Raven and the First Human

Raven — whom the Yup'ik call Tulukaruq — was flying over a vast, flat world. The world was mostly water. There were no people. Raven had been alone for so long that he had grown strange, and the strangeness made him creative.

He found a beach pea growing at the edge of the water, and on this beach pea hung a great, swollen pod. Raven watched it for four days. On the fifth day, the pod burst, and from it fell a man — fully grown, blinking in the light, looking down at his own hands with wonder. He looked at the water. He looked at the sky. He moved his arms and legs, testing them. Then he looked at Raven.

Raven studied him with the bright, calculating eye of one who has been waiting for this. Then Raven flew away and came back with clay, and he shaped from the clay a woman, and he breathed life into her, and he brought her to the man. The man and the woman looked at each other. The world had company now.

But before the people could truly live in the world, there had been the great flood. The Yup'ik speak of a time when the waters rose over everything — over the tundra, over the hills, over all but the highest places. The animals and the people who survived were those who could float, or fly, or find the highest ground. When the waters receded, the land was different. The great animals were gone. The world had been emptied and refilled.

The first true people learned to live in this new, quieter, emptier world, and their first teachers were the animals who had also survived. Raven taught them where the fish ran. The seal taught them how to move silently through cold water. The ptarmigan taught them how to change their colors with the seasons and not be found. Each animal gave the people something they needed, and in return, the people learned to take only what they needed and to give back what they could.