LITMIR.BIZ

           Red Cloud     (Still descending.)     Good hunting! Good hunting!

           Hunters     Good hunting! Good hunting!

           (Completing the descent, Red Cloud

           motions to the meat-bearers. They throw

           down their burdens before the women,

           who greedily inspect the spoils.)

           MEAT SONG OF THE NISHINAM

           Meat that is good to eat,

           Tender for old teeth,

           Gristle for young teeth,

           Big deer and fat deer,

           Lean meat and fat meat,

           Haunch-meat and knuckle-bone,

           Liver and heart.

           Food for the old men,

           Life for all men,

           For women and babes.

           Easement of hunger-pangs,

           Sorrow destroying,

           Laughter provoking,

           Joy invoking,

           In the smell of its smoking

           And its sweet in the mouth.

           (The younger women take charge of the meat,

           and the older women resume their acorn-pounding.)

           (Red Cloud approaches the acorn-pounders

           and watches them with pleasure.

           All group about him, the Shaman to the

           fore, and hang upon his every action, his

           every utterance.)

           Red Cloud     The heart of the acorn is good?

           First Old Woman     (Nodding.)     It is good food.

           Red Cloud     When you have pounded and winnowed and

           washed away the bitter.

           Second Old Woman     As thou taught'st us, Red Cloud, when the

           world was very young and thou wast the first man.

           Red Cloud     It is a fat food. It makes life, and life is good.

           Shaman     It was thou, Red Cloud, gathering the acorns

           and teaching the storing, who gavest life to the

           Nishinam in the lean years aforetime, when the

           tribes not of the Nishinam passed like the dew

           of the morning.

           (He nods a signal to the Old Man.)

           Old Man     In the famine in the old time,

           When the old man was a young man,

           When the heavens ceased from raining,

           When the grasslands parched and withered,

           When the fishes left the river,

           And the wild meat died of sickness,

           In the tribes that knew not acorns,

           All their women went dry-breasted,

           All their younglings chewed the deer-hides,

           All their old men sighed and perished,

           And the young men died beside them,

           Till they died by tribe and totem,

           And o'er all was death upon them.

           Yet the Nishinam unvanquished,

           Did not perish by the famine.

           Oh, the acorns Red Cloud gave them!

           Oh, the acorns Red Cloud taught them

           How to store in willow baskets

           'Gainst the time and need of famine!

           Shaman     (Who, throughout the Old Man's recital, has

           nodded approbation, turning to Red

           Cloud.)

           Sing to thy people, Red Cloud, the song of

           life which is the song of the acorn.

           Red Cloud     (Making ready to begin)     And which is the song of woman, O Shaman.

           Shaman     (Hushing the people to listen, solemnly)     He sings with his father's lips, and with the

           lips of his father's fathers to the beginning of time

           and men.

           SONG OF THE FIRST MAN

           Red Cloud     I am Red Cloud,

           The first man of the Nishinam.

           My father was the Coyote.

           My mother was the Moon.

           The Coyote danced with the stars,

           And wedded the Moon on a mid-summer night

           The Coyote is very wise,

           The Moon is very old,

           Mine is his wisdom,

           Mine is her age.

           I am the first man.

           I am the life-maker and the father of life.

           I am the fire-bringer.

           The Nishinam were the first men,

           And they were without fire,

           And knew the bite of the frost of bitter nights.

           The panther stole the fire from the East,

           The fox stole the fire from the panther,

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