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TSIMSIIIAN MYTHOLOGY 



COMPARISON OF THE THREE TYPES OF INTRODUCTION 



The principal contents of the three types of introduction may be 

 summarized in the following manner: 



Type I Type II Type III 



Jealous uncle kills neph- Child of faithless woman is Child of -faithless woman 



ews. His sister swallows taken to his uncle. born after her death is 



stone and gives birth to taken to her husband, 

 a boy. 



Boy shoots birds, 



chews gum chews gum 



to seduce uncle's wife. to seduce daughter of Sky 



seduces uncle's wife. 

 Uncle makes deluge. 



Uncle makes deluge. 



Boy flies to the skj 



He marries the Sky chief's 



daughter. 

 Their child 



drops down on kelp, 



is adopted, 

 becomes voracious. 



is adopted, 

 becomes voracious. 



Only the first of these versions has a consistent plot. In the two 

 others the actions do not form a clearly intelligible series of events. 

 In the third type no reason is given for Raven's flight to the sky, 

 although the forms of analogous tales suggest that he wanted to 

 marry the daughter of the Sky chief. There also appears no reason 

 why he should marry her; for the girl, he himself, and his friend who 

 accompanies him, seem to be introduced only to let the helpless child 

 drop down into the waters. They do not appear again in the tale. 



Among the Haida (Type II) the lack of coherence is still greater. 

 The principal peculiarity of this type consists in the weaving of the 

 tale of the origin of land into the introductory part of the myth. For 

 the sake of clearness, I will repeat this series of incidents. In Ska 

 the whole cycle begins with a scene representing the earth covered 

 by water, and the events lead to Raven's fall from heaven, and his 

 landing on drifting kelp. This sequence is identical with the Tlingit 

 deluge produced by the jealous uncle, but the intervening incidents 

 are more nearly related to the Tsimshian tale. In the Haida version 

 the cause of the flood is not accounted for, and at the end the account 

 of the creation of land is added. Later, however, follows another 

 deluge caused by the jealous uncle, as in the Tlingit version, which 

 ends in Raven's return to his uncle's house, whence he had fled to 



