Traditional Stories
How There Got to Be an Island In Anadyr Bay
In Anadyr Bay there is one island. Piri-sven is its name. Piri means to catch up quickly, sven - to cut off.
This story is about the time when people couldn't decide who was going to pasture their reindeer where. There was a lot of war among the Koriaks, Chukchi, and Even.
It happened in the spring. All the reindeer herders were moving to their summer camps. The time is call Kit-kit, time of bad weather, with strong frosts. They moved.
There was one young fellow called Vitegyn. He paid close attention to nature and could foretell happenings. At this time, he fell asleep; he slept one day, a second, and a third. His father thought he was going through a prophetic sleep. Others laughed and said he had just gone lazy.
Then they came to the summer camp. They made sacrifices so that hunting would be good. The ice was going out. They brought sacrifices to masters of fishing. Vitegyn was still asleep. The men were getting ready to take the reindeer out on their summer route when suddenly he woke up.
He said to his father, "You must take down the yaranga, get dressed in winter clothes, harness two reindeer."
The father told everyone. Many people laughed. They said Vitegyn had slept too much and gone abnormal, that he was crazy from too much sleep.
Others were not so sure. There were a lot of mosquitoes and little to make a raft from. How would they get to the other side? But some believed him; they started to take down the yaranga and dress in winter clothes.
Suddenly it started to snow. The water froze up. Vitegyn said, "Set off, just don't look back, and the herd will come right after you." And so they moved. The whole caravan, people and freight.
At the end of the line was a young woman. The first sleigh got to the other side. This young woman couldn't stand it and looked back. Everything around her began to thaw. On the last sled there were the skins for the yoroñi, and they began to fall off the sleigh into the water. She tired to pull the bundle back but it got heavier and heavier. Everybody tried but they couldn't get it out, and at last they cut the ropes and let it go. When they got to the other side they looked back at their old camp and everything was burning. The people who had stayed behind had been killed by enemies.
They looked back at the bay, and that yoroñi and sled had become an island. And from that time on the fighting over pastures stopped.
