The Flood

 

 

Myth    Interview    Journal

There was this man whose face was weather-beaten. He was an old Indian with bright eyes. No one had ever known which tribe he was from. The old man had been talking about the visions of the Young man. The old man sat in the rain for a long time over looking Yellowstone before he spoke. He said, "They were beginning to come back."

" Who is coming back," asked the younger man.

The animals are coming back. It has happened before," said the old man.

The Old man began to talk about the Great Spirit and how it used to smile on the land when he made it. " There were mountains and grasslands. There were all kinds of animals."

The spirit told the people to share the land with the brothers the animals. It went on to say that they would give the people food and shelter. And when the people killed an animal the prayed to the Great Spirit.

Then a new people came on to the land and killed the Buffalo for fun and burned the forest. They didn’t treat the animals as brother. They killed the fish in the streams for sport.

The Great Spirit tried to punish the people but still the hunted for fun and burned the forests. So the spirit changed its approach and it started to rain. The people moved to higher ground.

A medicine man gathered his people in a search for the buffalo. The spirit stated that as long as the Indians had the buffalo they would be safe. But this new people killed them all. The young men hunted the buffalo. They found three.