371. At the end of four days Estsánatlehi went to the top of Tsolíhi and sat down on a rock. Tsóhanoai came, sat beside her, and sought to embrace her; but she avoided him, saying: “What do you mean by this? I want none of your embraces.” “It means that I want you for my own,” said the bearer of the Sun. “I want you to come to the west and make a home for me there.” “But I do not wish to do so,” said she. “What right have you to ask me?” “Have I not given your boys the weapons to slay the alien gods?” he inquired, and added: “I have done much for you: now you must reward me.” She replied, “I never besought you to do this. You did not do it on my account; you did it of your own good will, and because your sons asked you.” He urged another reason: “When Nayénĕzgạni visited me in the east, he promised to give you to me.” “What care I for his promise?” she exclaimed; “I am not bound by it. He has no right to speak for me.” Thus four times she repulsed him. When he pleaded for the fifth time, saying: “Come to the west and make a home for me,” she said: “Let me hear first all you have to promise me. You have a beautiful house in the east. I have never seen it, but I have heard how beautiful it is. I want a house just the same built for me in the west; I want to have it built floating on the water, away from the shore, so that in the future, when people increase, they will not annoy me with too many visits. I want all sorts of gems—white shell, turquoise, haliotis, jet, soapstone, agate, and redstone—planted around my house, so that they will grow and increase. Then I shall be lonely over there and shall want something to do, for my sons and my sister will not go with me. Give me animals to take along. Do all this for me and I shall go with you to the west.” He promised all these things to her, and he made elk, buffalo, deer, long-tail deer, mountain sheep, jack-rabbits, and prairie-dogs to go with her.
372. When she started for her new home the Hadáhonestiddĭneʻ and the Hadáhonigedĭneʻ, two tribes of divine people,[160] went with her and helped her to drive the animals, which were already numerous. They passed over the Tuĭntsá range at Péslĭtsi (Red Knife or Red Metal), and there they tramped the mountain down so that they formed a pass. They halted in Tsĭnlí valley to have a ceremony[161] and a foot-race, and here the animals had become vastly more numerous. When they crossed Dsĭllĭzĭ′n (Black Mountain),[162] the herd was so great that it tramped a deep pass whose bottom is almost on a level with the surrounding plain; at Black Mountain all the buffaloes broke from the herd and ran to the east; they never returned to Estsánatlehi and are in the east still. At Hostóditoʻ the elks went to the east and they never returned. From time to time a few, but not all, of the antelope, deer, and other animals left the herd and wandered east. Four days after leaving Tsĭnlí valley they arrived at Dokoslíd (San Francisco Mountain), and here they stopped to perform another ceremony. What happened on the way from this mountain to the great water in the west, we do not know, but after a while Estsánatlehi arrived at the great water and went to dwell in her floating house beyond the shore. Here she still lives, and here the Sun visits her, when his journey is done, every day that he crosses the sky. But he does not go every day; on dark, stormy days he stays at home in the east and sends in his stead the serpents of lightning, who do mischief.
Plate VII. TOʻBADZĬSTSÍNI. (See [pars. 76] and [105] and [note 270].)
373. As he journeys toward the west, this is the song he sings:—
In my thoughts I approach,
The Sun God approaches,
Earth’s end he approaches,
Estsánatlehi’s hearth approaches,
In old age walking