To see one raven is lucky, 'tis true,
But it's certain misfortune to light upon two
And meeting with three is the devil!
![[raven blanket detail]](images/raven.jpg) Detail from a Tlingit button blanket made by Emma Marks and Carmela Ransom, depicting how Raven tricked Crane and Seagull to get a fish. |
Words from an unknown ballad, they accurately express our mixed emotions about the biggest songbird and largest all black bird in the world. The Common Raven, Corvus corax, can be found around the world throughout the Northern Hemisphere. It is equally at home hawking for prey over an arroyo in the Arizonan deserts during the blistering mid-day heat, tumbling through the skies amidst the loftiest peaks in the Himalayas, or perching on a street light in urban Alaska waiting to steal its next meal from an unsuspecting human benefactor.
The raven is a member of a very successful family of birds, the Corvidae, which also includes jays, magpies, and crows. Many people confuse ravens and crows, and even experienced bird watchers slip up now and then. Although ravens are considerably larger than crows, a big crow and a small raven might be a little difficult to tell apart by size alone, especially if the bird is some distance away. Ravens have larger, stouter bills than do crows, and the tip of the upper beak is more downcurved. Ravens also have shaggy throat feathers and a wedge-shaped tail, visible best when the bird is in flight. Crows' tails are more square cut. The call of the crow is a nasal caw compared to the deep, gutteral croak of the raven, although both species have extensive and varied vocal repertoires.
The raven is a permanent resident in Alaska, nesting from the Seward Peninsula and the Brooks Range throughout the mainland, south to Kodiak Island, throughout the Aleutian Chain and along the coast and mountains of southeast Alaska. Elevation seems no barrier, as ravens are found at the top of the highest peaks, including Mt. McKinley. As elsewhere, ravens in Alaska do not undertake long migrations like many birds, but breeding birds usually relocate each year for nesting.
Individuals, however, may wander considerable distances through the course of any day. Such an example was described by Laurence Irving in his book Birds of Anaktuvuk Pass, Kobuk, and Old Crow. The story came from Dr. Irving's long time friend and colleague Simon Paneak. During the days of Simon's grandfather, a man saw a raven suddenly die on a cliff along the Colville River. Upon inspection, it was discovered the bird had died from a whalebone spring it had consumed. Such springs were apparently commonly coiled and placed in frozen meat to kill foxes and wolves. Marks on the whalebone identified the owner. Subsequently, when the witness to the raven's death met with the owner of the trap, they determined that the missing whalebone had been taken near a tributary to the John River, about 150 miles from the cliffs of the Colville, on the morning of the same day the raven had died.
The story also illustrates that although ravens are purported to have the keenest intellect of any bird, they can fall prey to the proclivities of man. Trapping most certainly takes it's toll on a species so dependent on scavenging. There are other accounts in literature that tell us so. Charles Sheldon, in Wilderness of Denali, recounts how, after the turn of the century, the activities of trappers greatly reduced the numbers of ravens in the Denali Park area.
Still, ravens are thriving in Alaska. They are one of the most visible species, especially come winter when their haunts turn more urban. When the swallows, sandpipers, and warblers have fled for more suitable climes, the raven remains—seemingly to spit in the face of winter. There are other animals successfully coping with the arctic and subarctic winter, but none with quite the indifference or arrogance of the raven. This imperviousness to cold may be one of the reasons for the raven's popularity in the far north.
The raven has other attributes that stir our imagination. For example, a commercial fisherman from Petersburg once explained that he truly believed ravens had powers of immortality. His faith was built from an experience he had years ago when he was fishing in a deserted inlet somewhere in the southeastern archipelago. He decided to tie up at a dock of an abandoned fish cannery and go exploring. Upon entering one of the buildings, the fisherman began pushing through piles of garbage, working his way to the other side of the room. When he reached the other side, he came across an old floor safe with the door cracked slightly open. With the prospect of discovering enough money to pay off the loan on his troller, the fisherman began prying open the safe. Money was not to be found. Instead, a dirty, emaciated—but living—raven jumped out of the safe, made his way across the room, exited the building, and flew away!
While the story might be viewed with a good deal of skepticism, the inclusion here underlies the fact that the raven holds a special place in the minds of contemporary Alaskans. Of course, the relationship of Raven and the Native people of the Pacific Northwest, including Alaska, is relatively well known and understood to be of profound significance. The Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Bella Bella, and Kwakiutl all have seen Raven as the creator of the world and the bringer of daylight, and Raven also has an important role in the creation myths of the Eskimo. However, what is probably little known to most people in Alaska, is the role the raven has played in folklore and religion throughout the world.
