Eight years made the span of four days and four nights when the world
was new. It was while yet such days and nights continued that men
were led forth, first in the night, that it might be well. For even
when they saw the great star (_móyächun ‘hlána_), which since then is
spoken of as the lying star (_mókwanosona_), they thought it the Sun
himself, so burned it their eyeballs! Men and the creatures were nearer
alike then than now: black were our fathers the late born of creation,
like the caves from which they came forth; cold and scaly their skins
like those of mud-creatures; goggled their eyes like those of an owl;
membranous their ears like those of cave-bats; webbed their feet like
those of walkers in wet and soft places; and according as they were
elder or younger, they had tails, longer or shorter. They crouched
when they walked, often indeed, crawling along the ground like toads,
lizards and newts; like infants who still fear to walk straight, they
crouched, as before-time they had in their cave-worlds, that they might
not stumble and fall, or come to hurt in the uncertain light thereof.
And when the morning star rose they blinked excessively as they beheld
its brightness and cried out with many mouth-motionings that surely
now the Father was coming; but it was only the elder of the Bright
Ones, gone before with elder nations and with his shield of flame,
heralding from afar (as we herald with wet shell scales or crystals)
the approach of the Sun-father! And when, low down in the east the
Sun-father himself appeared, what though shrouded in the midst of the
great world waters, they were so blinded and heated by his light and
glory that they cried out to one another in anguish and fell down
wallowing and covering their eyes with their bare hands and arms. Yet
ever anew they looked afresh to the light and anew struggled toward the
sun as moths and other night creatures seek the light of a camp fire;
yea, and what though burned, seek ever anew that light!
Thus ere long they became used to the light, and to this high world
they had entered. Wherefore, when they arose and no longer walked
bended, lo! it was then that they first looked full upon one another
and in horror of their filthier parts, strove to hide these, even from
one another, with girdles of bark and rushes; and when by thus walking
only upon their hinder feet the same became bruised and sore, they
sought to protect them with plaited soles (sandals) of yucca fiber.