Native American Legends
The Fourth World
A Navajo Legend
When the people reached the Fourth World they saw that it was not
a very large place. Some say that it was called the White World;
but not all medicine men agree that this is so.
The last person to crawl through the reed was the turkey from Gray
Mountain. His feather coat was flecked with foam, for after him
came the water. And with the water came the female Water Buffalo
who pushed her head through the opening in the reed. She had a great
quantity of curly hair which floated on the water, and she had two
horns, half black and half yellow. From the tips of the horns the
lightning flashed.
First Man asked the Water Buffalo why she had come and why she
had sent the flood. She said nothing. Then the Coyote drew the two
babies from his coat and said that it was, perhaps, because of them.
The Turquoise Boy took a basket and filled it with turquoise. On
top of the turquoise he placed the blue pollen, tha'di'thee do tlij,
from the blue flowers, and the yellow pollen from the corn; and
on top of these he placed the pollen from the water flags, tquel
aqa'di din; and, again on top of these he placed the crystal, which
is river pollen.
This basket he gave to the Coyote who put it between the horns
of the Water Buffalo. The Coyote said that with this sacred offering
he would give back the male child. He said that the male child would
be known as the Black Cloud or Male Rain, and that he would bring
the thunder and lightning.
The female child he would keep. She would be known as the Blue,
Yellow, and White Clouds or Female Rain. She would be the gentle
rain that would moisten the earth and. help them to live. So he
kept the female child, and he placed the male child on the sacred
basket between the horns of the Water Buffalo. And the Water Buffalo
disappeared, and the waters with her.
After the water sank there appeared another person. They did not
know him, and they asked him where he had come from. He told them
that he was the badger, nahashch'id, and that he had been formed
where the Yellow Cloud had touched the Earth. Afterward this Yellow
Cloud turned out to be a sunbeam.
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