HOW OLD AGE CAME INTO THE WORLD
CHARACTERS
| Komúchass | Old Age |
| Nébăks | Sickness |
Five brothers and their sister lived alone on a mountain; the brothers had killed a great many people in the country around.
The sister gathered the wood and cooked the meat. When it was time for her maturity dance, she asked: “How can I dance when there is nobody to sing for me?”
“Walk around all the time,” said her eldest brother; “pile stones, and don’t sleep for five nights.”
The girl kept awake four nights, then she was so tired that she fell asleep. She dreamed that her brothers were covered with sores and were starving. When she woke up, she cried and said: “I wish I had died long ago, then I shouldn’t have brought trouble on my brothers. I have done this by not dancing and by going to sleep.”
When she got home, she found that Sickness had been in the house. Sickness came every day for five days. Then each one of the five brothers had great sores on his body. There was nobody to hunt for deer, or rabbits, and soon the brothers were starving. The sister brought wood and kept the fire, but she couldn’t find anything to eat. Everybody was glad that the brothers were sick and hoped they would die.
One of the brothers saw two swans on a pond near the house, and when the sister came with a load of wood on her back, he said: “I wish we could kill one of those swans.”