grow. Then he gathered the leaves which fell from the trees and blew
upon them. They became birds. He took a stick and broke it into pieces.
Out of the small end he made fishes and placed them in the mountain
streams. Of the middle of the stick, he made all the animals except the grizzly bear. From the big end of the stick came the grizzly bear, who was made master of all. Grizzly was large and strong and cunning. When the
earth was new he walked upon two feet and carried a large club. So strong
was Grizzly that Old Man Above feared the creature he had made. Therefore,
so that he might be safe, Chareya hollowed out the pyramid of ice and snow
as a tepee. There he lived for thousands of snows. The Indians knew he
lived there because they could see the smoke curling from the smoke hole
of his tepee. When the pale-face came, Old Man Above went away. There is
no longer any smoke from the smoke hole. White men call the tepee Mount
Shasta.


The Search for the Middle and the Hardening of the World
Zuni (New Mexico)

As it was with the first men and creatures, so it was with the world. It
was young and unripe. Earthquakes shook the world and rent it. Demons
and monsters of the under-world fled forth. Creatures became fierce,
beasts of prey, and others turned timid, becoming their quarry.
Wretchedness and hunger abounded and black magic. Fear was everywhere
among them, so the people, in dread of their precious possessions,
became wanderers, living on the seeds of grass, eaters of dead and slain things. Yet, guided by the Beloved Twain, they sought in the light and
under the pathway of the Sun, the Middle of the world, over which alone
they could find the earth at rest(1).

When the tremblings grew still for a time, the people paused at the
First of Sitting Places. Yet they were still poor and defenceless and
unskilled, and the world still moist and unstable. Demons and monsters