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When the Indians had determined to leave their habitations underground, the Minnatarees began, men, women, and children, to clamber up the vine, and one-half of them had already reached the surface of the earth, when a dire mishap involved the remainder in a still more desolate captivity within its bowels. There was among them a very fat old woman, who was heavier than any six of her nation.
A while after the boys were missing; nor did they come back till the Minnatarees had celebrated their death, and the lying priest had, as he falsely said, in a vision seen them inhabitants of the land of spirits. The Indians were surprised by the return of the boys.
At that time few of the Indian tribes wore the human form. Some had the figures or semblances of beasts. The Paukunnawkuts were rabbits, some of the Delawares were ground-hogs, others tortoises, and the Tuscaroras, and a great many others, were rattlesnakes. The Sioux were the hissing-snakes, but the Minnatarees were always men.
The life of the Indians was a life of misery compared with that they now enjoy, and it was endured only because they were ignorant of a fairer or richer world, or a better or happier state of being. There were among the Minnatarees two boys, who, from the hour of their birth, showed superior wisdom, sagacity, and cunning. Even while they were children they were wiser than their fathers.
I will give you the shape of the war-eagle, and you shall be the chief of all birds, and your duty shall be to watch over their destinies." The Minnatarees, and all the other Indians who are not of the stock of the grandfather of nations, were once not of this upper air, but dwelt in the bowels of the earth.
Their part of the great cavern was situated far towards the mountains of snow. The great cavern in which the Indians dwelt was indeed a dark and dismal region. In the country of the Minnatarees it was lighted up only by the rays of the sun which strayed through the fissures of the rock and the crevices in the roof of the cavern, while in that of the Mengwe all was dark and sunless.
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