Perhaps the Sun did this because Old Man tried to steal his leggings.

THE SMART WOMAN CHIEF

Long ago, they tell me, men and women did not know each other.  Women were put in one place and men in another.  They were not together; they were apart.

He who made us made women first.  He did not make them very well.  That is why they are not so strong as men.  The men he made better; so that they were strong.

The women were the smartest.  They knew the most.  They were the first to make piskuns, and to know how to tan hides and to make moccasins.  At that time men wore moccasins made from the shank of the buffalo’s leg, and robes made of wolfskin.  This was all their clothing.

One day when Old Man was travelling about, he came to a camp of men, and stayed there with them for a long time.  It was after this that he discovered there were such beings as women.

One time, as he was travelling along, he saw two women driving some buffalo over a cliff.  When Old Man got near them, the women were very much frightened.  They did not know what kind of animal it was that was coming.  Too much scared to run away, they lay down to hide.  When Old Man came up to them he thought they were dead, and said, “Here are two women who are dead.  It is not good for them to lie out here on the prairie.  I must take them to a certain place.”  He looked them all over to see what had killed them, but could find no wound.  He picked up one of the women and carried her along with him in his arms.  She was wondering how she could get away.  She let her arms swing loose as if she were dead, and at every step Old Man took the arm swung and hit him in the nose, and pretty soon his nose began to bleed and to hurt, and at length he put the woman down on the ground and went back to get the other woman; but while he was gone she had run away, and when he came back to get the first one she was gone too; so he lost them both.  This made him angry, and he said to himself, “If these two women will lie there again, I will get both of them.”

In this way women found out that there were men.

One day Old Man stood on a hill and looked over toward the piskun at Woman’s Falls, where the women had driven a band of buffalo over the cliff, and afterward were cutting up the meat.  The chief of the women called him down to the camp, and sent word by him to the men, asking if they wanted to get wives.  Old Man brought back word that they did, and the chief woman sent a message, calling all the men to a feast in her lodge to be married.  The woman asked Old Man, “How many chiefs are there in that tribe?” He answered, “There are four chiefs.  But the real chief of all that tribe you will know when you see him by this—­he is finely dressed and wears a robe trimmed, and painted red, and carries a lance with a bone head on each end.”  Old Man wanted to marry the chief of the women, and intended to dress in this way, and that is why he told her that.