120 BUREAU OF AMERICAlSr ETHNOLOGY [bull. 30 



order to kill him. Raven, however, again changed himself into a 

 rock, and, when they thoiioht he was cooked to pieces and looked 

 inside, the^^ saw that he was still there. Then they told him to come 

 out. 



Now Nas-cA'kl-yeJ was very angry and said, "Let rain pour down 

 all over the world, and let people die of starvation." Then it became 

 so wet and stormy that people could not get food and began to 

 starve. Their canoes were also broken up, their houses fell in on 

 them, and they suffered terri])ly. Now Nas-cA'ki-yel asked for his 

 jointed dance hat and when he put it on, water began pouring out 

 of the very top of it. It is from Nas-cA'ki-yei that the Indians 

 obtained this kind of hat. When the water rose so as to cover the 

 house floor. Raven and his mother got upon the lowest retaining 

 timber. This house we are talking of, although it looked like a 

 house to them, was really part of the world. It had eight rows of 

 retaining timbers, and, as the water came up. Raven and his mother 

 climbed to a higher one. At the same time the people of the world 

 were climl)ing up into the hills. When the waters reached the fourth 

 retaining timber they were half way up the moiuitains. When the 

 house was nearly full of water. Raven had his mother get into the 

 skin of the cax he had killed, while he got into the skin of the white 

 bird with copper-colored bill, and to this very day Tlingit do not 

 eat the cax because it was Raven's mother. The cax, which is a 

 great diver, now stayed on the surface of the water, but Raven him- 

 self flew to the very highest cloud in the sky and hung there l)v his 

 bill.« 



After Raven had hung to this cloud for days and days, nobody 

 knows how long, he pulled his bill out and prayed to fall upon a 

 piece of kelp, for he thought that the water had gone down. He 

 did so, and, flying off, found the waters just half way down the 

 mountains. 



Then he traveled along again and came to a shark which had a 

 long stick it had been swimming around with. He took this, stuck 

 it straight down into the sea and used it as a ladder on which to 

 descend under the ocean. Arrived at the bottom, he gathered up 

 some sea urchins and started along with them. 



By and by Raven came to a place where an old woman lived and 

 said to her, "How cold I am after eating those sea urchins." As she 

 paitl no attention to him, he repeated it over and over for a long time. 



« A short version of this part of the story was related to me by my Sitka interpreter who had obtained 

 it from his wife. According to this, a man had a wife of whom he was very jealous. People wanted to 

 get to her and marry her, but he guarded her very closely. Finally a man reached her and pulled aside 

 her arms, letting free all of the land animals and sea creatures she had been keeping there. That was 

 why her husband was so jealous about her. Afterward the husband raised a flood, but one man heard 

 of it and niade a big canoe to which others attached theirs, and all went up together. He also took 

 two animals of each species into his canoe. This last is evidently a Christian addition. By some 

 the jealous husband is said to have been Loon. 



