29. Old-One and the Earth, Sun, and People.
(cont.)He said to the people. “Where you see fish jump, there you will find water to drink. It will quench your thirst. and keep you alive.” He taught the women to make birch baskets, mats, and lodges, and how to dig roots, gather berries and cure them. He taught the men how to make fire, catch fish, shoot, snare, trap, and spear game. He taught them how to make nets, spears, and snares. He showed them the spa'tsan-tree, telling them the bark from it was the best for making, thread and rope. He taught them how to make dead-falls for marten, and showed them the white and the black arrow-stone, telling them it was best for making knives, spear-points, and arrow-heads. He taught them how to snare grouse, and use the feathers on arrows so that then might go straight. He also told the people how to cook and eat salmon and other food, and showed them tobacco and pipe-stone, and how to smoke. He also taught the people the relationship of the sexes, how to have sexual intercourse, and how to give birth to children. When he had finished teaching them, he bade them good-by, saying, “I now leave you; but if you forget any of the arts I have taught you, or if you are in distress and require my aid, I will come again to you. The sun is as your father, and the earth as your mother. When you die, you will return to your mother's body. You will be covered with her flesh as a blanket, under which your bones will rest in peace.”
30. The Creation of the Earth by Old-One.1
Old-One or Chief came down from the upper world on a cloud, which, when it approached the surface of the great lake, became a bank of fog. He was tired looking at the endless and monotonous expanse of water underneath the sky, and thus had descended to create some kind of a world in the midst of the watery waste which was where the earth is now. The cloud descended until it rested on the surface of the lake. Then Old-One pulled five hairs from his head2 and, throwing them down on the clouds, they became endowed with life, and sprang up in the form of young women. They were all perfect women endowed with speech, sight, and hearing. He asked the first one to speak and state what she preferred to be. She answered. “I wish to be a woman and to bear children. I shall be bad and foolish, and shall seek after my own pleasure. My descendants will fight, lie, steal, murder, and commit adultery. They will be wicked.” The Chief answered her, saving. “I am sorry you have spoken thus, for in this way death and much sorrow will arise.”
1. Another Tcawa'xamux version.
2. The narrator said he was not quite sure whether the hairs were from the head or pubes. He also said he thought they might have been have ribs taken by the chief from his right side.
