Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest
A widely used anthology of traditional narratives from Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest, retold and organized for general readers. It presents creation stories, flood accounts, trickster cycles, and place-legends spanning the Coast and Plateau regions.
Description
Ella E. Clark’s collection gathers a broad range of narratives from tribal nations across the Pacific Northwest, including Coast Salish, Chinookan, Sahaptin, Kalapuya, Makah, Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Kwakwakaʼwakw, and others. The volume focuses on representative episodes—Raven’s and Coyote’s transformations, Thunderbird’s battles, salmon origins, mountain-making, and the great flood—framed as place-based histories tied to rivers, coasts, and volcanoes. Clark assembled her retellings from earlier ethnographic publications, field recordings, and storytellers, typically noting cultural attributions and variants. Though composed in accessible prose, the anthology preserves the moral and cosmological structures central to the region’s storytelling traditions, such as respect for salmon, reciprocity, and the social meanings of potlatch.
Historiography
The work is a mid-20th-century compilation that draws on oral accounts recorded by Indigenous narrators and on earlier ethnographic sources. Subsequent editions and reprints helped circulate these narratives in classrooms and popular venues. While influential for public awareness, the retellings reflect their period’s editorial norms and terminology. The book is best read alongside primary-source transcriptions and tribally authorized publications for linguistic and contextual precision.
Date Notes
Anthology of orally transmitted narratives recorded primarily in the late 19th–mid 20th centuries; first published 1953 with later reprints.
Themes
Archetypes
Major Characters
- Raven
- Coyote
- Thunderbird
- Transformer
- Salmon People
Myths
- Coyote the Transformer
- Raven and the Theft of Light
- The Origin of Salmon
- The Thunderbird and the Whale
Facts
- First published in 1953; frequently reprinted by a university press.
- Compiles narratives from multiple Pacific Northwest cultural areas, Coast and Plateau.
- Balances creation accounts, trickster cycles, flood stories, and place-legends.
- Retellings draw from earlier ethnographies and tribally sourced oral narrations.
- Helped popularize regional myths for general and classroom audiences in the mid-20th century.
- Editorial voice reflects its era; tribal-specific versions and languages are often condensed.
- Highlights ecological ethics around salmon, cedar, and seasonal cycles.
- Organized for readability, with cultural attributions and thematic grouping.
- Influenced later illustrated and children’s adaptations of Raven and Coyote cycles.
- Best contextualized alongside primary transcriptions and Indigenous-authored editions.