Raven steals the sun
At a Glance
- Central figures: Raven (Yéil), the trickster and transformer; an old chief who hoards all light in nested boxes; the chief’s daughter, who unknowingly carries Raven into her father’s house.
- Setting: Tlingit tradition of the Pacific Northwest Coast (southeast Alaska); Raven is the central creator-trickster figure among the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian peoples.
- The turn: Raven transforms himself into a hemlock needle, is swallowed by the chief’s daughter, and is reborn as her infant son - all to get close to the boxes that hold the sun, the moon, and the stars.
- The outcome: Raven opens the boxes one by one, releasing the stars and moon into the sky, then flies through the smoke hole with the sun in his beak, bringing light to the world for the first time.
- The legacy: Raven’s theft of the sun is foundational to the Tlingit understanding of how light entered the world; Raven remains the preeminent figure of the Pacific Northwest Coast oral tradition, carved into house posts and totem poles, and his acts are recounted across clan lineages.
The chief had the sun in a box. He had the moon in another box. He had the stars in a third. All three were nested inside still more boxes - bentwood cedar, fitted tight, stacked in the deepest corner of his great plank house at the head of the Nass River. The world outside was dark. People stumbled along the beaches. They ate by feel. They caught fish with their hands in black water and could not see each other’s faces.
Raven knew about the boxes. He had been flying in the dark for a long time, bumping into trees and mountains, and he was tired of it. More than that, he was hungry, and it is hard to find food when there is no light at all. He sat on a branch near the chief’s village and listened to the river below him. He could hear the chief’s daughter walking down to the water every morning to drink. He made his plan.
The Hemlock Needle
Raven flew to a hemlock tree that hung over the river where the daughter came to drink. He pulled a single needle from a branch and turned himself into it - small, green, thin as a sliver. He dropped into the water and floated there, turning slowly in the current.
The daughter came at her usual time. She knelt on the stones and cupped water in her hands. She drank, and the needle went into her mouth and down her throat.
Not long after, her belly began to grow. The chief watched his daughter and said nothing. She gave birth to a boy - dark-eyed, dark-haired, with a sharp nose and a cry that could be heard all through the house. The chief loved the child immediately. He held the boy on his knee and gave him whatever he pointed at. He could not refuse the child anything.
This was Raven.
The Box of Stars
The child grew fast. He crawled across the cedar-planked floor and put his hands on everything. He pulled at the woven mats. He grabbed at the dried fish hanging from the rafters. He screamed when he did not get what he wanted, and his screaming was terrible - it went on and on, shaking the walls, until the chief would do anything to stop it.
Raven had seen the boxes stacked in the corner. He crawled toward them and cried. He reached his small hands toward the outermost box and wailed. The chief’s people covered their ears. The chief tried to distract him with food, with shells, with a carved rattle. Nothing worked.
Finally the chief said: give him the smallest box.
They opened the outer boxes one inside the other until they reached the box that held the stars. They placed it in front of the child. Raven opened it. The stars flew out through the smoke hole in the roof, scattering across the dark sky. For the first time, people outside looked up and saw points of light above them.
The chief was startled, but the child laughed and clapped his hands, so the chief let it go.
The Box of the Moon
Days passed. Raven cried again. He pointed at the remaining boxes. The chief shook his head. The child screamed louder, rolled on the floor, held his breath until his face went dark. The chief’s daughter begged her father to give the boy what he wanted.
They opened the next box. The moon rose out of it, pale and round, and floated up through the smoke hole into the sky. Now the world had the stars and the moon. People could see the outlines of mountains. They could see the shine of water. They could see each other, dimly, in the silver light.
But Raven was not finished.
The Sun in His Beak
He waited. He played quietly for a while, rolling on the floor, chewing on strips of dried halibut. The chief relaxed. The household went back to its work - carving, weaving, smoking fish.
Then Raven began to cry for the last box.
This time the chief resisted longer. He knew what was in the box. The sun was his most precious possession, the brightest and most powerful thing in the world, and he had kept it for himself since the beginning. He held the box against his chest and turned away from the child.
Raven screamed. He screamed until the planks of the house rattled. He screamed until the chief’s daughter wept. He screamed until the chief’s own ears bled. The sound was beyond what any person could stand.
The chief set the box on the floor.
Raven stopped crying. He crawled to the box. He opened it carefully, and the sun blazed out - golden, hot, filling the house with light so fierce that everyone shielded their eyes. In that moment Raven dropped the child’s body like a skin. He was himself again - black-feathered, sharp-beaked, with his bright round eyes. He seized the sun in his beak and flew straight up through the smoke hole.
The chief shouted. His people rushed to the door. But Raven was already above the trees, climbing into the sky with the sun clenched tight.
Light Over the Nass River
Raven flew high. The sun was hot in his beak and burned him. His feathers, which had once been white, scorched black from the heat and the soot of the smoke hole, and they stayed black. He did not drop the sun. He carried it up and up and placed it in the sky where it hangs now.
Light fell across the world. The Nass River flashed silver. The mountains showed their faces - green slopes, white peaks, the dark line of the forest. The beaches were gold and grey stone. People came out of their houses and stood blinking. They saw the ocean for the first time. They saw each other’s faces clearly. Fish jumped in water that was suddenly bright, and the people laughed because they could see what they were catching.
Raven landed on a rock and looked at his feathers. They were black all the way through. He shook himself, but the color would not come off.
He was hungry. He had done a great thing, and nobody was going to feed him for it. He flew off down the coast to see what he could find to eat.