Stonerella Queen Of Weed IJWTGH's blog: "Raven Stories"

Raven and Goose-Wife

It is said that Raven once fell in love with a beautiful young goose girl. They stayed together all summer long, but when fall came and snow was soon to arrive, the goose girl wanted to join her relatives to fly south. Raven decided to go with her because he loved her so much and she would not stay.

Now Raven can fly as good as any other bird, but he cannot fly very far at one time. He tried to keep up with the large flock, but he was always growing tired and had to rest often. When the geese did stop to sleep and eat, they always stopped at places where there was no food for Raven. Because of this, he was becoming weaker every day.

The geese were in a hurry to get away from the coming cold and they did not like waiting for Raven all the time. His goose-wife let him ride on her back, but because he was so heavy she couldn't carry him for long. The girl's folks carried Raven for a while, too, but they soon grew tired as well. They took turns like that until they came to the ocean.

The girl's father told Raven that the ocean was very far across and that there would be no place to land and rest. He told him that they could not make it with him on their backs.

Raven thought about this and decided that he would have to stay. He said good-bye to his beloved goose-wife, and then he flew home where he has lived since. Now ravens live here all the time because they can't fly across the ocean like the geese.

Raven and Mink decided they would go where the fish spawn. They wanted to kill a grizzly bear. So they went. They each had a canoe. They finally reached there when they saw a bear walking in a trail. But they did not do anything to it. They were too scared to spear it.

Then Raven told Mink to make a hole inside a fish tail. "I will go inside it. Maybe the one that is walking in its trail will swallow me. When it swallows me, I will cut through its chest and jump out. When it comes towards me, watch closely. When I jump out, you should spear it too. Maybe it will die then," he said. Mink agreed and he put the fish tail on the trail with Raven inside. After a while, something came. But when the grizzly opened its mouth to eat the fish tail, Raven cawed and flew up. He became scared and did not stay inside the fish tail. The grizzly ran into the brush, too.

Mink came to Raven and said, "What did you do? How come you let it go when it finally came? When the sun goes down, I will do it instead." So Mink went inside the fish tail. Raven told him he would spear the grizzly when Mink jumps out. A grizzly finally came along and swallowed the fish tail. When he swallowed it, he started thrashing around. Mink cut through its chest and jumped out. While this was going on, Raven had his spear stuck between two trees. He tried to get it unstuck. Soon the grizzly fell dead from the wound that Mink had made. Mink said to Raven, "What happened? You were supposed to spear it when I came out. Why did you have the spear across your stomach so you had to lunge against it?"

Raven said, "The spear got stuck between the trees with me. That is why I didn't help."

They skinned and cut it up. They got the fat too. Raven said that they will cook the fat to get grease out of it. "Like our forefathers used to do it. They would take the intestine and string it through a portage. Then they would pour the grease into it. I will show you how it is done," he told Mink.

Mink went to work cooking the fat while Raven strung the intestine through the portage. The intestine must have been really long. There was a knot tied at the end so that the grease would not run out on the ground. Then Raven said, "I will go walking in the woods while you are cooking the fat and filling the intestine. It will get full soon. That is the way our forefathers used to do it."

Mink, therefore, kept working. He kept filling the grease into the intestine. Raven went into the woods. He circled and returned to the portage where the intestine ended. Mink kept on working but the intestine never filled up. The grease kept flowing on down into the intestine. Then he started to wonder if Raven was at the end of it. He stopped and stole away down there (to the end of the intestine). When he got there, Raven was there drinking the grease.

Mink got really mad and he picked up a burned stick that was there. He ran to Raven and hit him on the forehead. Raven fell backwards and was knocked unconscious. Mink tied up the intestine again and went back through the portage. Finally, Raven got up and went into the brush. Mink was working again. This time, it, the intestine, filled up. Raven returned when the sun went down. He had soot on his forehead. Mink asked him, "What happened to you that caused you to have soot on your face?" Raven told him, "I was pushing a burned tree which my forefathers had left when one fell on me. That is why I have soot on my face."

