“Do you understand his words, or do you even know him?” asked the Master. “He is Sun, my messenger, Ho‘sĕn’äge‘´dagōwā. Each day he brings me news. Nothing from east to west escapes his eyes. He has just told me of a war raging even now between your people and another nation, so come, let us look down upon the earth.”
Going to a high hill the men looked down through a hole in the sky and saw the struggling bands of men, saw the flaming lodges, and even the cries of anguish and rage.
“Such things men will ever do,” said the Master of Life as he led them away.
The brothers lived long in the upper world and learned much that their tongues never could tell. They saw untenanted villages awaiting the coming of tribes yet to be born and saw their own lodges where they should be when they came again as spirits. Many good things the great Master of Life told them, and our preachers proclaim them now.
At last the Master told them they must depart, and, guided by two messengers, they descended to the earth by night and slept on the ground.
In the morning they discovered that their native village was overgrown with trees, and following a path through the woods came to another settlement. In a council they told their story and no one knew them except a sister, aged and on the verge of the grave.
“The war of which you speak,” said they, “took place fifty years ago.”
The men did not love earth now but longed for their lodges in the sky world. They were men of wonderful physical power and neither pestilence nor enchantments could kill them but two fiery shafts of the sky did. They then journeyed back to the great white lodge, but this time could not return.[[11]]
3. THE DEATH PANTHER.[[12]]
Now the old folk say this is true.