But the short-legged Cottontail sang for rain, like this:
“Hatchi ethla ho na an saia.”
That’s what they sung—one asking for snow, the other for rain; hence to this day the Pók’ia (Jack-rabbit) runs when it snows, the Â′kshiko (Cottontail) when it rains.
Thus shortens my story.
THE RABBIT HUNTRESS AND HER ADVENTURES
IT was long ago, in the days of the ancients, that a poor maiden lived at K’yawana Tehua-tsana (“Little Gateway of Zuñi River”). You know there are black stone walls of houses standing there on the tops of the cliffs of lava, above the narrow place through which the river runs, to this day.
In one of these houses there lived this poor maiden alone with her feeble old father and her aged mother. She was unmarried, and her brothers had all been killed in wars, or had died gently; so the family lived there helplessly, so far as many things were concerned, from the lack of men in their house.
It is true that in making the gardens—the little plantings of beans, pumpkins, squashes, melons, and corn—the maiden was able to do very well; and thus mainly on the products of these things the family were supported. But, as in those days of our ancients we had neither sheep nor cattle, the hunt was depended upon to supply the meat; or sometimes it was procured by barter of the products of the fields to those who hunted mostly. Of these things this little family had barely enough for their own subsistence; hence, they could not procure their supplies of meat in this way.