426 THE ESKIMO ABOUT BERING STRAIT [ethann.IS 



that he made things on earth so much like those in the sky that the 

 shamans still pretend to replace animals on the earth by trips to the 

 sky land. 



The first man made on the earth returned to the sky land, where the 

 shades of shamans and people who are recompensed for a violent death 

 also go; the Eaven Father is believed still to live there. I was informed 

 that the Eskimo about Norton sound place fragments of dried fish or 

 other food in different places ou the tundra as offerings to the Eaven 

 Father in the sky; in return for which he gives them fine weather. 



The Unalit say that to kill a raven will cause the Eaven Father to 

 become very angry and to send bad weather, and the lower Yukon 

 Eskimo dislike and fear ravens as evil birds. 



The common mark symbolizing the raven is found upon all kinds of 

 carvings, ornamental work, tools, implements, and utensils among the 

 western Eskimo, as i)reviously described and illustrated. On the eth- 

 nological sjiecimens obtained from Point Barrow and through Bering 

 strait to Kuskokwim river, this mark is common. There is an ivory 

 bodkin in the National Museum, brought from the mouth of Mackenzie 

 river, which bears this mark, and I saw the same device tattooed on 

 the forehead of a boy at Plover bay, Siberia (see figure 115). 



The Eaven Father, who made the land and everything upon it, is the 

 subject of many tales in which he is represented as benefiting man- 

 kind. When he returned to the sky he left on earth children like him- 

 self, and some of these are the subjects of numerous tales among the 

 Eskimo and adjacent tribes of Tinne, in northern Alaska. These Eaven 

 children frequently figure in their tales as boasters or in other discredit- 

 able and absurd ways, and while the ravens now living are thought to 

 be descendants of the Eaven Father, they have lost their magical 

 powers. 



For .a long time they were said to have retained their powers of 

 changing back and forth at will from men to birds, but gradually lost 

 these powers until they became ordinary ravens as we see them today. 



Many things, such as physical features of tlie landscape, etc, con- 

 nected with raven tales are pointed out as evidence of the Eaven 

 Father's former presence when the earth was new. Below Paimut on 

 the Yukon is a large block of stone resting near the water's edge which 

 they say was dropped there by the Eaven Father after he had made the 

 earth. When he had placed it there he told the people of the Yukon 

 that whenever fish became scarce they must tie an inflated bladder to 

 this stone and throw both into the river, whereupon fish would become 

 plentiful. They say that one year, when fish were very scarce, the 

 shamans did this and when the stone and the bladder struck the water 

 the latter immediately sank out of sight and the stone floated like 

 a piece of dry wood some distance down the river; then it returned 

 upstream of its own volition, went to its former place on the bank and 

 fish immediately became very numerous. 



