The thunderbirds, so ran another tale of the aged storyteller, live suspended between heaven and earth, their wings supported by lightning. Above are the dark clouds. Below is the earth. When the thunderbirds shake their wings favorably, it rains. There was a time when they tired of living between heaven and earth, and asked the Great Mystery if they might become men and live on earth. This the Great Mystery gave them permission to do, but told them that they should become men such as no other men were. Accordingly, they became giants so large that one living on the Big Muddy could reach the Atlantic Ocean in a single step. One of them playfully took up a handful of earth, and the waters flowing into the depression formed Lake Superior, while the handful of earth which he tossed aside made a mountain. They dug a ditch to the Gulf of Mexico, and it is now called the Mississippi River. Such antics finally produced all the lakes and rivers. At last the thunderbird men grew old and died, and went back to the spaces between heaven and earth. Lightning is the fire from their eyes, and thunder the reverberation from their eggs as they hatch. While the night settled darker and a breath of cool air stole in from the prairie, the storyteller told of the great giant who lives in the North and whose name is Wasiya. The feathers of his bonnet are icicles, and his clothing is of ice. When he blows his breath, it turns cold and winter comes. Later, as strange lights began to play far away in the northern sky, the narrator told the story, heard from the Chippewa, of the Northern Lights. A woman in a dream once visited the land where these lights shine, and discovered that they are ghosts rising and falling in the steps of a dance. All the women wear gay colors, and the warriors brandish their war clubs. The boys and girls heard, too, of the beautiful Indian maiden who came from the land of the setting sun and brought the Sioux the pipe of strange red stone, which is the solidified blood of Indians. She told them to use the pipe only when there is peace, or peace to be made, and in times of sickness and distress; and urged them to be kind to the women because they are weak. She is now the morning star, the Indians' sister, and stands in the heavens, wearing a white buffalo robe. The boys and girls were told, too, as the darkness deepened out on the prairies, that the earth is the Indians' Mother, and the sun their Father. Therefore, they should treat kindly and with reverence all things in earth and sky, because they are manifestations of Wakantanka, the Great Mystery, or the Great Spirit, to whom the Indians pray. DECLINE OF THE INDIAN TRIBES