“The Story of Ithenthiela”[2]
Many years ago there was a brave Indian boy named Ithenthiela, the Caribou-Footed, who lived far away in the great northwest.
One day, as Ithenthiela went through the woods, he saw a squirrel in the branches of a tall red spruce tree, and, raising his bow, he shot an arrow at it. Down fell the squirrel, but the arrow lodged in the branches.
Then Ithenthiela started to climb after the arrow, but he had not climbed far when he heard a great pack of wolves howling at the foot of the tree. So he climbed higher, and as he mounted, the arrow went up, too.
Up, up, it went, until at last it came to the sky itself. The arrow passed through the thin blue, and Ithenthiela wriggled after it.
Great was Ithenthiela’s surprise when he entered the Sky Country; it was so different from what he had expected. He had imagined a glorious country where the sun always shone, and where huge herds of musk-oxen, caribou, and moose roamed at large. He had expected to find many of his own people camped in wigwams here and there, preparing to fight with other tribes. But instead, the air was damp, dreary, and cold; no trees or flowers grew; no herds of animals ran on the silent plains; the smoke of no wigwam greeted his anxious eyes; no war-whoop or hunting cry was heard. But far in the distance against the sky shimmered a great white mass, like a pile of snow when the sun shines upon it in the early summer. Toward this great white wonder ran a winding path from the very spot where Ithenthiela stood.
“I will follow it,” thought he, “and see what I find in that shining wigwam over there.”
As he passed along he met an old woman who said to him: “Who are you, and where are you going?”
“I have come from far,” said Ithenthiela. “I am the Caribou-Footed. Can you tell me who lives over there in that big white wigwam?”
“Ah,” said Capoteka—for that was the old woman’s name—“I know you, Ithenthiela! Long have I known that sometime you would come here. But you have done wrong; this is no country for man. In that great wigwam over there lives Itakempka; and he is unhappy because he has lost his great medicine belt. Until he gets it again, no one will be happy in the Sky Country. The belt is at the tepee of the two blind women who live far beyond the wigwam which shines so white, and no one has been able to get it from them. But whoever captures it, and takes it from the blind women, will have the daughter of Itakempka, the beautiful Etanda, for his wife.”