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."

He went to some of the people who were left, and said to them, "How is it
that you people do nothing to these animals that are killing you?" The
people said: "What can we do? We have no way to kill these animals, while
they are armed and can kill us." Then said the Maker: "That is not hard. I
will make you a weapon that will kill these animals." So he went out, and
cut some sarvis berry shoots, and brought