The Innu, an ancient aboriginal people in Eastern Quebec, carved large trees into totem poles. Totem poles were large cedar trees that had animals carved into them to tell a story. On one totem pole there was a magnificent raven, but it had no beak.

The Innu believed that ravens were powerful birds that had the powers of changing from a bird to a man. He could also fly faster than any bird and swim faster than any fish.

This totem pole tells the story of Raven and one of the reasons why he is so well known.

One day the Raven felt like a peaceful stroll in the forest, so he turned into an elderly man hunched over with a sturdy wooden cane and a long white beard that he let hang all the way down to his knees. As he was walking, he started to feel hungry, but he disregarded it and kept walking.

He was walking by a village next to the sea when his hunger overwhelmed him, and he stopped, thinking he could find some food there. He saw some of the local men fishing and devised a grand plan to get food.

He turned into a fish, dived into the sea, and swam to the spot where the men were fishing off a dock. He swam around stealing their bait one at a time. Every time he bit the bait, the fishermen felt a tug on their line, but when they pulled up their line, there was nothing there, just a bare hook with no bait or fish.

Soon he made a great blunder. He decided to bite the hook of the best fisherman in their village, Houskana. As soon as Houskana felt the tug, he jerked at his fishing pole, pulling the hook right into the raven’s lower jaw. Raven pulled in the opposite direction, grabbed onto some sturdy gray rocks at the bottom of the sea, and pleaded to the rocks in a frightful voice, “Oh rocks, please save me from this fisherman’s line!” But the rocks just sat there being rocks.

Then when he could no longer stand the horrible ache, he begged to his jaw, “Oh jaw, break off, for I am tired and cannot hold on any longer,” and his jaw obeyed immediately.

As soon as the tugging stopped, Houskana pulled in his line to find a jaw with a long white beard attached to it.

The fishermen were all very scared because they thought the jaw belonged to an evil spirit, so they all ran as fast as they could to the chief’s home in fear that something bad might happen to them.

Raven swam to a concealed place and leaped out of the water and followed them. Although he was in great tenderness from his lack of a jaw, no one noticed because he covered his face with his blanket.

The chief and his people all examined the jaw, for none of them knew where it had come from or why it was there. They passed it on to one another until it came to the Raven in the form of the old man. “This is a wonder to behold!” he bellowed as he threw off his blanket and replaced his jaw.

He used his magic so fast that none of the villagers knew what he was doing until he had gotten his jaw back in place, turned back from a man into a raven, and soared out the smoke hole.

It was then that the villagers realized it was not an elderly man but Raven the trickster who had stolen their bait and hooked onto Houskana’s line while thieving a meal.

They carved him on the totem pole not as the elderly man who let his long white beard hang all the way down to his knees but as a raven with no beak to show that it was the Raven who had lost his jaw, bitten Houskana’s line, and taken his jaw back. n