The storyteller also had another version of the beginning of things. At first the world was entirely water, inhabited by no living creature but a swan, which in some unaccountable way produced a crow, a wolf, and a water hen. Through the unsparing efforts of the crow to improve their situation the water hen was finally sent to the bottom of the waters to fetch some earth. Taking a small quantity of this in her bill, the crow made the earth. Later, persevering in her labor of improving their lot, she assumed the form of an Indian, and made all the beasts, birds, fishes, and insects, and became the first of all Indians. If the aged narrator had been an Arikara, his story would have been similar to that of the Mandan. The Arikara believed that they together with all other living things existed first in an embryo state deep within the earth. There they gradually developed, and after many generations of patient struggle were at last successful in their attempt to get to the surface. As they emerged, they were directed by a Voice, which remained with them, comforting and guiding them until after many hardships and vicissitudes they came to a fair land. Here there came to them a beautiful woman--the one whose voice had led them. She was Mother Corn, the protective spirit of the agricultural tribes, and the one who gave them their staple food grain. As the hunters passed along they heard through the village the sound of music--crude flutes, whistles, and drums. All the North Dakota tribes were musical, even though their product was hampered by the limitations of their scale, which had only five notes. Frances Densmore has placed hundreds of their songs in notation, copies of which are published in the bulletins of the Smithsonian Institution. Now and then, above the sound of the music, voices raised in wailing were heard. These came from the scaffold cemetery on the prairie just outside the village, whither some had withdrawn to lament the death of loved ones. Great mourning followed upon a death--the wailing could often be heard for miles. The Mandan slashed themselves until their bodies were covered with blood, and mourned for a year. In the tree or scaffold method of burial, the one usually followed by the North Dakota tribes, the cemetery was ordinarily situated only two or three hundred paces from the village. The body was wrapped in blankets and placed upon the scaffold very soon after death--some say before the sun again sank below the prairies. The Arikara and the Chippewa placed their dead in the ground, the former resting the body in a sitting posture, or on its side, with the knees drawn up, in a shallow stone-lined grave. The latter people believed the spirit followed a wide, beaten path to the west, at the end of which lay everything an Indian could desire.