The priest who was named Yanauluha carried ever in his hand
a staff which now in the daylight was plumed and covered with feathers
- yellow, blue-green, red, white, black, and varied. Attached to
it were shells, which made a song-like tinkle. The people when they
saw it stretched out their hands and asked many questions.
Then the priest balanced it in his hand, and struck with it
a hard place, and blew upon it. Amid the plumes appeared four round
things-mere eggs they were. Two were blue like the sky and two dun-red
like the flesh of the Earth-mother.
Then the people asked many questions.
"These,"
said the priests, "are the seed of living beings. Choose which
ye will follow. From two eggs shall come beings of beautiful plumage,
colored like the grass and fruits of summer. Where they fly and
ye follow, shall always be summer. Without toil, fields of food
shall flourish. And from the other two eggs shall come evil beings,
piebald, with white, without colors. And where these two shall fly
and ye shall follow, winter strives with summer. Only by labor shall
the fields yield fruit, and your children and theirs shall strive
for the fruits. Which do ye choose?"
"The blue! The blue!" cried the people, and those
who were strongest carried off the blue eggs, leaving the red eggs
to those who waited. They laid the blue eggs with much gentleness
in soft sand on the sunny side of a hill, watching day by day. They
were precious of color; surely they would be the precious birds
of the Summer-land. Then the eggs cracked and the birds came out,
with open eyes and pin feathers under their skins.
"We
chose wisely," said the people. "Yellow and blue, red
and green, are their dresses, even seen through their skins."
So they fed them freely of all the foods which men favor. Thus they
taught them to eat all desirable food. But when the feathers appeared,
they were black with white bandings. They were ravens. And they
flew away croaking hoarse laughs and mocking our fathers.
But the other eggs became beautiful macaws, and were wafted
by a toss of the priest's wand to the faraway Summer-land.
So those who had chosen the raven, became the Raven People.
They were the Winter People and they were many and strong. But those
who had chosen the macaw, became the Macaw People. They were the
Summer People, and few in number, and less strong, but they were
wiser because they were more deliberate. The priest Yanauluha, being
wise, became their father, even as the Sun-father is among the little
moons of the sky. He and his sisters were the ancestors of the priest-keepers
of things.
About the Author:
Katharine Berry Judson first published this book in 1916, which
collects the oral traditions of the Zuni, Hopi, Achomawi, Sia, Pima,
Pai Ute, and other tribes of the Southwest. She compiled and edited
four collections of native myths and tales. Judson was a professor
of history at the University of Washington
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