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The book names this the Ducks Fly Moon, the first span of the west under Mudjekeewis, and assigns the Butterfly clan — air. Plant: mullein. Mineral: bloodstone jasper. Colour: brown. The book's, all of it.

A rule before the content. On the Northwest Coast, stories are property. Crest narratives, songs, names and dances belong to particular clans and houses, and it is not proper to tell a story owned by another clan without permission. The Tlingit concept of at.óow — clan treasures held in trust rather than owned outright — is the frame. What follows describes the shape of these traditions and names whose they are; it is not a retelling.

The Haida are divided into two matrilineal, exogamous moieties, Raven and Eagle, each holding rights to its own myths, dances, songs and music. The Tlingit likewise have Raven and Eagle moieties, with the pairing varying regionally — Raven with Eagle in the north of Tlingit territory, Raven with Wolf in the south, an influence of neighbouring nations. The Tsimshian are not organised this way at all: they have four matrilineal clans — Gispwudwada (Killerwhale), Ganhada (Raven), Laxgibuu (Wolf) and Laxsgiik (Eagle). Writing that treats "Raven and Eagle" as a single Northwest Coast system is flattening three different structures.

The names differ too: Tlingit Yéil, related to a verb for trickery and mimicry; Haida Yáahl; Tsimshian Txamsem, "the Clever One."

The story of Raven and the daylight is not one story either. In the Tsimshian version, Txamsem turns himself into a pine needle, is swallowed by the daughter of the chief who guards the daylight, is born as her child, seizes the light and carries it up the Nass River. In the Haida version, Gray Eagle is guardian of sun, moon, stars, fresh water and fire; Raven steals them and escapes through the smoke hole, and the smoke turns his white feathers permanently black. In a Tlingit version he tricks Seagull into releasing a box of light. Naming which nation's telling you mean is the whole courtesy.

Haida tradition describes Raven as magician, transformer, creative force and culture hero at once — and the poet Robert Bringhurst put the paradox well: Raven "never actually creates anything; he made the world by stealing, exchanging, redistributing, and generally moving things around." The clamshell story, in which the first people are found in a shell on the beach, is the subject of Bill Reid's The Raven and the First Men at the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver.

Further north the figure recurs under other names: Yup'ik Tulukaruq, a benevolent culture hero, and Iñupiaq Tuluŋigraq, who in the tradition of Point Hope — Tikiġaq — released the sun from its skin wrapping in a world of perpetual night, and harpooned a sea creature that became the promontory itself.

On the Koyukon of interior Alaska, this page says little on purpose. Their relationship with the raven is famous, but the reference works available here carry essentially nothing about it. The standard published account is Richard K. Nelson's Make Prayers to the Raven (1983), and pointing to it is more useful than paraphrasing something this page has not verified.

Date	Event
c. 3200 BCE	The Majorville cairn and medicine wheel, Alberta — 28 spokes, dated by artefact stratification
pre-contact	The Bighorn wheel, Wyoming — 28 spokes, seven cairns, no established construction date
1883	The US Code of Indian Offenses outlaws the Sun Dance and "the usual practices of the medicine man"
1884–85	Canada's Indian Act amendment bans the potlatch — the institution through which Northwest Coast clan crests, names and stories are formally transferred
1888	Franz Boas observes that the potlatch ban is unenforceable; it is later reclassified as a summary offence so agents can convict without a jury
1895	A further amendment outlaws ceremonies involving "wounding or mutilation"
1903	S. C. Simms surveys Bighorn — American Anthropologist 5: 107–110
1905	John Swanton, Contributions to the Ethnology of the Haida
1951	Canada's ceremonial prohibitions, including the potlatch ban, are repealed
c. 1970	Sun Bear forms the Bear Tribe (date widely repeated, not firmly sourced)
1974	Eddy's Science paper on Bighorn; Schaefer (1986) finds no statistical support for the stellar alignments
11 Aug 1978	The American Indian Religious Freedom Act is signed
1980	Bill Reid completes The Raven and the First Men
1980	Sun Bear and Wabun Wind, The Medicine Wheel: Earth Astrology — where this placement comes from
1983	Richard K. Nelson, Make Prayers to the Raven
1984	The AIM Southwest chapter resolution names Sun Bear and the Bear Tribe
1992 / 10 Jun 1993	Sun Bear dies; the Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality follows. It names no individuals

"Ducks Fly Moon" is the book's most accurate name. Late September and October is the heart of autumn migration across the north — waterfowl moving south in numbers, the leaves going, the first hard frosts inland.

The moon names of the northern nations agree. Anishinaabemowin gives October as Binaakwe-giizis, the falling-leaves moon; Lakȟótiyapi gives Čhaŋwápe-kasná Wí, the moon when the wind shakes the leaves off. Both are lunar months and align only approximately with the Gregorian calendar, and the names vary between communities.

The raven itself does not migrate. It stays, through everything, which is part of why it is the bird it is in so many northern traditions.

• Medicine Wheel Totems — the system, the 1980 book, and the objections to it.
• Brown Bear — the span before.
• Snake — the span after.
• World Zodiacs · Religion · Calendar