How The Raven Helped Men
: The Book Of Nature MythsThe raven and the eagle were cousins, and they were almost always
friendly, but whenever they talked together about men, they quarreled.
"Men are lazy," declared the eagle. "There is no use in trying to help
them. The more one does for them, the less they do for themselves."
"You fly so high," said the raven, "that you cannot see how hard men
work. I think that we birds, who know so much more than they,
help them."
"They do not work," cried the eagle. "What have they to do, I should
like to know? They walk about on the ground, and their food grows close
by their nests. If they had to fly through the air as we do, and get
their food wherever they could, they might talk about working hard."
"That is just why we ought to help them," replied the raven. "They
cannot mount up into the air as we do. They cannot see anything very
well unless it is near them, and if they had to run and catch their
food, they would surely die of hunger. They are poor, weak creatures,
and there is not a humming-bird that does not know many things that they
never heard of."
"You are a poor, weak bird, if you think you can teach men. When they
feel hunger, they will eat, and they do not know how to do anything
else. Just look at them! They ought to be going to sleep, and they do
not know enough to do even that."
"How can they know that it is night, when they have no sun and no moon
to tell them when it is day and when it is night?"
"They would not go to sleep even if they had two moons," said the eagle;
"and you are no true cousin of mine if you do not let them alone."
So the two birds quarreled. Almost every time they met, they quarreled
about men, and at last, whenever the eagle began to mount into the air,
the raven went near the earth.
Now the eagle had a pretty daughter. She and the raven were good
friends, and they never quarreled about men. One day the pretty daughter
said, "Cousin Raven, are you too weak to fly as high as you used to do?"
"I never was less weak," declared the raven.
"Almost every day you keep on the ground. Can you not mount into the
air?"
"Of course I can," answered the raven.
"There are some strange things in my father's lodge," said the pretty
daughter, "and I do not know what they are. They are not good to eat,
and I do not see what else they are good for. Will you come and see
them?"
"I will go wherever you ask me," declared the raven.
The eagle's lodge was far up on the top of a high mountain, but the two
birds were soon there, and the pretty daughter showed the raven the
strange things. He knew what they were, and he said to himself, "Men
shall have them, and by and by they will be no less wise than the
birds." Then he asked, "Has your father a magic cloak?"
"Yes," answered the pretty daughter.
"May I put it on?"
"Yes, surely."
When the raven had once put on the magic cloak, he seized the strange
things and put them under it. Then he called, "I will come again soon,
my pretty little cousin, and tell you all about the people on the
earth."
The things under his cloak were strange indeed, for one was the sun, and
one was the moon. There were hundreds of bright stars, and there were
brooks and rivers and waterfalls. Best of all, there was the precious
gift of fire. The raven put the sun high up in the heavens, and fastened
the moon and stars in their places. He let the brooks run down the sides
of the mountains, and he hid the fire away in the rocks.
After a while men found all these precious gifts. They knew when it was
night and when it was day, and they learned how to use fire. They cannot
mount into the air like the eagle, but in some things they are almost as
wise as the birds.
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