As usual, Raven was hungry. He had heard of a large whale near an island and so he went to see it for himself. The people in the village near the whale were afraid of it, and they were too scared to go fishing.

Raven flew to the place and watched the whale for three days hoping to think of a way to trick it. You see, the smart bird knew that he would have lots of meat if he could kill the whale.

Finally, an idea came to him and he walked up close to the whale who was resting near shore.

"Please come closer, Cousin Whale, so that I may speak with you," requested Raven.

Whale opened his eyes and slowly swam up to the small black bird and asked what he wanted.

"I have come to tell you that we are cousins," responded the trickster.

"That is impossible! You are a bird and I am a whale. We cannot be relatives," said the great whale.

"Oh," said Raven, "it is true and I can prove it to you."

The whale was curious and asked how he could prove their relation.

"If you open your mouth," said Raven, "I will show you how our throats are the same shape, which proves that we are cousins."

Although the giant whale was not completely satisfied, he was soon opening his mouth for Raven nonetheless.

When the creature's mouth was open far enough, Raven ran into his mouth and down his throat. He was wearing a backpack with his knife and some firewood in it, and once inside he cut meat from the whale and cooked it over a small fire.

Whale knew that he had been tricked so he pleaded with Raven not to eat his heart. Raven agreed at the time and spent many days living inside the whale's body eating his meat whenever he grew hungry, which was most of the time.

Once most of the flesh had been cooked and eaten, Raven began to pull out Whale's organs as well. He ate his liver and other parts, but left the heart.

One day, Whale told Raven that the water was getting shallower and that they were near land. Raven took his knife and cut out Whale's heart and ate it, killing the great creature immediately.

The dead body washed up onto shore but Raven could not get out because the giant mouth was closed. He stayed inside the whale for another few days eating the rib cage.

On the third day he heard the voices of men outside. It was a group of hunters who had found the whale carcass. As soon as the people cut the whale, Raven flew out and escaped.  

Raven had played so many tricks on mankind for so long that one day a great chief decided to kill him. The chief invited Raven to visit him and when the black bird wasn't watching, he quickly threw him into a large skin bag which he tied tightly shut so that the troublesome bird would not escape.

Then, with the large bag over his shoulder, the man began to climb a very high and steep mountain which was close by the village. It was very dark inside of the skin bag so Raven could not see anything. He asked the man what he was doing, but the chief ignored him.

As the chief climbed higher and higher, Raven spoke out again.

"Where are you taking me?" he asked.

The chief just kept on climbing.

"I can tell that you are climbing a mountain," insisted Raven. "Why are you carrying me there? What are you going to do to me?"

The man ignored him still and continued to climb.

Raven warned the chief that he would be sorry if he killed him, saying that bad things would befall his people.

When the chief was on top of the mountain he threw the bag with the Raven over the side. As it fell, it struck the side of the steep cliff and ripped open. Raven was torn to pieces by the jagged rocks as he crashed to the ground far below. The chief had killed Raven!

When the chief returned to his village, he showed the people the pieces of Raven so that they knew what he had done. All of the men called him a great chief for killing the mischievous trickster. For several days the villagers were happy and they celebrated.

Finally, though, some people started to notice that all of the water was gone. They went to the river, but it was dry. They went to a lake, but it was empty. There was no water to be found! Then the people began to get thirsty. They knew that they could not live long without water.

The people asked why the water had vanished and a shaman told them that it was gone because the chief had killed the Raven. Now the villagers were not happy that Raven was dead and they wanted him back before everyone died.

The shaman told the chief that he had to put Raven back together. The chief took all of the pieces of the dead bird and put them together again. When he was finished Raven came back to life! He jumped up and started to fly away, but he first asked the chief why he had brought him back to life.

