United States or Myanmar ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Not so far, but they had to stay from planting to harvest. Of what use was the seed without knowledge. Traveling hard they crossed the River of the White Rocks and reached, by the end of that moon, the mountain overlooking the Country of Stone Houses. Here the men stayed. Waits-by-the-Fire arranged everything. She thought the people of the towns might hesitate to admit so many men strangers.
People stood up in the fields to stare, and we would have stared back again, but we were afraid. Behind the stone house we saw the Hill of the Sun and the priests moving up and down as Waits-by-the-Fire had described it. "Below the hill, where the ground was made high, at one side of the steps that went up to the Place of Giving, stood the house of the Corn Goddess, which was served by women.
"He spoke sharply to the Chief Corn Woman to know why strangers were received within the town without his knowledge. "Waits-by-the-Fire answered quickly.
Two of them hid in their clothing as much Seed as they could lay hands on and went down toward the river. They were watched and followed. So they came back to the house where Waits-by-the-Fire prayed daily with her hand on the Medicine of the Sun. "So came the last day of the feast when the sacred seed would be sealed up in the god-house.
They had surprised a herd of buffaloes at Two Kettle Licks and were cutting up the meat when the Tenasas fell upon them. Waits-by-the-Fire lost her last son by that battle. One she had lost in the fight at Red Buttes and one in a year of Hunger while he was little.
Waits-by-the-Fire moved out to the edge of the platform. "'It is not, O People of the Sun, for what is given, that the gods grow angry, but for what is withheld, she said, 'Is there nothing, priests of the Sun, which was given to the Sun and let go again? Think, O priests. Nothing?
It hollowed like a meal basket and had a green pattern woven through it by a river. Shungakela went with the women to the foot of the mountain, and then, all at once, he would not let them go until Waits-by-the-Fire promised to come back to the foot of the mountain once in every moon to tell him how things went with us.
He was on the platform in front of the god-house where the steps go up to the Hill of the Sun, and the elders of the town were behind him. Priests of the Sun stood on the steps and the Corn Women came out from the temple of the Corn. As Waits-by-the-Fire went up with the Seven, the people closed in solidly behind them. The Cacique looked at the carriers on their backs and frowned.
They thought it shame to dig in the ground. "Shungakela, of the Three Feather band, found her at the fork of the Turtle River, half starved and as fierce as she was hungry, but he called her 'Waits-by-the-Fire' when he brought her back to his tipi, and it was a long time before we knew that she had any other name.
"'It may be, said Waits-by-the-Fire, 'that the gods are not pleased. They have long memories. She looked at him very straight and somebody in the crowd snickered." "But wasn't it awfully risky to keep making him mad like that?" asked Dorcas. "They could have just done anything to her!" "She was a wise woman; she knew what she had to do. The Cacique was angry.
Word Of The Day