RAVEN AND HIS MOTHER-IN-LAW
Once upon a time Raven came to a small house away from everybody, where lived two women, a widow and her young daughter. The elder woman asked him in and gave him a good supper, and as the house appeared to be well stocked with dried fish and other necessaries, he proposed that evening to marry the daughter and was accepted.
The next day, after a hearty breakfast, he borrowed the old woman’s stone ax and went out. He told the two women that he was going to cut down a cedar tree and make a boat for the fishing, and he charged his wife to see that her mother had a good meal ready for him on his return. Before night he came back very hungry, saying that he had felled the tree and would begin next day to hollow out the canoe.
This went on for some time, Raven going forth every morning with the ax and returning in the afternoon, apparently tired out, and with so great an appetite that the widow’s stores of food were getting low. They could hear the blows of the ax from time to time in the depths of the forest, but somehow the boat was never quite finished.
At last one morning the old woman said to her daughter, “Go quietly, my child; follow your husband without letting him know it, and see for yourself what progress he is making.”
The young wife did as she was told, and there was the trickster pounding a rotten stump with the stone ax so as to make the sounds they had heard. When she told her mother what she had seen, the two women packed up all the goods they had left and went away.
When Raven went home that night, he found only the empty hut, which was as much as he deserved.
RAVEN AND THE SALMON WOMAN
Now Raven had been unfortunate for a long time and was poorer than ever, but he had at last contrived to build a small hut and make a boat and a spear. Just as he was ready to go fishing, a heavy fog came down and covered the face of the water, hiding his boat entirely. When the fog lifted, there sat a beautiful woman in the bow of the canoe.
“You have come to my boat; will you be my wife?” asked Raven.