"All of the water has gone," the chief replied, "and only you can return it."

Raven flew up higher and then spoke to the man, "Look around you, there is water everywhere."

The chief turned and saw that the lake was full and that the river ran deep and fast again. As Raven disappeared in the distance, the chief promised never to try to kill Raven again.

Because of his powers and role in their heritage, Natives do not kill ravens.

There once lived a very powerful and rich chief who had a beautiful young daughter. Somehow, the chief got the sun and the moon and he hung them up in his house. Because he had the sun and the moon, it became dark everywhere.

Because of the darkness, the people could not hunt or fish. When they went out to find wood to burn in their fires, they had to crawl around in the forest feeling with their hands until they found something which might be wood. Then they would bite it to make certain that it was indeed firewood.

Raven learned that the great chief had taken the sun and moon, so he went to his house to take it back. He asked the chief if he would return the sun and moon, but he would not. So the smart black bird devised a plan.

He saw how the chief's daughter went to a small stream to get water every morning, so he hid near there and waited for her to return. When he saw her coming down the trail, he turned himself into a fingerling, a tiny fish, and jumped into the water. After the girl arrived, she filled a bucket with water. Then she dipped her drinking cup into the stream and Raven, disguised as a fingerling, quickly swam into it. She did not see Raven and drank the water.

Inside her body, Raven turned into a baby and so the girl became pregnant. After a short time the daughter gave birth to a baby boy which was really Raven. The baby grew fast and was soon a young boy. The grandfather was very fond of his grandson and would do anything for him. One day the boy began crying for something.

The chief asked him, "What do you want, grandson?"

The boy pointed to the sun and moon hanging from the ceiling. The chief decided to let him play with them if it would make him stop crying. So the boy took them outside and played with them for a while, but then he threw them high into the air. When the old chief ran out to see what had happened, Raven became himself again and flew away. Since that time there has been light.

A very, very long time ago, giant animals lived in the world and there was no such thing as mankind. They were all big and could talk to each other and use magic. There were even some animals which no longer live on earth. One day Dotson' Sa, Great Raven, said to Raven, "Make a large raft."

So Raven made a large boat. It took a long time because it had to be very big. When Raven was finished, Dotson' Sa told him it wasn't big enough.

"You must build it bigger." he said.

When it was finished, it began to rain. At first it rained only a little and Dotson' Sa instructed Raven to gather all of the animals in pairs. Raven gathered the animals and food for them. It was very difficult but he did it anyhow.

Once all of the animals were on the raft, it started to rain very hard. The whole world was soon flooded and only those animals on the raft were left in the world.

When it stopped raining Raven asked some seagulls to fly in every direction in search of land. They flew away and returned saying how there was no land in sight. There was only water!

After a while the flood was almost gone. Raven told Muskrat to swim down to the ocean floor to make an island. The muskrat, who was really quite large, dived down and started piling up the mud from the bottom. He kept this up until land appeared.

Dotson' Sa used his magic and made berries, trees, and plants to cover the land. When he had done this, lakes and ponds were left where there had been low spots in the land. Next, Great Raven made rivers. He made them so that they flowed both ways! On one side the river ran down to the sea, and on the other it flowed up towards the mountains!

Later, though, he decided that it was too easy to travel and so he made it so that rivers only went down to the sea.

Now that the flood was gone and there was land, Dotson' Sa decided to make man. He created him from stone but because he was made of rock, man would never die and so Great Raven decided to make him from clay instead.

After he had made man, he made woman so that they could be married and have children. Raven wanted a wife so he tried to marry one of the women but the men took her away from him. This made Raven mad, so he took some dried leaves and crushed them into a large bag. He took the bag and went to where the people lived and opened it. Out flew millions of mosquitoes which still pester and bite mankind because Raven wasn't allowed to marry a woman.

Now Raven had created the whole world. That is why he is never hunted because he made everything.