At sunset the sister looked forth from her high housetop, but nowhere could she see her brother coming. She turned at last to enter, thinking and saying to her breast: “Alas! what did we not think and guess of his carelessness.” But just as the country was growing dim in the darkness, the young man ran breathlessly in, and, greeting his sister, sat down in the doorway.
The sister wondered that he had no deer or other game, but placed a meal before him, and, when he had done, herself ate. But the young man remained silent until she had finished, then he said: “Younger sister, I am weary and would sit here; do you go and call father, for I would speak to him of many things.”
So the sister cleared away the food and ran to summon the father. Soon she returned with the old man, who, sighing, “Ha hua!” from the effort of climbing, greeted his son and sat down, looking all about the room for the fresh deer-meat; but, seeing none, he asked: “What and wherefore hast thou summoned me, my son?”
“It is this,” replied the son, and he related all that had been told him by the Deer-being, describing the magnificent dress, the turquoise and shell earrings, necklaces, and wristlets of the handsome stranger.
“Certainly,” replied the father. “It is well; for as the Sun-father hath directed the Deer-being, thus must it be done.”
Then he forthwith went away and commanded his Priest of the Bow, who, mounting to the topmost house, directed the elders and priests of the tribe, saying:
“Ye, our children, listen!
Ye I will this day inform,
Our child, our father,
He of the strong hand,
He who so hunts the Deer,
Goes unto the Sunset world,
Goes, our Sun-father to greet;
Gather at the sacred houses,
Bring thy prayer-sticks, twines, and feathers,
And prepare for him—
For the Sun-father,
For the Moon-mother,
For the Great Ocean,
For the Prey-beings, plumes and treasures.
Hasten, hasten, ye our children, in the morning!”
So the people gathered in the kiwetsiwe and sacred houses next morning and began to make prayer-plumes, while the sister of the young man and her relatives made sweet parched cornmeal and gathered pollen. Toward evening all was completed. The young man summoned his relatives, and chose his four uncles to accompany him. Then he spread enough cotton-wool out to cover the floor, and, gathering it up, made it into a small bundle. The sweet meal filled a large sack of buckskin, and he took also a little sack of sacred red paint and the black warrior paint with little shining particles in it. Then he bade farewell to his lamenting people and rested for the evening journey.
Next morning, escorted by priests, the young man, arrayed in garments of embroidered white cotton and carrying his plumes in his arms, started out of the town, and, accompanied only by his four uncles, set out over the mountains. On the third day they reached the forest on the bank of the great river and encamped.
Then the young man left the camp of his uncles and went alone into the forest, and, choosing the greatest tree he could find, hacked midway through it with his great flint knife. The next day he cut the other half and felled it, when he found it partly hollow. So with his little knife he began to cut it as he had been directed, and made the round door for it and the hole through the top. With his bundle of cotton he padded it everywhere inside until it was thickly coated and soft, and he made a bed on the bottom as thick as himself.
When all was ready and he had placed his food and plumes inside, he called his uncles and showed them the hollow log. “In this,” said he, “I am to journey to the western home of our Sun-father. When I have entered and closed the round door tightly and put the plug into the upper hole securely, do ye, never thinking of me, roll the log over and over to the high brink of the river, and, never regarding consequences, push it into the water.”
Then it was that the uncles all lamented and tried to dissuade him; but he persisted, and they bade him “Go,” as forever, “for,” said they, “could one think of journeying even to the end of the earth and across the waters that embrace the world without perishing?”
Then, hastily embracing each of them, the young man entered his log, and, securely fastening the door from the inside, and the plug, called out (they heard but faintly), “Kesi!” which means “All is ready.”
Sorrowfully and
