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Show 6 I. HAJIINEI men and women grew angry with each other. Finally First Man and all the men decided to leave. They would move across the river and live apart from the women. So that they could pass safely over the whirling water at the place Where the Waters Crossed, the men had special boats built with sacred jewels in the front. At first the women said that they were glad to be rid of the men. They planted a small field of corn. But they were soon too busy enjoying their new freedom to work, and the field quickly filled with weeds. As a result of the women's wickedness, many of the Monsters would be born. The men, meanwhile, prospered at their work. Their fields provided bigger harvests each year. But some of the men, who turned to bad ways as the women had, were struck with lightning. The women finally grew tired and hungry. They began to starve because they had not tended their fields. Looking at their ragged clothes, they remembered their husbands across the river. After the women called to the men for help, the leaders met in council. They agreed that it would be bad to be forever without women, and so they brought the women back across the river. But they had to wait in a corral, apart from the men. A council then decided that sweathouses should be built so that the women could be purified. When this had been done, the men and women were reunited. Later Coyote, prompted by First Woman, asked First Man for a piece of the whiteshell that First Man kept in his medicine bundle. Coyote began to play with the whiteshell in the river. Each time he dipped it in the water and drew it out, the water rose and fell. The fourth time he dipped the shell in the river, the water uncovered the baby of Water Monster (Tee hooTtsodii). Coyote quickly grabbed the child and carried it off. Soon it began to rain. As the waters gathered in the washes and became a flood, the deer and the birds warned First Man that the flood was coming. Quickly he put all the inner forms of the Third World in his medicine bundle. Then he gathered the people so that they could leave. Led by Locust (Wiineeshch'jjdii), the people hurried into a tall reed and began climbing upwards, just ahead of the foaming water. The last of the people into the reed was Turkey (T^zhii). His tailfeathers have white tips where they were touched by the rising water. Locust emerged into the Fourth World (Hajimei), the Glittering World, and found it covered with water. When First Man came out, he was met by Talking God from the east and by Calling |
