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         MYTHS AND LEGENDS
             OF ALASKA


      SELECTED AND EDITED BY

      KATHARINE BERRY JUDSON

  Author of "Myths and Legends of
    the Pacific Northwest," and
  "Montana, 'The Land of Shining
            Mountains'"


            ILLUSTRATED


          [Illustration]


              CHICAGO
        A. C. McCLURG & CO.
               1911


             Copyright
        A. C. McCLURG & CO.
               1911

     Published September, 1911

    W. F. Hall Printing Company
              Chicago




  [Illustration: Tlingit Indians in Dancing Costume]




    _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

    MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST.
      Especially of Washington and Oregon.
      _With 50 full-page illustrations. Small 4to._
        _$1.50 net._

    MONTANA: "The Land of Shining Mountains."
      _Illustrated. Indexed. Square 8vo._
        _75 cents net._

    A. C. McCLURG & CO., Publishers




PREFACE


Long ago, even before the days of the animal people, the world was
only a great ocean wherein was no land nor any living thing except a
great Bird. The Bird, after a long, long time, flew down to the
surface of the water and dipped his great black wings into the flood.
The earth arose out of the waters. So began the creation. While the
land was still soft, the first man burst from the pod of the beach pea
and looked out upon the endless plain behind him and the gray salt sea
before him. He was the only man. Then Raven appeared to him and the
creation of other beings began. Raven made also animals for food and
clothing. Later, because the earth plain was so bare, he planted trees
and shrubs and grass and set the green things to growing.

With creation by a Great Spirit, there came dangers from evil spirits.
Such spirits carried away the sun and moon, and hung them to the
rafters of the dome-shaped Alaskan huts. The world became cold and
cheerless, and in the Land of Darkness white skins became blackened by
contact with the darkness. So it became necessary to search for the
sun and hang it again in the dome-shaped sky above them. Darkness in
the Land of Long Night was the cause, through magic, of the bitter
winds of winter--winds which came down from the North, bringing with
them ice and cold and snow. This was the work of some Great Spirit
which had loosened the side of the gray cloud-tent under which they
lived, letting in the bitter winds of another world. Spirits blow the
mists over the cold north sea so that canoes lose sight of their
home-land. Spirits also drive the ice floes, with their fishermen, far
over the horizon of ocean, into the still colder North. Spirits govern
the run of the salmon, the catching of whales, and all the life of the
people of the North who wage such a terrific struggle for existence.

So there must needs be those who have power over the evil spirits,
those who by incantations and charms of magic, by ceremonial dancing
in symbolic dress, can control the designs of those who work ever
against these children of the North. Thus there arose the shamans with
all their ceremonies.

The myths in this volume are authentic. The original collections were
made by government ethnologists, by whose permission this compilation
is made. And no effort has been made, in the telling of them, to
change them from the terse directness of the natives. The language of
all Indian tribes is very simple, and to the extent that an effort is
made to put myths and legends into more polished form, to that extent
is their authenticity impaired.

Only the quaintest and purest of the myths have been selected. Many
Alaskan myths are very long and tiresome, rambling from one subject to
another, besides revealing low moral conditions. These have been
omitted, as have also those which deal with the intermarriage of men
and birds, and men and animals. Such myths are better left among
government documents where they can be readily consulted by those
making a special study of the subject. They are hardly suitable for
any collection intended for general reading. The leading myth of the
North, however, the Raven Myth, is given with a fair degree of
completeness. It would not be possible, nor would it be wise, to
attempt a compilation of all the fragments of this extensive myth.

Especial thanks are due to Dr. Franz Boas for the Tsetsaut and
Tsimshian myths, to John R. Swanton for the Tlingit myths, to Edward
Russell Nelson for the Eskimo myths, to Ferdinand Schnitter, and to
others. Thanks are also due for courtesies in securing photographs to
Mr. B. B. Dobbs and particularly to Mr. Clarence L. Andrews, both of
whom have spent many years in Alaska.

                                                    K. B. J.

    _University