Haida

(map)

A strange woman wearing an unusual fur cape came to a village. One of the boys playing in the area pulled at her garment and saw her backbone, which had protuberances like a plant that grows along the seashore. The children jeered at this. The parents told the children not to laugh, and the woman sat by the water's edge at low tide. As the tide rose and touched her feet, she moved up a little and sat down again. The tide kept rising, following the woman. The villagers soon became alarmed at its unprecedented height, and having no canoes, they prepared rafts and provisioned them with fish and water. At last the tide covered the whole island. The people saved themselves on the rafts. The various rafts landed in different places, which is how the tribes became dispersed.

Erdoes & Ortiz, 1984, 472-473.

Long ago there was a flood which killed all creatures except a single raven. This raven, Ne-kil-stlas, was a person who could don and doff his feathers at will; he had been born of a woman who had had no husband. When the flood had gone down, he looked about but found no mate, so he became very lonely. He married a cockle (Cardium nuttalli) from the beach, and he constantly brooded and wished for a companion. In time, he heard a faint cry, such as from a newborn child, from the shell. The cry gradually grew louder, and at last a small female child appeared. She grew larger and larger and finally married the raven. From them all the Indians were produced.

Frazer, 1919, 319.

Yes, this narrative is hard to follow. It is as clear as I can make it, though.

A person went to People's Town to gamble and saw another coming from there wearing marten-skin blankets with the fur turned out. He[?] reported it to them[?], and they ran there. He cried, "Gan-guudaeng, my seed, my seed!" portending the destruction of the [a?] town.

From the town one went to sell a copper called "Upsetter-of-the-town." On their way back, there was a great smoke at the town, and they wondered about it.

When they got close to the town of Lgiela-ala, they pushed a prisoner named "Letting-go-of-each-other" down to the beach. The Inlet people (of Masset Inlet) had burned the town. The war chief was called Burnt-forest.

When they saw them coming, they chased them seaward, and they paddled towards Cape Ball to escape. They fastened the copper to a paddle and, when they held it high, their pursuers tried all the harder to catch them. Then they upset themselves; two chiefs were drowned. Burnt-forest dived for the copper and retrieved it.

The people who were drowned went in front of Cape Ball's Chief's house and begged the chief for a flood. He asked them to come in. They refused. The warriors started home. The weather was calm. Toward evening two tidal waves rolled in from the ocean. The first washed away the canoes. The last even washed away the trees by their roots. Half the warriors were lost. Burnt-forest escaped into the woods carrying the copper on his back.

By washing away the front of Tow Hill, the waves washed dentalium shells to the surface. The Inlet people dug them, paddled north, and bought slaves with them.

John R. Swanton, Haida Texts and Myths, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 29 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1905; reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint, 1970), 318-320.