Tlingit Myths and Texts

Northwest Coast tradition

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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