Raven and the First Men

A Haida telling, and a sculptor's retelling

This story is recorded by John R. Swanton in Haida Texts and Myths (1905) and, decades later, reworked by the Haida artist Bill Reid, drawing on 19th-century Haida carver Charles Edenshaw's earlier miniature version, into the monumental sculpture The Raven and the First Men, carved from laminated yellow cedar between 1978 and 1980 and held at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Reid's version is itself a public, widely seen retelling of Haida tradition, not a departure from it, and this narrative draws on both his and Swanton's versions.

The clamshell

Raven, walking the beach alone at Rose Spit on Haida Gwaii after a great flood has receded, notices an enormous clamshell lying in the sand, and from it come small sounds. Looking closer, he finds it full of tiny beings, the first humans, crowded together and afraid to come out into his strange new world.

Coaxing them out

Using his voice, by turns coaxing, teasing, and persuading, exactly as Raven persuades and tricks his way through every other story told of him, he convinces the beings to leave the shell's safety. Some hesitate at the edge; others emerge readily, curious about the wide world of sea, sky, and forest Raven describes to them. Once out, they become the first Haida people, beginning their life on Haida Gwaii.