of the Two Brothers. These
mysterious beings are upon the earth before man appears. Though alone,
they do not agree, and the one attacks and slays the other. Another
brother appears on the scene, who seems to be the one slain, who has come
to life, and the two are given wives by the Being who was the Creator of
things. These two women were perfectly beautiful, but invisible to the
eyes of mortals. The one was named, The Woman of the Light or The Woman of
the Morning; the other was the Woman of Darkness or the Woman of Evening.
The brothers lived together in one tent with these women, who each in turn
went out to work. When the Woman of Light was at work, it was daytime;
when the Woman of Darkness was at her labors, it was night.

In the course of time one of the brothers disappeared and the other
determined to select a wife from one of the two women, as it seems he had
not yet chosen. He watched what the Woman of Darkness did in her absence,
and discovered that she descended into the waters and enjoyed the embraces
of a monster, while the Woman of Light passed her time in feeding white
birds. In course of time the former brought forth black man-serpents,
while the Woman of Light was delivered of beautiful boys with white skins.
The master of the house killed the former with his arrows, but preserved
the latter, and marrying the Woman of Light, became the father of the
human race, and especially of the Dene Dindjie, who have preserved the
memory of him.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Monographie des Dene Dindjie, par_ C.R.P.E. Petitot, pp.
84-87 (Paris, 1876). Elsewhere the writer says: "Tout d'abord je dois
rappeler mon observation que presque toujours, dans les traditions Dene,
le couple primitif se compose de _deux freres_." Ibid., p. 62.]

In another myth of this stock, clearly a version of the former, this
father of the race is represented as a mighty bird, called _Yel_, or
_Yale_, or _Orelbale_, from the root _ell_, a term they apply to
everything supernatural. He took to wife the daughter of the Sun (the
Woman of Light), and by her begat the race of man. He formed the dry land
for a place for them to live upon, and stocked the rivers with salmon,
that they might have food. When he enters his nest it is day, but when he
leaves it it is night; or, according to another myth, he has the two women
for wives, the one of whom makes the day, the other the night.

In the beginning Yel was white in plumage, but he had an enemy, by na