How Kah'-kah-loo The Ravens Became People

2026

drawings from Miwok legends

Sierra Miwok are the native people of Northern California.

"In their myth How Kah'-kah-loo The Ravens Became People, there was an epic flood, and the first world people climbed a mountain to avoid drowning. The water finally receded. They were starving, they thought it was safe to come down and look for food but they sank into the mud and died. The ravens came to sit on the holes where the people died, one raven at each hole. The ravens turned into new people, the Miwok." [8] [Merriam, C. Hart, editor.The Dawn of the World, Myths and Weird Tales Told by the Mewan (Miwok) Indians of California. Cleveland OH: Arthur H. Clarke Co, 1910. Reprinted as The Dawn of the World: Myths and Tales of the Miwok Indians of California, in 1993 with an introduction by Lowell J. Bean, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln; available at Sacred Texts Online]