“What can you do to be a benefit to the men-beings I am about to create?” asked Good Mind.
“I shall slay evil monsters when they escape from the under-world,” said Thunder. “I shall have scouts who will notify me and I shall shoot all otgont beings.”
Then was Good Mind satisfied, and he pulled up a tree and saw the water fill the cavity where the roots had been. Long he gazed into the water until he saw a reflection of his own image. “Like unto that will I make men-beings,” he thought. So then he took clay and molded it into small images of men and women. These he placed on the ground and when they were dry he spoke to them and they sprang up and lived.
When he saw them he said unto them, “All this world I give unto you. It is from me that you shall say you are descended and you are the children of the first born of earth, and you shall say that you are the flesh of Iagĕn’´tci, she the Ancient Bodied One.”
When he had acquainted them with the other first beings, and shown them how to hunt and fish and to eat of the fruits of the land, he told them that they should seek to live together as friends and brothers and that they should treat each other well.
He told them how to give incense of tobacco, for Awĕn‘hā´i‘, Ancient Bodied One, had stripped the heaven world of tobacco when she fell, and thus its incense should be a pleasing one into which men-beings might speak their words when addressing him hereafter. These and many other things did he tell them.
Soon he vanished from the sight of created men beings, and he took all the first beings with him upon the sky road.
Soon men-beings began to increase and they covered the earth, and from them we are descended. Many things have happened since those days, so much that all can never be told.
2. THE BROTHERS WHO CLIMBED TO THE SKY.
There were once three brothers who had spent their lives as hunters. At last one growing tired of the chase suggested that, as a break in the monotony of existence, they would walk to the end of the earth where the sky touched the water of the great seas. This proposition met with favor with all and together they set out on their long journey. Many years of adventure were spent, when at last they reached the spot where the sky bends down to earth (gaenhyakdondye).