POWELL. ] STAGES OF PHILOSOPHY. 25 
of the earth, and there watched long and patiently, till at last the sun- 
god coming out he shot an arrow at his face, but the fierce heat con- 
sumed the arrow ere it had finished its intended course; then an- 
other arrow was sped, but that was also consumed; and another, and 
still another, till only one remained in his quiver, but this was the 
magical arrow that had never failed its mark. Ta-wdts, holding it in 
his hand, lifted the barb to his eye and baptized it in a divine tear; 
then the arrow was sped and struck the sun-god full in the face, and the 
sun was shivered into a thousand fragments, which fell to the earth, ° 
causing a general conflagration. Then Ta-wdts, the hare-god, fled be- 
fore the destruction he had wrought, and as he fled the burning earth 
consumed his feet, consumed his legs, consumed his body, consumed his 
hands and his arms—all were consumed but the head alone, which 
bowled across valleys and over mountains, fleeing destruction from the 
burning earth until at last, swollen with heat, the eyes of the god burst 
and the tears gushed forth in a’ flood which spread over the earth and 
extinguished the fire. The sun-god was now conquered, and he ap- 
peared before a council of the gods to await sentence. In that long 
council were established the days and the nights, the seasons and the 
years, with the length thereof, and the sun was condemned to travel 
across the firmament by the same trail day after day till the end of 
time. 
In this same philosophy we learn that in that ancient time a council 
of the gods was held to consider the propriety of making a moon, and 
at last the task was given to Whippoorwill, a god of the night, and a 
frog yielded himself a willing sacrifice for this purpose, and the Whip- 
poorwill, by incantations, and other magical means, transformed the 
frog into the new moon. The truth of this origin of the moon is made 
evident to our very senses; for do we not see the frog riding the moon 
at night, and the moon is cold, because the frog from which it was made 
was cold? 
The philosopher of Oraibi tells us that when the people ascended by 
means of the magical tree which constituted the ladder from the lower 
world to this, they found the firmament, the ceiling of this world, low 
down upon the earth—the floor of this world. Matcito, one of their 
gods, raised the firmament on his shoulders to where it is now seen. 
Still the world was dark, as there was no sun, no moon, and no stars. 
So the people murmured because of the darkness and the cold. Matcito 
said, ‘Bring me seven maidens,” and they brought him seven maid- 
ens; and he said, ‘Bring me seven basbets of cotton-bolls,” and they 
brought him seven baskets of cotton-bolls; and he taught the seven 
maidens to weave a magical fabric from the cotton, and when they had 
finished it he held it aloft, and the breeze carried it away toward the 
firmament, and in the twinkling of an eye it was transformed into a 
beautiful full-orbed moon, and the same breeze caught the remnants of 
flocculent cotton which the maidens had scattered during their work, 
