Mitg is the sea-master of the Itelmen (Kamchadals), described in the eighteenth-century records as a god in the form of a fish who dwells in the sea and owns its fish, sending the salmon on which the people lived; modern ethnographic surveys of Itelmen belief repeat Krasheninnikov's picture of a fish-shaped 'master of the sea' who was especially venerated because he gave the staple food. No genealogy, consort or kinship with the raven family is recorded for him, and he stands alongside the earthquake-maker Tuil and the thunderer Bilyukai among the self-standing nature-masters of the tradition.
Domains
sea and its fish
Powers
to give or withhold the fish of the sea
Sources
S. P. Krasheninnikov, Opisanie zemli Kamchatki [Description of the Land of Kamchatka] (St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1755), vol. 2, pt. 3.
A. A. Sirina and O. A. Murashko, 'Verovaniia itel'menov' [Beliefs of the Itelmens], in Narody Severo-Vostoka Sibiri, ed. E. P. Bat'ianova and V. A. Turaev (Moscow: Nauka, 2010).
S. P. Krasheninnikov, Explorations of Kamchatka: North Pacific Scimitar, trans. E. A. P. Crownhart-Vaughan (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1972).