How Raven Helped the Ancient People

One thing I really enjoy about living in the Pacific Northwest is the strong connection I feel to nature. I like to get lost among the trees, rivers, and moss imagining what life must have been like long ago, before buildings and roads. I love learning about the Native Americans tribes in the state, and how the natural order that is so familiar to me has history in ancient oral traditions - history that gives me a whole new perspective on the profound beauty of the quietly observed world. 

(some photos I took on one of my trips to the Olympic Peninsula)

Native Americans along the Olympic Peninsula and Puget Sound area highly regard Raven as a hero-like central figure in their legends and stories (to the south-east, by the Olympic Mountains and Columbia River, this figure is Coyote). Which made me realize that I don't know how to tell a raven from a crow (we get a lot of big black birds around here). But, that's besides the point. 

Let me share one of my favorite stories about Raven with you - as told by a Puget Sound tribe and quoted from the fascinating book "Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest" by Ella E. Clark:


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 daughter, and Raven fell in love with her.  At that time Raven was a handsome young man.  He changed himself into a snow-white bird, and as a snow-white bird he pleased Gray Eagles daughter.  She invited him to her fathers longhouse.
When Raven saw the sun and the moon and the stars and fresh water hanging on the sides of Eagles 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 longhouse through the 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 had stolen.
He flew back over the land.  When he had reached the right place, he dropped all the water he had stolen.  It fell to the ground and there became the source of all the fresh-water streams and lakes in the world.
Then 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 stone together, fire will drop out.

Ravens feathers never became white again after they were blackened by the smoke from the firebrand.  That is why Raven is now a black bird. 

~md