tradition

Northwest Coast tradition

Traditions

The oral literatures of Indigenous peoples of the North Pacific coast of North America. Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian raven cycles are related and not identical.

Also known as Tlingit · Haida

Meetings with this tradition

  • Northwest Coast tradition is associated with Trickster.

    Tlingit narratives recorded by Swanton give Raven creator and thief work. Trickster here is a Northwest Coast narrative role, not Hermes.

    from John R. Swanton · Tlingit Myths and Texts, 1909

    associated with · sourced · culturally specific

  • Raven appears in Northwest Coast tradition.

    Swanton’s Tlingit collection treats Raven as a named protagonist of origin stories, not as a bird omen standing in for something else.

    from John R. Swanton · Tlingit Myths and Texts, 1909

    appears in · sourced · culturally specific

  • Kushtaka appears in Northwest Coast tradition.

    Swanton’s Tlingit Myths and Texts records land-otter people, the otter-person of Tlingit speech. A named Tlingit being in that collection, not a Sasquatch, not a European werewolf, and not a pan-coast otter.

    from John R. Swanton · Tlingit Myths and Texts, 1909

    appears in · sourced · culturally specific

  • Thunderbird appears in Northwest Coast tradition.

    Swanton’s Tlingit Myths and Texts records the great-bird of Tlingit story under the English cover-name thunderbird. A named Tlingit bird-being in that collection, not an eagle, not Zeus’s bird, and not a pan-Indigenous thunder-god.

    from John R. Swanton · Tlingit Myths and Texts, 1909

    appears in · sourced · culturally specific

Meetings in this tradition's context

  • Raven is associated with Trickster.

    Tlingit narratives collected by Swanton include Raven as a being who steals daylight and rearranges the world. That is a creator-trickster cycle, not an Old World omen and not Odin’s birds.

    from John R. Swanton · Tlingit Myths and Texts, 1909

    associated with · sourced · culturally specific

sources