Episode Details

Six tales open the Big-Raven cycle of Bogoras's Koryak Texts — the Koryak creator-trickster and his household, in the book's own order. Raven-Man, who eats in secret and makes water in his boots, steals the sun into his mouth, and loses it to a tickle and a laugh; the Mouse-Girls dance on the shore and take their seal back out of Big-Raven's kettle by magic and mischief; a pilfering mouse-child's lie is found out by her own lost tooth; a small kamak, caught in Big-Raven's snare, chooses what he will be made into, and lives on as the watchful harpoon-line that no thief can carry away in silence; Big-Raven slides down the largest mountain into the kamaks' porch and comes home eaten, and goes back with a hammer; and Kilu, finding her husband married among the Bumblebee people, settles the matter in a single beat, and the river-bank fills with bees.

Chapters:

00:04 — Little-Bird-Man and Raven-Man

08:43 — Big-Raven and the Mice

15:48 — The Mouse-Girls

17:43 — How a Small Kamak was transformed into a Harpoon-Line

22:52 — Big-Raven and the Kamaks

24:14 — Kilu and the Bumblebees

From Koryak Texts (1917) by Waldemar Bogoras — Publications of the American Ethnological Society, Vol. V, the Jesup North Pacific Expedition recordings of 1900–01. Public domain. Fresh English rendering by KacheliTV. In keeping with this shelf's practice, some tales are heard with single beats left out or told in outline, and the register records them all: Little-Bird-Man and Raven-Man stands as Bogoras printed it, Raven-Man's death in the book's own single clause and his spotted palate set on high in the book's own words. In Big-Raven and the Mice, the book's one violent beat of the first visit is not heard — Big-Raven comes home with the shreds on his eyes, shouting of a fire that is not there, and Miti's answer stands as printed; the defiled kettle and the painted face stand whole. In The Mouse-Girls, the mother's cruel command to her child is not heard — the girl is scolded and sent away, and her end comes after the sending-away, as the book leaves it. In the Harpoon-Line tale, the small kamak's making is told without its cutting — he is asked what he will be, he laughs and consents, and lives on as the speaking line. In Big-Raven and the Kamaks, the eating of Big-Raven is told in outline only — he is eaten, and he lives, being a shaman; his return with the hammer stands as printed. Kilu and the Bumblebees stands as printed, its one hard beat in a single clause. Northern Tales gathers the Chukchi, Siberian Eskimo, Koryak, Yukaghir and Even tales from Bogoras's Jesup North Pacific Expedition volumes, in the books' own order.

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