Skaay was a blind, crippled storyteller of the

Haida Haida may refer to: Places * Haida, an old name for Nový Bor * Haida Gwaii, meaning "Islands of the People", formerly called the Queen Charlotte Islands * Haida Islands, a different archipelago near Bella Bella, British Columbia Ships * , a ...

village of Ttanuu born c. 1827 at Qquuna. Skaay could neither read nor write, but his stories of

Haida mythology The Haida are one of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their national territories lie along the west coast of Canada and include parts of south east Alaska. Haida mythology is an indigenous religion that c ...

have survived in the form of written transcriptions taken down by John Swanton with the aide of Henry Moody over the winter of 1900. These transcriptions of myths are unique in the literature, both for their fidelity (due to Swanton) to the precise wordings of the mythteller, and for the survival of the pre-translation originals. The stories Skaay chose to dictate are the ''Qquuna Cycle'', the longest poem recorded in Haida, ''Qquuna Qiighawaay'', the oral history of Skaay's family, and ''Raven Travelling'', Skaay's original take on the well-worn tale (see

Raven Tales Raven Tales are the traditional human and animal creation stories of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. They are also found among Athabaskan-speaking peoples and others. Raven stories exist in nearly all of the First Nations ...

). Skaay appears three times in church records: first, in 1884 when he was baptized "Robert McKay"; second, on 13 March 1892, again a baptism, where his name is entered simply as "Sky"; third, in January 1894 when he registers a marriage to "Esther" and was baptized once more, this time as "John Sky". In

, 'Skaay' refers to a type of

mollusk Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is e ...

. The Haida were divided into two social groups, or moieties, called Raven and Eagle. Skaay belonged to the Eagle side or

moiety Moiety may refer to: Chemistry * Moiety (chemistry), a part or functional group of a molecule ** Moiety conservation, conservation of a subgroup in a chemical species Anthropology * Moiety (kinship), either of two groups into which a society is ...

References

*Bringhurst, Robert (2000) ''A Story As Sharp As a Knife: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World''. U of Nebraska Press; . *Being in Being : The Collected Works of a Master Haida Mythteller by Skaay of the Qquuna. (2002) Robert Bringhurst (Ed., Translator) University of Nebraska Press. {{ISBN, 978-0-8032-1328-9 1827 births Year of death missing 19th-century First Nations people Canadian storytellers First Nations literature Haida people Mythography 19th-century storytellers

See also

References