When the elder sister left, she said to Ût´sĕt, “To-morrow you come to my house,” and all night she was busy arranging things for the morning, and in the morning Ût´sĕt hastened to her sister’s house. (She was accompanied by Sûs´sĭstinnako, who followed invisible close to her ear.) Now´ûtsĕt asked, “What have I there?” pointing to a covered object, and Ût´sĕt replied, “I can not tell, but I have thought that you have under that blanket all things that are necessary for all time to come; perhaps I speak wrong.” “No,” replied Now´ûtsĕt, “you speak correctly,” and she threw off the blanket, saying, “My sister, I may be the larger and the first, but your head and heart are wise; you know much; I think my head must be weak.” The younger sister then said: “To-morrow you come to my house;” and in the morning when the elder sister called at the house of the younger she was received in the front room and asked to be seated, and they talked awhile; then the younger one said: “What do you think I have in the room there?” pointing to the door of an inner room. Four times the question was asked and each time Now´ûtsĕt replied, “I can not tell.” “Come with me,” said Ût´sĕt, and she cried as she threw open the door, “All this is mine, when you have looked well we will go away.” The room was filled with the Ka´ᵗsuna beings with monster heads which Ût´sĕt had created, under the direction of Sûs´sĭstinnako.
Sûs´sĭstinnako’s creation may be classed in three divisions:
1. Pai´-ä-tä-mo: All men of Ha´arts (the earth), the sun, moon, stars, Ko´-shai-ri and Quer´-rän-na.
2. Ko´-pĭsh-tai-a: The cloud, lightning, thunder, rainbow peoples, and all animal life not included under the first and third heads.
3. Ka´ᵗsuna: Beings having human bodies and monster heads, who are personated in Sia by men and women wearing masks.
After a time the younger sister closed the door and they returned to the front room. Not a word had been spoken except by the younger. As the elder sister left she said, “To-morrow you come to my house.” Sûs´sĭstinnako whispered in the ear of the younger, “To-morrow you will see fine things in your sister’s house, but they will not be good; they will be bad.” Now´ûtsĕt then said: “Before the Sun has left his home we will go together to see him; we will each have a wand on our heads made of the long white fluffy feathers of the under tail of the eagle, and we will place them vertically on our heads that they may see the sun when he first comes out;” and the younger sister replied: “You are the elder and must go before, and your plumes will see the sun first; mine can not see him until he has traveled far, because I am so small; you are the greater and must go before.” Though she said this she knew better; she knew that though she was smaller in stature she was the greater and more important woman. That night Sûs´sĭstinnako talked much to Ût´sĕt. She said: “Now that you have created the Ka´ᵗsuna you must create a man as messenger between the sun and the Ka´ᵗsuna and another as messenger between the moon and the Ka´ᵗsuna.”
The first man created was called Ko´shairi; he not only acts as courier between the sun and the Ka´ᵗsuna, but he is the companion, the jester and musician (the flute being his instrument) of the sun; he is also mediator between the people of the earth and the sun; when acting as courier between the sun and the Ka´ᵗsuna and vice versa and as mediator between the people of the earth and the sun he is chief for the sun; when accompanying the sun in his daily travels he furnishes him with music and amusement; he is then the servant of the sun. The second man created was Quer´ränna, his duties being identical with those of the Ko´shairi, excepting that the moon is his particular chief instead of the sun, both, however, being subordinate to the sun.
After the creation of Ko´shairi and Quer´ränna, Ût´sĕt called Shu-ah-kai (a small black bird with white wings) to her and said:
“To-morrow my sister and I go to see the sun when he first leaves his house. We will have wands on our heads, we will be side by side; she is much taller than I; the sun will see her face before he sees mine, and that will not be good; you must go to-morrow morning very early near the house of the sun and take a plume from your left wing, but none from your right; spread your wings and rest in front of the sun as he comes from his house.” The two women started very early in the morning to greet the rising sun. They were accompanied by all the men and youths, carrying their bows and arrows. The elder woman, after they halted to await the coming of the sun, said: “We are here to watch for the sun.” (The people had divided, some being on the side of Now´ûtsĕt, the others with Ût´sĕt). “If the sun looks first upon me, all the people on my side will be my people and will slay the others, and if the sun looks first upon the face of my sister all the people on her side will be her people and they will destroy my people.”
As the sun left his house, the bird Shu´ahkai placed himself so as to obscure the light, excepting where it penetrated through the space left by the plucking of the feather from his wing, and the light shone, not only on the wand on the head of the younger sister, but it covered her face, while it barely touched the top of the plumes of the elder; and so the people of the younger sister destroyed those of the elder. The two women stood still while the men fought. The women remained on the mountain top, but the men descended into a grassy park to fight. After a time the younger sister ran to the park and cried, “This is enough; fight no more.” She then returned to the mountain and said to her sister, “Let us descend to the park and fight.” And they fought like women—not with arrows—but wrestled. The men formed a circle around them and the women fought hard and long. Some of the men said, “Let us go and part the women;” others said, “No; let them alone.” The younger woman grew very tired in her arms, and cried to her people, “I am very tired,” and they threw the elder sister upon the ground and tied her hands; the younger woman then commanded her people to leave her, and she struck her sister with her fists about the head and face as she lay upon the ground, and in a little while killed her. She then cut the breast with a stone knife and took out the heart, her people being still in a circle, but the circle was so large that they were some distance off. She held the heart in her hand and cried: “Listen, men and youths! This woman was my sister, but she compelled us to fight; it was she who taught you to fight. The few of her people who escaped are in the mountains and they are the people of the rats;” and she cut the heart into pieces and threw it upon the ground, saying, “Her heart will become rats, for it was very bad,” and immediately rats could be seen running in all directions. She found the center of the heart full of cactus, and she said, “The rats for evermore will live with the cacti;” and to this day the rats thus live (referring to the Neotoma). She then told her people to return to their homes.