Today

Reflecting on how human was the relationship between Kamchatka's Koryaks and their crowlike deity Kutkh, stripped of all the absurd seriousness and self-importance of Indoeuropean beliefs. No doctrinal apologetics was necessary here. As Stepan Krasheninnikov (1711–1755) reported:

They pay no homage to him and never ask any favor of him; they speak of him only in derision. They tell such indecent stories about him that I would be embarrassed to repeat them. 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. In winter when they climb up or down the mountains, they heap abuses on him and curse him with imprecations. They behave the same way when they are in other difficult or dangerous situations.