5. Creation of the World.

The Eskimo of Siberia, by Waldemar Bogoras, [1913], at sacred-texts.com

5. Creation of the World. ¹

   The Raven and his wife created the world. They made the cape of Uñi´sak out of a nose of an eider-duck (Somatheria spectabilis); the peninsula of Alaska, of a long belt-knife; and the island Ima´lik (one of the Diomedes), of a button of the scabbard (with which it is clasped around the hip). They made reindeer of their hair, and dogs of their nails, and sea-water of their urine.

Told by Ñịpe´wġi, an Asiatic Eskimo man, in the village of Uñi´sak, at Indian Point, May, 1901.

Footnotes

424:1 This fragment seems to include material from two different sources, — one belonging to the Raven cycle, and probably borrowed from the Chukchee; the other referring to the creation of Uñi´sak and Alaska, undoubtedly Eskimo.