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 priests 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.
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