300 Field Columbian Museum — Anthropology, Vol. II. 



could get her, when all others had failed ; the Porcupine was told to do 

 this. 



The Porcupine went to the camp of the beautiful woman and 

 climbed to a prominent place in a tree near the ground, close to the 

 place where the woman would go for wood. As she came for wood, 

 she saw the Porcupine, and the woman said to a companion that was 

 with her, "Let us get that porcupine for his quills, to make moccasins, 



etc." 



She then began to climb the tree where the Porcupine was, and 

 just as she was about to place her hand upon it, the Porcupine would 

 move up higher in the tree, eluding her grasp. The woman's com- 

 panion cried and begged her not to attempt to catch the Porcupine, 

 but she insisted on catching it and would climb higher and higher in 

 her efforts, until she was lost to the view of her companion, and soon 

 .appeared before the Creator (the Sim), to whom she was' shortly 

 afterwards married. 



In course of time a boy was born of them. The Creator instructed 

 his wife not to lift any buffalo manure, and when the boy grew so he 

 could shoot birds with his* arrows his father told him not to kill the 

 meadow larks, for they could talk Indian words. 



One day the wife disobeyed her husband by lifting the buffalo 

 manure, which covered a hole through which she looked down and 

 saw her people on the earth, hunting buffalo and having a good time. 

 The same day, the boy disobeyed, and killed a meadow lark, and the 

 other meadow larks said to him : "You do not belong up here ; you are 

 a people of a different world." The boy came home crying, because he 

 thought he belonged up there. 



The Creator, when he saw the secret was known to the mother and 

 the boy, and that they would no longer be happy there, planned for 

 them to return home. He told his people to kill one buffalo and to tie 

 the ends of the fifteen sinews that are in a buffalo, so a long rope would 

 be made. This was tied to the mother and boy, and they were lowered 

 through the hole covered with manure toward the lower world, until 

 the limit of the rope was reached, which left them hanging in midair. 

 In making the rope, a sinew from the leg of the buffalo had been for- 

 gotten, that would have made the rope long enough to reach the earth 

 below. The Creator took a large rock and padded it with buffalo hair 

 and told the rock to go down and break the rope that the mother and 

 boy might be able to reach the earth. The rock went down and hit 

 the woman on the head and killed her and she fell to the earth along- 

 side of her son, who wandered over the earth killing everything he 



