Raven Steals the Fresh Water

A Sitka telling

This episode belongs to the long Raven cycle recorded in English at Sitka and published by John R. Swanton in Tlingit Myths and Texts (1909). Tlingit tellers tell it in many ways, and in its fullest forms Raven stories can be clan property; this is the published version, retold in summary.

No water to drink

After Raven had freed the stars, the moon, and daylight, there was still no fresh water to drink in the world. Raven heard of a man named Petrel (Ganook) who owned an everlasting spring. Petrel kept it covered and slept beside it, so that no one could take any.

The trick

Raven came to Petrel's house and was taken in for the night. While Petrel slept, Raven took some dog dung and put it beside him. Then he woke Petrel and told him he had soiled himself and his clothes. Petrel, ashamed, went outside to clean himself, and Raven went straight to the spring, took off its cover, and began to drink.

The smoke hole

Petrel came back and saw what Raven was doing. Raven flew up toward the smoke hole, but Petrel called on his spirits to hold him there, and Raven hung in the smoke of Petrel's fire until at last he got free. Raven had been white; the smoke turned him black, and ravens have been black ever since.

The rivers

Flying over the land with his mouth full, Raven let the water fall. Where it fell the great rivers began: the Nass, the Stikine, the Taku, the Chilkat, and the Alsek, and from the smaller drops came the many little creeks where the salmon run. So the fresh water that one man had kept to himself became the rivers everyone shares.