Because of the wide distribution of the raven throughout the Northern Hemisphere, its shrewdness and opportunistic behavior around man, its all black color, and relatively large size, it is no wonder that man has developed myths and legends associated with this great bird. In societies throughout the northern hemisphere, the raven has appeared since ancient times as a prophet, a harbinger of death and doom, a messenger, as well as being strongly associated with storms and floods. Since the crow exhibits certain similar traits, folklore involving ravens and crows has intermingled over time in some cultures.
Regarding the association with floods, perhaps the best known is the description of the raven's role on Noah's ark during the flood depicted in Genesis. In this story the raven is sent off by Noah to see whether or not the waters have subsided—but the raven never returns. Interestingly, there are stories from North America which closely parallel the earlier Babylonian associations of flood and raven. For example, the Algonquin Indians relate a myth which was recorded in 1634 describing how the sun was hunting with wolves when he entered a lake. The lake overflowed and submerged the world. The sun then asked the raven to search out some dry land to make the world again, but the raven could not find any.
The raven appeared in similar myths in other early North American cultures, including the Tlingit and other Pacific Northwest nations. Ceremonies depicting such stories were an integral part of some of these societies. Therefore, as Edward Armstrong explains in his fascinating book, The Folklore of Birds, it seems unlikely these myths stemmed from a Christian influence. The raven-flood creation myths are an example of the apparent diffusion or dispersal of a myth around the world.
The association of the raven in the flood-creation story also points out its significance as a messenger. In Norse mythology, Odin's two ravens, Hugin and Munin, Thought and Memory, flew around the world every day to learn of the day's news and then returned to Odin to report to him. In Tibetan legend the raven is the messenger of the Supreme Being, and the Irish felt the bird to be omniscient, using phrases like “raven's knowledge” to mean seeing all and knowing all. There are examples from Germany, India, Siberia, Iceland, and elswhere where people are advantaged by speaking with these birds or eavesdropping over the conversation of ravens. In Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, a raven attempts to help little Gerda look for her lost playmate Kay.
“Listen to me,” said the raven, “but it is so difficult to speak your language! Do you undersand Ravenish? If so, I can tell you much better.”
Beyond any doubt, the raven is considered first and foremost a bird of evil. Its resonant “kaw” has signaled pending doom throughout history in societies north of the equator. We speak admiringly of a pride of lions, or kindly of a charm of finches, but a terror of ravens and a murder of crows? Somehow it does not seem fair, although opportunistically scavenging and feeding on dead animals makes the association with death obvious. During the military invasions and plagues throughout Europe in earlier centuries, the raven dined on human corpses, and they apparently loitered near the sites designated for human executions. The word “ravenstone” means a place of execution in old English. The Germans have a word, “rabenaas,” meaning raven's carrion, denoting a person who should be hanged.
As Armstrong pointed out, it is not implausible for people to extend the association with death to one where the birds can fortell the coming of tragedy. If a bird can predict tragedy, then it can likely predict good as well, and peoples from many cultures have acknowledged the raven's powers of augury and associated the bird with ghosts and the supernatural.
For example, in Swedish folklore, ravens are the ghosts of murdered individuals who have not had a proper Christian burial, and in Germany, ravens were thought to be damned souls. On the other hand, King Arthur supposedly disguised himself as a raven when he traveled about; to kill a raven was very bad luck. That ravens have strange and forboding powers can be documented as far back as the ancient Semite tribes of the Middle East and in Greek mythology dating to hundreds of years before Christ. An inscription from a Babylonian tablet decrees:
A raven, the bird that helpeth the gods,
In my right hand I hold:
A hawk, to flutter in thine evil face
In my left hand I thrust forward.
Compare this to an ancient British rhyme:
If a raven cry just o'er his head
Some in the towne have lost their maidenhead.
So what are we to make of this bird—creator of the world, scourge of all mankind? Possibly no other species has evoked such strong emotion or found its way more into the psyches of men and women throughout time. It is truly remarkable to consider that the raven could have been at the center of mankind's earliest thoughts on the origin of the earth, and that a raven creation myth subsequently spread around the world. Such a tribute!
