Going to a high hill the men looked down through a hole in the sky and saw the struggling bands of men, saw the flaming lodges, and even the cries of anguish and rage.
“Such things men will ever do,” said the Master of Life as he led them away.
The brothers lived long in the upper world and learned much that their tongues never could tell. They saw untenanted villages awaiting the coming of tribes yet to be born and saw their own lodges where they should be when they came again as spirits. Many good things the great Master of Life told them, and our preachers proclaim them now.
At last the Master told them they must depart, and, guided by two messengers, they descended to the earth by night and slept on the ground.
In the morning they discovered that their native village was overgrown with trees, and following a path through the woods came to another settlement. In a council they told their story and no one knew them except a sister, aged and on the verge of the grave.
“The war of which you speak,” said they, “took place fifty years ago.”
The men did not love earth now but longed for their lodges in the sky world. They were men of wonderful physical power and neither pestilence nor enchantments could kill them but two fiery shafts of the sky did. They then journeyed back to the great white lodge, but this time could not return.[11]
Two boys were fast friends and always were seen together. Their favorite sport was to play in the waters of a deep lake that washed the feet of a tall white-headed mountain that lay a distance from the village.
One day as they splashed in the water, swimming, diving, and sporting as boys do, one suggested that they both dive at the same instant and see which could remain below the surface the longer. This suggestion was at once acted upon and each time they dove they remained below a greater time.
In the course of the game one of the boys, Oohoosha, by name, discovered a flat projecting rock to which he could cling. As he lay holding fast to the rock after a dive he saw a hazy indistinct object approaching him and when it neared him he saw that it was a tall warrior whose smooth glistening body was the color of the sky or the color of clear water when the clouds pass over.