Moon answered, “People turn aside their faces when they look at you. You blind them; and you are so hot you make them very uncomfortable. I don’t burn people as you do. Besides, I am prettier than you are.”
Thus they disputed.
At last they agreed to this: Sun should shine by day and Moon by night. And they did so. They do so even to this day. They used both to shine at the same time; so the Indians say.
THE MAN IN THE MOON
Central Eskimo
Once an Eskimo visited the Moon. He put out all the lamps in his house, and sat down with his back to them, and at once his guardian spirit carried him through the air.
Moon’s house was not very large. It is white because it is covered with white deerskins, which Moon always has drying there. On each side of the entrance is the upper half of a walrus’s body, with very long teeth. It is very dangerous to pass here, because the teeth try to bite you. Moon’s dog is dappled red and white. He lives in the passage, and is the only dog in the moon.
Moon always sits in the outer room, but in an inside room, the Eskimo saw Sun. She is Moon’s wife. The moment she saw the Eskimo, she brightened her fire and got behind the glow of it, therefore the Eskimo could not look at her for the brightness. Moon had great piles of deer meat lying about, and piled up; yet he did not offer any to the Eskimo until he and Sun had danced a very strange dance.
There are great plains in Moon Land, and large herds of deer roaming over them. Moon allowed the Eskimo to choose one animal, which at once fell through a hole in Moon Land to the earth below. In a large house were many seals swimming. The Eskimo chose one seal and it at once fell to the earth and into the ocean.
That is why the Eskimo have deer and seals. If this Eskimo had not visited Moon, they would not have them.