NELSON] BRINGING OF LIGHT BY RAVEN 485 
the seacoast, and a great wind arose, drifting him with the ice across 
the sea to the land on the other shore. There he found a village of 
people and took a wife from among them, living with her people until 
he had three daughters and four sons. In time he became very old and 
told his children how he had come to their country, and after telling 
them that they must go to the land whence he came, he died. 
Raven’s children then went away as he had directed them, and finally 
they came to their father’s land. There they became ravens, and their 
descendants afterward forgot how to change themselves into people 
and so have continued to be ravens to this day. 
At Raven’s village day and night follow each other as he told them 
it would, and the length of each was unequal, as sometimes Raven 
traveled a long time without throwing out any light and again he threw 
out the light at frequent intervals, so that the nights were very short, 
and thus they have continued. 
THE RED BEAR (TA-KU-KA) 
(From Andreivsky, on the lower Yukon) 
On the tundra, south of the Yukon mouth, there once lived an orphan 
boy with hisaunt. They were quite alone, and one summer day the boy 
took his kaiak and traveled away to see where people lived on the 
Yukon, of whom he had heard. When he came to the river, he traveled 
up its course until he reached a large village. There he landed and 
the people ran down to the shore, seized him, broke his kaiak to pieces, 
tore his clothing from him, and beat him badly. 
The boy was kept there until the end of summer, the subject of con- 
tinual beating and ill treatment from the villagers. In the fall one of 
the men took pity on him, made him a kaiak, and started him home- 
ward, where he arrived after a long absence. When he reached home 
he saw that a large village had grown up by his aunt’s house. As soon 
as he landed, he went to his aunt’s house and entered, frightening her 
very much, for he had been starved aud beaten so long that he looked 
almost like a skeleton. 
When his aunt recognized him, she received his story with words of 
pity, then words of anger at the cruel villagers. When he had finished 
telling her of his sufferings, she told him to bring her a piece of wood, 
which he did; this they worked into a small image of an animal with 
long teeth and long, sharp claws, painting it red upon the sides and 
white on the throat. Then they took the image to the edge of the 
creek and placed it in the water, the aunt telling it to go and destroy 
every one it could find at the village where her boy had been. 
The image did not move, and the old woman took it out of the water 
and cried over it, letting her tears fall upon it, and then put it back in 
the water, saying, “Now, go and kill the bad people who beat my boy.” 
At this the image floated across the creek and crawled up the other 
bank, where it began to grow, soon reaching a large size, when it became 
