Raven Steals the Sun

The Eyak traditional territory centered on the Copper River Delta, one of the most dynamic and ecologically rich landscapes in North America. In such a place, the creation story is also a story about change.

In the Eyak telling, the sun was not hidden by a greedy man but had simply been absent — the world was a world without warmth, where everything lived in a thin, grey endurance. Raven, who could not bear endurance and preferred action, found where the sun was kept — deep in a house at the edge of the sky — and he stole it.

The theft was not clean. Raven had to transform himself, had to deceive, had to flee, and the sun was too hot for him to hold for long. He flew as far as he could, and where he finally had to drop it, it settled into the sky and began its path. That is why the sun moves — because Raven set it tumbling and it has not stopped since.

The Eyak also remember the time of the animals that walked before the people — great hulking creatures whose bones can be found in certain riverbanks when the Copper River cuts through old gravel beds. These creatures were from the world before the flood. They belong to the first world. The people belong to the second.