Meat that is good to eat,
Tender for old teeth,
Gristle for young teeth,
Big deer and fat deer,
Lean meat and fat meat,
Haunch-meat and knuckle-bone,
Liver and heart.
Food for the old men,
Life for all men,
For women and babes.
Easement of hunger-pangs,
Sorrow destroying,
Laughter provoking,
Joy invoking,
In the smell of its smoking
And its sweet in the mouth.
_(The younger women take charge of the meat,
and the older women resume their acorn-pounding.)_
_(Red Cloud approaches the acorn-pounders
and watches them with pleasure.
All group about him, the Shaman to the
fore, and hang upon his every action, his
every utterance.)_
{Red Cloud}
The heart of the acorn is good?
{First Old Woman}
_(Nodding.)_
It is good food.
{Red Cloud}
When you have pounded and winnowed and
washed away the bitter.
{Second Old Woman}
As thou taught'st us, Red Cloud, when the
world was very young and thou wast the first man.
{Red Cloud}
It is a fat food. It makes life, and life is good.
{Shaman}
It was thou, Red Cloud, gathering the acorns
and teaching the storing, who gavest life to the
Nishinam in the lean years aforetime, when the
tribes not of the Nishinam passed like the dew
of the morning.
_(He nods a signal to the Old Man.)_
{Old Man}
In the famine in the old time,
When the old man was a young man,
When the heavens ceased from raining,
When the grasslands parched and withered,
When the fishes left the river,
And the wild meat died of sickness,
In the tribes that knew not acorns,
All their women went dry-breasted,
All their younglings chewed the deer-hides,
All their old men sighed and perished,
And the young men died beside them,
Till they died by tribe and totem,
And o'er all was death upon them.
Yet the Nishinam unvanquished,
Did not perish by the famine.
Oh, the acorns Red Cloud gave them!
Oh, the acorns Red Cloud taught them
How to store in willow baskets
'Gainst the time and need of famine!
{Shaman}
_(Who, throughout the Old Man's recital, has
nodded approbation, turning to Red
Cloud.)_
Sing to thy people, Red Cloud, the song of
life which is the song of the acorn.
{Red Cloud}
_(Making ready to begin)_
And which is the song of woman, O Shaman.
{Shaman}
_(Hushing the people to listen, solemnly)_
He sings with his father's lips, and with the
lips of his father's fathers to the beginning of time
and men.