A long time ago several young men made up their minds to find the
place where the Sun lives and see what the Sun is like. They got
ready their bows and arrows, their parched corn and extra moccasins,
and started out toward the east. At first they met tribes they knew,
then they came to tribes they had only heard about, and at last to
others of which they had never heard.
There was a tribe of root eaters and another of acorn eaters, with
great piles of acorn shells near their houses. In one tribe they
found a sick man dying, and were told it was the custom there when
a man died to bury his wife in the same grave with him. They waited
until he was dead, when they saw his friends lower the body into a
great pit, so deep and dark that from the top they could not see the
bottom. Then a rope was tied around the woman's body, together with
a bundle of pine knots, a lighted pine knot was put into her hand,
and she was lowered into the pit to die there in the darkness after
the last pine knot was burned.
The young men traveled on until they came at last to the sunrise
place where the sky reaches down to the ground. They found that the
sky was an arch or vault of solid rock hung above the earth and was
always swinging up and down, so that when it went up there was an
open place like a door between the sky and ground, and when it swung
back the door was shut. The Sun came out of this door from the east
and climbed along on the inside of the arch. It had a human figure,
but was too bright for them to see clearly and too hot to come very
near. They waited until the Sun had come out and then tried to get
through while the door was still open, but just as the first one was
in the doorway the rock came down and crushed him. The other six were
afraid to try it, and as they were now at the end of the world they
turned around and started back again, but they had traveled so far
that they were old men when they reached home.