derived from the beasts, which died as beasts, and became
men and the ancestors of the tribes living on the earth.

V. THE SIX NANTICOKES.

Once upon a time, there was a very bright and sunny day on the earth,
and, upon this day so bright and sunny, a strange thing happened. It
was in the country inhabited by the tribe of Nanticokes, and upon the
borders of the Great Lake. It was in the morning of the day, and the
moon was the moon in which the shad, leaving the waters which are
salt, make their journey to those which are fresh. Beautiful was the
day; the salt and bitter waters lay as motionless as a little child
sleeping on the bosom of its mother. The winds were hushed in the
caverns of the earth, and the beams of the sun fell gladdening and
refreshing every thing beneath them. They shone upon field and forest,
hill and valley; upon bird and beast, and fish and reptile, and many
other things, beautiful or ugly, curious or strange; but they fell not
upon man, for he was not. The tall and erect form, which commands
obedience from all other creatures, was not then seen walking among
the glades of the forest, with the firm step and haughty eye which
distinguishes him. Beasts were many, birds were many, fishes were
many, but of men, the lords of all, there were none.

Before the sun descended behind the mountains of the West, he shone
upon man also. Six Indians, the first men that were ever on earth, and
the ancestors of the tribe of Nanticokes, all at once, they knew not
how, nor by what means, found themselves sitting upon the same shore,
upon the verge of the ocean. Whether they were created on the spot, or
came from some other place beyond the seas; whether they had swum up
from the waters, or crawled out of the mud, or bounded from the depths
of the forest, or alighted from the regions of the air, and were
changed into men, receiving a gift to forget their former state, they
knew not, or if they dropped from the skies, and forgot whence they
came through dizziness and the violence of the fall. But this they
knew, that they found themselves sitting on the shores of the Great
Lake, in the country now inhabited by the Nanticokes, on the latter
part of a warm and pleasant day, in the moon in which the shad leave
the waters which are salt, and make their journey to those which are
fresh. And they knew that there were six of them, and this was all
they knew.

These six Indians were all men; there was not amongst them,