He Often Discussed This
Question With His Father, Saying, 'It Must Flow Down Some Great Pit, Into
The Underworld, For
After all these years the gorge below never fills up,
and none of the water ever flows back again.'
His father would say, 'Maybe
it flows so far away that many old men's lives would be too short to mark
its return.' Tiyo said, 'I am constrained to go and solve this mystery, and
I can rest no more till I make the venture.' His family besought him with
tears to forego his project, but nothing could shake his determination, and
he won them to give their sorrowful consent.
"The father said, 'It is impossible for you to follow the river on foot,
hence you must look for a hollow cottonwood-tree, and I will help you make
a wi-na-ci-buh (timber box) in which you may float upon the water.' Tiyo
found a dry cottonwood-tree, which they felled, and cut off as long as his
body, and it was as large around as they both could encompass with their
outstretched arms. They gouged and burned out all of the inside, leaving
only a thin shell of dry wood like a large drum; small branches and twigs
were fitted in the ends to close them, and the interstices were pitched
with pinion gum. All this work was done with the stone axe and the live
ember.
"The father then announced that in four days Tiyo should set forth, and
during that time the mother and her two daughters prepared kwip-do-si (a
kind of corn meal made from corn which has been dried and then ground.
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