. He was the only man. ThenRaven appeared to him and the creation of other beingsbegan. Raven made also animals for food andclothing. Later, because the earth plain was so bare,he planted trees and shrubs and grass and set the greenthings to growing.

With creation by a Great Spirit, there came dangersfrom evil spirits. Such spirits carried away the sunand moon, and hung them to the rafters of the dome-shapedAlaskan huts. The world became cold andcheerless, and in the Land of Darkness white skins becameblackened by contact with the darkness. So itbecame necessary to search for the sun and hang itagain in the dome-shaped sky above them. Darknessin the Land of Long Night was the cause, throughmagic, of the bitter winds of winter—winds which[Pg vi]came down from the North, bringing with them ice andcold and snow. This was the work of some Great Spiritwhich had loosened the side of the gray cloud-tentunder which they lived, letting in the bitter winds ofanother world. Spirits blow the mists over the coldnorth sea so that canoes lose sight of their home-land.Spirits also drive the ice floes, with their fishermen, farover the horizon of ocean, into the still colder North.Spirits govern the run of the sal

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