As they were standing by the river, the woman said to him, “How is it? will we always live, will there be no end to it?” He said:  “I have never thought of that.  We will have to decide it.  I will take this buffalo chip and throw it in the river.  If it floats, when people die, in four days they will become alive again; they will die for only four days.  But if it sinks, there will be an end to them.”  He threw the chip into the river, and it floated.  The woman turned and picked up a stone, and said:  “No, I will throw this stone in the river; if it floats we will always live, if it sinks people must die, that they may always be sorry for each other."[1] The woman threw the stone into the water, and it sank.  “There,” said Old Man, “you have chosen.  There will be an end to them.”

[Footnote 1:  That is, that their friends who survive may always remember them.]

It was not many nights after, that the woman’s child died, and she cried a great deal for it.  She said to Old Man:  “Let us change this.  The law that you first made, let that be a law.”  He said:  “Not so.  What is made law must be law.  We will undo nothing that we have done.  The child is dead, but it cannot be changed.  People will have to die.”

That is how we came to be people.  It is he who made us.

The first people were poor and naked, and did not know how to get a living.  Old Man showed them the roots and berries, and told them that they could eat them; that in a certain month of the year they could peel the bark off some trees and eat it, that it was good.  He told the people that the animals should be their food, and gave them to the people, saying, “These are your herds.”  He said:  “All these little animals that live in the ground—­rats, squirrels, skunks, beavers—­are good to eat.  You need not fear to eat of their flesh.”  He made all the birds that fly, and told the people that there was no harm in their flesh, that it could be eaten.  The first people that he created he used to take about through the timber and swamps and over the prairies, and show them the different plants.  Of a certain plant he would say, “The root of this plant, if gathered in a certain month of the year, is good for a certain sickness.”  So they learned the power of all herbs.  In those days there were buffalo.  Now the people had no arms, but those black animals with long beards were armed; and once, as the people were moving about, the buffalo saw them, and ran after them, and hooked them, and killed and ate them.  One day, as the Maker of the people was travelling over the country, he saw some of his children, that he had made, lying dead, torn to pieces and partly eaten by the buffalo.  When he saw this he was very sad.  He said:  “This will not do.  I will change this.  The people shall eat the buffalo.”