I really enjoyed all of the stories in this unit. I thought it was really interesting to learn more about what Eskimos believed in and the fact that a lot of the stories were about the raven. I've never really done a lot of research into their mythology, so I really enjoyed this unit!
My favorite story in this unit is "The Origin of the Tides". I haven't read a story about why there is high tide or low tide, so this story caught my eye almost immediately. It begins with a man, a raven named Qa, walking along the Nas River. Instead of having a high tide and a low tide, the sea was always high. Qa found a rock in the very middle of the sea and decided that he was going to build a home underneath it. He made a hole in it and then dug a hole through the house and the Earth and put a lid over it all. He had another man be in charge of the hole and he would open it twice a day, which would cause the ocean's tide to go in and out. A chief, Tael, got caught in the tide and couldn't figure out why the ocean kept going in and out. He finally realized it was because of the lid and that's the reason that we have high and low tide.
All of the stories in this unit were very good. I loved reading about the different beliefs that the Eskimo indians had.
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