Indians of North America; Indians of North America -- Folklore
“If you will not go into the little wigwam, you shall not come back to
my fire. You may sleep where you can find a place, but never come back
to me until you have talked to a manitou,” said the warrior.
The boy ran into the forest and hid himself. He picked berries all day
and made a bed on the moss at night. The moon shone very bright, and he
thought there was a face in it, so he asked the moon to take care of
him while he slept.
The boy awoke, but it was not day. A girl stood by him dressed in
shining clothes, and her face was like the one he had seen in the moon.
“I shall have to go back to my sky teepee, but you must go with me.
Stand up quickly and take hold of my hand. Come, Cloud Catcher, come,
for the stars are going to hide,” and the boy felt himself rising and
moving through the air like a bird.
Cloud Catcher went through the clouds into the beautiful country behind
the sky, and soon they stopped in front of a great teepee which
belonged to a great chief with hair like fire. The chief was the moon
maiden’s brother.
“You are not wise,” said the great chief to the girl.
“I am alone; let me have him and I shall be happy,” said the moon
maiden.
The chief gave the boy a pipe and a bow and some arrows. “You may
stay,” said the sun chief.
Cloud Catcher and the girl played in the fields all day while the sun
was off on his journeys. He shot at the stars, and sometimes hit one so
hard that it let go and fell down through the sky. The moon maiden had
a great bow that she hung in the sky at night and played with in the
daytime. She could shoot farther than Cloud Catcher, but she never hurt
anything with her arrows.
One day the boy went to the great sun chief and said: “I used to eat
much when in my father’s wigwam. I am hungry for meat; will you give me
some?”
“You children of the ground are very strange in your ways,” said the
sun chief. “You have all the sky to make you happy, but now you are
crying for meat. It is not wise, but you shall have it, for you are one
of us, and whatever you ask must be given. Come with me.”
The sun chief took Cloud Catcher the next day, and they walked to a
place where the sky was open. They looked down on the ground, and the
chief shot one of his arrows. It struck a little child, who fell down
and was carried into her father’s wigwam.
“Send meat and the child shall be well,” said the sun chief. Meat was
put on the fire and burned, and as it burned it came up to Cloud
Catcher’s feet, and he ate it like a hungry man. The child walked out
of the wigwam, for it was now well, and Cloud Catcher had his meat.
After that feast he wanted to walk many times with the sun to the place
where the sky was broken, and every time he asked for meat.
One day he said: “I will go back to my own country; there my arrows
will bring my meat to me, and no one will need to be sick.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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