Tlingit Myths and Texts

Collected from Tlingit storytellers in Sitka and Wrangell in 1904, these myths, speeches, and song texts preserve a wide sweep of oral tradition: Raven cycles, origin tales, clan histories, shamanic encounters, marriage legends, and ceremonial speech. Swanton's introduction identifies his informants, explains the circumstances of collection, and notes the influence of Christianity and white contact while emphasizing the traditional force of the narratives. A phonetic guide helps frame the language of the texts, but the real center is the living world they reveal, where myth and social memory are inseparable. At the heart of the volume is Raven, the cunning culture hero who brings light into a dark world, steals stars, moon, fire, and food, and repeatedly reshapes nature through wit, greed, and transformation. Other episodes trace supernatural danger and power in human life: a young man's spirit-driven initiation, death and restoration through fire, mountain sheep summoned from the wild, a shamanic cave alive with bears and spirits, and a town emptied by mysterious disappearances before a heron's marriage offers renewal. Together, these texts form a vivid record of Tlingit imagination, cosmology, and communal experience. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.