The Beginning of the World

In the time before this world was settled, the Tsimshian tell of a young man who was poor, who was hungry, who was teased by his brothers. The young man trained in secret with a spirit who lived in a mountain, and the spirit gave him strength — not the simple strength of muscles, but the older strength of those who have been tested and learned to endure.

But before the young man and before his people, there was the shaping. The world did not always have its rivers. In the first time, the water covered everything, and when it withdrew, it left the paths that would become the rivers, carved by its going. The Tsimshian who live along the rivers trace the meaning of their lives to these waterways.

The great Raven made the world habitable through a series of transformations. He stole the light. He arranged the tides. He taught the salmon to return. He was not always kind and not always clever and not always honest, but he was always necessary, the way fire is necessary, the way the tide is necessary.

The Tsimshian also carry the flood memory: the story of the world being covered by water from which only the highest places emerged, and the long, slow work of the people's return to the valleys as the water went down, following the water's retreat as the salmon follow the flooding river back to the sea.