E15B. Birds sew a boat. 40.41.

Female birds sew the birch bark cover of the hero's boat. See motive E15.

The Arctic. Northern Alaska Inupiate (Selawik) [Nunamiu and his wife Qimmiq have four sons, they go and go; N. conceives a fifth, making a fire so that sparks fall into his wife's vagina; a son is born Qayaq; his father magically educates him in strength and dexterity, gives amulets made from the bodies of insects and small nimble animals (weasels, minks, shrews); preparing a supply of food for parents, K. goes up the Kobuk Valley in search of brothers; his father tells him to take his uncle with him, whom he meets on the way; an unfriendly man enters K.'s hut in the parking lot, he throws him away, he turns into a woodpecker; a wolverine picks up a broken tooth at a beaver hut; a man sleeps with him, leaves in the morning, it was a wolverine; K. says to the person who came up that his thumb eats people like him; a man runs away in fear, turns out to be a trot; someone voracious behaves strangely, rushes at K. with a knife; K. offers him to die in the fire, he jumps into the fire and burns; in the village of K. marries; in the spring the wife expects her father to cut her to take out the child; K. teaches her how to give birth in the usual way; goes on, meets a giant; he says that his two wives will soon come and fight; let K. cut both veins, first the one that comes from the sea side, because it is aggressive; after urinating, the giant flooded the whole valley; K. does this, the giantesses bandage their wounds, the husband sends them to clean the house; wives live with a giant only in spring; a giant kills a caribou with uprooted larch; K. leaves, prepares material to make a boat, wants help; spies, sees a fox girl roasting meat, Squirrel heats resin, female birds sew the boat's skin, the Beaver prepares the frame and oars, the Raven prepares the dart for birds, the Wolf and Wolverine scrape the bark, the Bear knocks down trees, cleans branches; then everything they dance, the Woodpecker hits the tambourine; K. jumps up, grabs the Fox, she remains human, the rest run away in the form of animals and birds; in the summer, K. swims down the Yukon, the wife becomes a fox again; K. meets takes his uncle with him; they see how a person breaks off fir chips, they fall into the water, turn small ones into trout, large ones into salmon; thanks to this, there is fish; on the shore there is a house, his bones and skulls brothers, a naked woman; K. throws a lahtak's head into her vulva, her head tears the cannibal; K. buries her bones; there is a shiny ball on the tree, he attracts K., he hangs in a trap; the cannibal brings it home, his two children say that the game opened their eyes; the cannibals fell asleep, K. cut off their heads; K.'s boat slips between the crashing rocks, only the paddle is shattered; the giant in the boat and K. throw darts at each other , K.'s dart cuts off the giant's head; enters the house, the giant's wife throws the ulu, K. throws it at her, cuts off his head; the door is closed, he gets out as a mouse; turns into trout, bites off the tip of the prison fisherman; comes to him, offers to repair the prison, pierces the fisherman; turns into salmon, climbs into the fishermen's net; the chief's son eats his head, the bone gets stuck in his throat, he dies; bones they throw him into a hole, K. is reborn, he is shot at, he runs away; they swim to the sea; his uncle has left, turning into a lynx; K. becomes a falcon; the leader of the people catches him, eats him, he revives from his bones, marries the leader's stepdaughter; he wanted her for himself; sends a storm, K. steals the boat into the open sea; K. regurgitates the pebbles given by his father, the wind has subsided; K. burns the leader's face with this stone; he orders to split a log for firewood; this is how he killed many of his stepdaughter's suitors; with the help of a caress amulet, K. performs the task, the leader is surprised that K. is alive; the leader orders to shoot partridges, K. kills a huge cannibal bird there; cross the log abyss, K. falls but returns unharmed; crawls away with a caterpillar from the community house where the leader wanted to burn him; K. dodges the arrows fired at him, kills the leader's soldiers himself; ties him naked to a pole, leaves him in the cold; appoints a new leader, flies away with a falcon]: Ivanoff Brown 1981:40-114.

Subarctic. Koyukon; upper kuskoquim; tanana; kuchin; tanaina; upper tanana.