Kutkh

He is a popular subject of the animist stories of the Chukchi people and plays a central role in the mythology of the Koryaks and Itelmens of Kamchatka.

In Koryak, the name is employed commonly in its augmentative form, (KutqÍnnaku, KusqÍnnaku, KuyÍnnaku) all meaning "Big Kutkh" and often translated simply as "God".

Sometimes, he tricks an evil spirit which has captured the celestial bodies much in the style of analogous legends about the Tlingit and Haida in the Pacific Northwest.

In the animistic tradition of north-Eurasian peoples, Kutkh has a variety of interactions and altercations with Wolf, Fox, Bear, Wolverine, Mouse, Owl, Dog[broken anchor], Seal, Walrus and a host of other spirits.

Thus, the variable world recognizable to people emerged from the dynamic interaction between the mighty Kutkh and the small but numerous Mice.

[2] Although Kutkh is supposed to have given mankind variously light, fire, language, fresh water and skills such as net-weaving and copulation, he is also often portrayed as a laughing-stock, hungry, thieving and selfish.

The early Russian explorer and ethnographer of Kamchatka Stepan Krasheninnikov (1711–1755) summarizes the Itelmen's relationship to Kutkh as follows: They pay no homage to him and never ask any favor of him; they speak of him only in derision.

They upbraid him for having made too many mountains, precipices, reefs, sand banks and swift rivers, for causing rainstorms and tempests which frequently inconvenience them.