| How Raven Helped the Ancient
People
Long ago, near the beginning of the world, Gray
Eagle was the guardian of the sun and moon and stars, of fresh
water and of fire. Gray Eagle hated people so much that he kept
these things hidden. People lived in darkness, without fire and
without fresh water.
Gray Eagle had a beautiful daugher, and Raven
fell in love with her. At that time Raven was a handsome young
man.(1) He changed himself into a snow-white bird, and as a
snow-white bird he pleased Gray Eagle's daughter. She invited
him to her father's lodge.
When Raven saw the sun and teh moon and the
stars and fresh water hanging on the sides of Eagle's lodge, he
knew what he should do. He watched for his chance to seize them
when no one was looking. He stole all of them, and a brand of
fire also, and flew out of the lodge through a smoke hole.
As soon as Raven got outside, he hung the sun up
in the sky. It made so much light that he was able to fly far
out to an island in the middle of the ocean. When the sun set,
he fastened the moon up in the sky and hung the stars around in
different places. By this new light he kept on flying, carrying
with him the fresh water and the brand of fire he hadstolen. It
fell to the ground and there became the source of all the
freshwater streams and lakes in the world.
The Raven flew on, holding the brand of fire in
his bill.
The smoke from the fire blew back over his white
feathers and made them black.. When his bill began to burn, he
had to drop the firebrand. It struck rocks and went into the
rocks. That is why, if you strike two stones together, fire will
drop out.
Raven's feathers never became white again after
they were blackened by the smoke from the firebrand. That is why
Raven is not a black bird. (1) Raven was the benefactor of the
mythological people along the shores of Puget Sound and the
beaches of the Olypic Peninsula, much as Coyote was of the
ancients east of the Cascade Range. Among many other deeds,
according to Quillayute mythology, Raven brought the blueback
salmon to the rivers along the Washington coast. Having eaten
some in the underground home of his father-in-law, Moke, young
Raven determined to take a blueback salmon home with him.
Pursued, he hid the scales of the fish in his mouth and
nostrils. He came up to the south. He threw one scale of the
salmon into the Quillayute River, one into the Hoh, and two into
the Queets. He washed off all the rest of the scales into the
Quinault River. That is why there are a few blueback salmon in
the Quillayte and Hoh rivers today, many in the Queets, and very
many in the Quinault. "So much for that."
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