The Creator came to the lodge of the First Man and the First Woman to tell them that He was leaving. They honored him. On a white buffalo robe before the fire, they fed him, they shared the sacred pipe, and when only embers glowed, and time was now, the Creator spoke. He said he had completed the world. It lay in waves of beautiful complexity and repetition just beyond the fire-lit walls of Earthmother lodge. Walls that had, til now, faced only the dark perpetuality of Before. He came to tell them that while he was gone they must do two things. They must love, and thus cooperate with, the world he has made, and they must protect the sanctity of the Lodge, the source of their identity. First Woman was puzzled. How were they to approach two such mutually exclusive tasks?

First Man felt a friendly pat on his shoulder and turning to hear the creator's answer to First Woman's question, found him gone. First Woman shrugged, selected a small piece of hickory for the coals, and said: "My husband, we will have much to discuss in the morning; come to bed, look how our shadows are dancing! "

Dawn came to the first morning. First Man awoke to the high call of a Red tail hawk; music he had never heard before, and he was pleased. He looked down at First Woman so beautiful beside him in that primal dawn, and kissed her whispering; "Wake up my wife. It has begun...... Listen!".

Dawn was a yellow glow through the walls of their lodge. First Woman awoke with the kiss of her husband, and placing his hand on her belly, smiling said. "Yes my husband it has. Do you feel your child?"; and he was pleased. She stirred the fire, and prepared to break fast. They were excited by anticipation of the creator's newest work, and their participation in it.

First Man looked around them in wonder. "What is this beautiful yellow light around us my wife? First Woman smiled and whispered. "Go and see my curious husband, and when you return tell me things I cannot believe; though I know them so."

First man stepped from the earthmother lodge into a world of ten thousand things newly created, and foretold by the fire-light of the previous night.

The land rolled away in undulating waves of grass to the horizon. There were innumerable animals gathered or dispersed as to their nature. Those big shaggy fourleggeds, the Creator whispered in his mind, are your brothers and sisters the Buffalo. They are there for you, as you are for them. Each creature as it came into his awareness was named by the one who had made it. The Red Tailed Hawk he had awoken too earlier, the Black Racer snake weaving like a stick in the tall wind- blown grass. The small gray mouse stealthily avoiding being a meal for either, while gathering the seeds she craves. All these things First Man came to know as he as he walked through the world.

First Man stood on a hill watching Coyote approach him from upwind-singing quietly to himself and tossing a painted stick into the air. The Creator had called him the Trickster and First Man looked forward to experiencing that which the trickster would try, on this their first meeting.