OUT OF THE BOOK: THE INDIANS BY NATALIE CURTIS 1968 (C) 1907 BY PAUL BURLIN
THE STORY OF GOMOIDEMA POKOMA-KIAKA
Many years ago we lived not here upon the earth but down under the ground. And ther came the time when we had no fruit and there was nothing to eat. So we sent the humming-bird to see what he could find. Where-ever he might find fruit or food of any kind, there the people would go. He flew up into the sky, and there he saw a grape-vine that had his roots in the underworld and grew up through a hole in the middle of the sky into the upper world. The humming-bird saw the hole in the sky and flew through it, and came to a land where mescal and fruits and flowers of all kinds were growing. It was a good land. It was this world. So the humming-bird flew back and told the people that he had seen a beautifull country above. "Let us all go up there," he said. So they all went up, climbing on the grape-vine. They climbed without stopping until they had come out through the hole in the sky into the upper world. But they left behind them in the underworld the frog-folk, who were blind. Now when the people had lived for a while in that land they heard a noise, and they wonderend at it and send a man to look down the hole, through which they had come, to see what made the noise. The man looked and saw the waters were rising from the underworld and were already so high that they nearly reached the mouth of the hole. The people said. "The blind frogs below have made this flood, and if it rises out of the hole it will wash us all away." So they took counsel together, and then they hollowed out a tree like a trough and put into plenty of fruits and blankets. They chose a beautifull maiden and laid her in the trough, and closed it up and said, "Now if the waters come and we are all washed away, she will be saved alive." The flood came up through the hole, and the people ran to the mountains, but thougt the mountains were high the waters rose over them. The trough floated like a boat, and the flood kept rising, till at last it nearly touched the sky. Still the waters rose till the waves dashed the trough against the sky, where it struck with a loud noise. It struck first to the south, then to the west, then to the north, then nearly to the east.Then the flood began to go down. The people had said to the woman, "If you hear the waters going down, wait till the trough rest on the earth, then make a little opening and look around you." When the trough rested on the ground the woman opened it and went out. She looked all around her, over all the world, but saw no one. All the peolple had been drowned. Then the woman thought, "How can I bear children and make new people?" She went up into the mountains early, before sunrise, and lay there alone. Then the daylight came and the beams from the sun shone warm upon the woman, and the water dripped from the crag, and in this way she conceived, and bore a daughter. When the child was grown to maidenhood the mother said to her, "Do you know, my daughter, how you came to be?" And the maiden said, "No." "I will show you," said the mother. So she led her daughter up into the mountains, and bade her lie down as she herselfs had lain. And the maid lay on the mountain all day. Next morning early, before sunrise, the mother went to her, and she lay down upon her daughter and look at the sun. Then she quickly sprang up, and in this way the maiden conceived of the sun, and the child that she bore was the Son of God - Sekala Ka-amja, "The-One-Who-Never-Died."
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