28. Old-One and the End of the World.
(cont.)At his right hand sits the Beaver.1 When Old-One thinks it is time for the earth to stop turning round, he will tell the Beaver to gnaw the pole, and the earth will fall over and stop revolving.2
29. Old-One and the Earth, Sun, and People.
A long time ago, before the world was formed, there lived a race of people together. They were the Stars, Moon, Sun, and Earth. Earth was a woman,3 and her husband was the Sun.4 The Earth woman found fault with her husband, and was disagreeable with him, saying, “You are nasty, ugly, and too hot.”5 They had several children. At last the Sun was annoyed at her grumbling, and deserted her. The Moon and Stars were relatives of the Sun, also left her, and moved over to where Sun had taken up his abode. When the Earth-woman saw that her husband and his friends had all deserted her, she became very sorrowful, and very sad. Now Old-One appeared, and transformed Sun, Moon, and Stars into what we see in the sky at the present day, and placed them all so that they look on the Earth-woman, and she could look at them. He said, “you shall not desert people, nor hide yourselves, but remain so you can always be seen at night or by day. Henceforth you will look at the Earth.”6 Then he transformed the woman into the present earth7, her hair became the trees and grass; her flesh, the clay; her bones, and her blood, the springs of water. Old-One said, “Henceforth you will be the earth, and people will live on you, and trample on your belly you will be as their mother, for from you, bodies will spring, and to you they will go back. People will live as in your bosom, and sleep on your lap, they will derive nourishment from you, for you are fat; and they will utilize the parts of your body. You will no more weep when you see your children.
After this, the earth gave birth to people,8 who were very much in form to ourselves; but they knew nothing and required neither food nor drink. They had no appetites, desires, knowledge, or thoughts of their own. One travelled over the world and among the people, giving them thoughts and desires, and causing all kinds of birds and fish to appear, to which he gave names, and ascribed to them certain positions and functions.
1. Some say the beaver lives or sits at his right hand, and the coyote at his left in this story, where the beaver is spoken of as sitting near the Old-One (p. 328).
2. Some say it will burst up and break when it falls; others say it will be transformed into a better world.
3. Some add, of large stature.
4. Some add, he was chief of the people.
5. Compare Traditions of the Thompson River Indians, p. 53.
6. Some say, the Sun was commanded to visit the Earth every night. He thus sleeps at night with his old wife and he is seen leaving in the morning, and returning to her at night.
7. Some say there was a former earth, and that most of the people belonging to it are dead.8. Some say, the people may have been brought out of the earth in the same manner as other animals were, or they may have sprung from the union of the Sun and Earth again to be children of the Sun. But some think the latter were transformed into stars, and that those people also survived the flood of a former earth.
