The ancient legend of the Alaskan koukons about the Flood and the creation of man

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The ancient legend of the Alaskan koukons about the Flood and the creation of man
The ancient legend of the Alaskan koukons about the Flood and the creation of man
Anonim

The Koyukon people in Alaska have an ancient legend in which the Raven takes 2 animals to protect them from flooding. These stories appeared among this people before the arrival of Christianity in these places.

Below you can read this legend and we can say that it not only mentions the Flood, but can also serve as an occasion for other equally interesting reflections on the events that took place in antiquity in Antediluvian times:

A very, very long time ago, giant animals lived in the world, and there was no such thing as humanity. They were all large, knew how to talk to each other and use magic. There were even some animals that no longer live on earth. One day Dotson 'Sa, the Great Raven, said to the Raven, "Make a big boat."

And Raven made a big boat. It took a long time because it had to be very large. When Raven finished, Dotson Sa told him that she was not big enough.

“You have to build more of it,” he said.

When everything was ready, it started to rain. At first it rained a little, and Dotson Sa told Raven to collect all the animals in pairs. The raven gathered animals and food for them. It was very difficult, but he did it anyway.

As soon as all the animals were on the boat, it started to rain heavily. Soon the whole world was flooded, and only those animals that were on the boat remained in the world.

When the rain ended, Raven asked several seagulls to fly in all directions in search of land. They flew away and returned, telling that the land was not visible. There was only water!

After a while, the flood was almost over. The raven ordered the muskrat to descend to the bottom of the ocean and make an island. The muskrat, which was actually very large, dived down and began to collect mud from the bottom. He continued to do this until land appeared.

Dotson 'Sa used his magic and created berries, trees and plants to cover the ground. When he did this, where there were lowlands, there were lakes and ponds. Then the Great Raven created rivers. He made them so that they flowed in both directions! On one side, the river flowed down to the sea, and on the other - up to the mountains!

But later he decided that it was too easy to travel, and made it so that the rivers only flowed down to the sea.

Now that the flood was over and dry land appeared, Dotson 'Sa decided to create man. He created it from stone, but since man was made of stone, he would never have died, so the Great Raven decided to make it from clay.

After he created man, he created woman so that they could get married and have children. The crow wanted to have a wife, and he tried to marry one of the women, but the men took her away from him.

This angered Raven, and he took some dried leaves and pounded them into a large bag. Taking the bag, he went to where the people lived and opened it. From there, millions of mosquitoes flew out, which still harass and bite humanity, because the Raven was not allowed to marry a woman.

This is how the Raven created the whole world. This is why he is never hunted, because he created everything.

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Reference:

Koyukons - Athabaskan people living mainly between the rivers Koyukuk and Yukon; one of 11 Athabaskan groups of inner Alaska. The first Europeans to enter the territory of the Koyukons were the Russians who approached the Yukon River in the settlement of Nulato, headed by centurion P. V. Malakhov in 1838.

In the settlement, they found iron pots, bugles (elongated glass cylinders with a longitudinal hole for a thread), cloth clothes and tobacco, which the coastal Eskimos had been trading with the Russians for a long time.

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Smallpox epidemics that came along with the Russians caused a high mortality rate in the settlement. In subsequent years, infectious diseases sharply reduced koukons, which did not have immunity to these diseases.

The relative isolation of the people from the Europeans persisted until 1898, when, during the gold rush, Europeans arrived in search of gold.

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