394 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1945 



The people tried in many ways to get the box but all efforts failed until Raven 

 through trickery changed himself into a small leaf in a spring where he had 

 observed the chief's daughter came regularly for water. She dipped up Raven and 

 swallowed him when she took a drink. Raven then turned into an infant and was 

 given birth by the girl in her father's cave. Raven turned out to be a very fretful 

 and disagreeable child constantly crying for the box which contained the sun and 

 moon. At last the exasperated chief gave it to him to play with and he at once 

 quieted down and became very cheerful. Of course when the chief fell asleep, 

 Raven ran off with the box. He was pursued but escaped. When he returned 

 with the box containing the sun, the people called him a liar, but he opened the 

 lid a little and everyone was dazzled by the brightness and urged him to tone it 

 down. So Raven placed the sun in tbe sky where it is bright enough to light the 

 world but not too bright. The moon was also hung in the sky to light up the night. 



The place of sunrise, according to the Bella Coola, is guarded by 

 the Bear of Heaven, a fierce warrior, inspirer of martial zeal in man ; 

 and the place of sunset is marked by an enormous pillar which supports 

 the sky. The trail of the sun is a bridge as wide as the distance be- 

 tween the winter and summer solstices; in summer he walks on the 

 right-hand side of the bridge, in winter on the left; the solstices are 

 "Where the sun sits down." Three guardians accompany the sun on 

 his course, dancing about him ; but sometimes he drops his torch, and 

 then an eclipse occurs. 



Not many Pacific coast tribes have as definite a conception of the 

 sun as this, and, generally speaking, the orb of day is of less impor- 

 tance in the myths of the northern than in those of the southern stocks 

 of the Northwest. It is conceived both as a living being, which can 

 even be slain, and as a material object — a torch or a mask — carried 

 by a Sun Bearer. One of the most widespread of Northwestern legends 

 is a Phaethon-like story of the Mink, son of the Sun, and his adventures 

 with his father's burden, the sun disk. 



A woman becomes pregnant from sitting in the Sun's rays; she gives birth 

 to a boy, who grows with marvelous rapidity, and who, even before he can talk, 

 indicates to his mother that he wants a bow and arrows; other children taunt 

 him with having no father, but when his mother tells him that the sun is his 

 parent, he shoots his arrows into the sky until they form a ladder whereby he 

 climbs to the Sun's house; the father requests the boy to relieve him of the 

 sun burden, and the boy, carelessly impatient, sweeps away the clouds and ap- 

 proaches the earth, which becomes too hot — the ocean boils, the stones split, and 

 all life is threatened, whereupon the Sun Father casts his offspring back to earth 

 condemning him to take the form of the Mink. 



In some versions the heating of the world results in such a conflagra- 

 tion that those animal beings who escape it by betaking themselves 

 to the sea are transformed into the men who thereafter people the 

 earth. 



The Huron of the Great Lakes area thought that the earth was 

 pierced and that when the sun went down it entered this hole and 

 remained hidden until the next morning when it came out at the other 

 end. 



