About fifteen miles east of Taos is the place where the Jicarilla Apache stopped. This is the heart of the world. The earth is thought of as a woman, as the mother of all people. The sky is the father of all people. The sun is our grandfather; the moon is our grandmother. We call the sun and the moon our grandparents, but they, too, are the children of the earth. They were born under the earth and came up, as I have told you. But the earth and the sky are our father and mother. They help each other to provide for us. If they did not take care of us we would die.
Other Indians stopped at different places during the journey and live at the arms or the legs of the earth or in some other part of her body; but the Jicarilla went straight to the heart of the earth and stopped there.
When the people were scattering all over the earth the Jicarilla stayed in Arizona somewhere for a while. But Red Boy and Holy Boy, who were still with them, told them to travel on and to take care of the heart of the earth. So they journeyed on. Some went across to the north. They came back and told that there was nothing but snow and ice there and that the sun never shines there. They traveled many years before they reached the heart of the earth. Every time they stopped they saw a better place ahead and went onward. The reason the Mescalero and the Navaho have different stories from ours is that they stopped off before the end of the journey and, of course, they do not know what happened after that.
At first the Mexicans were all Indians. But their children, too, began to play that they were a different people. There were a rooster and a chicken there. The children listened to the fowls. “Perhaps they are talking,” the children said and began to imitate the rooster and hen. After a while they turned into Mexicans. That is why, when the Mexicans talk rapidly, they sound just like chickens.
All the animals and plants were still talking at this time. [My grandfather, my father’s father, traveled all over. He didn’t go by horse or with a woman, but just on foot. Ho found a place where everything still talked. When you went past a stick it went, “Hist!” And the stones and trees and all other things talked too. It is somewhere around here. (Inf.)]
Two girls went out somewhere and were lost during their travels. The people were all looking for these two, but they couldn’t be found. The two girls had gone up a mountain. They lied there on fruit of all kinds. Those girls stayed there a long time. By that time they weren’t afraid of anything.
One day one of them was sleeping. Sun came and slept with her. She woke up. There was a man lying beside her. She arose. It was a young man who was there. He spoke to her and she spoke to him. The sun brought food to her, for she had had nothing but fruit to eat for a long time.
That same night Water came to the other girl. In the morning she saw him lying by her side.
The sun spoke to the girl in the morning. “I must go to the east,” he said. “It is time for me to do my work.” Before he went he said, “When you need anything, ask me for it.” He left and went back to the east.
Water was about to leave too. He said to the other girl, “Call me if you need anything.” Then he left.
Soon the girls learned that they were pregnant.
After the sun had spent a night with the girl, her period started. “This is my fault,” the sun said. “I’ll fix it.”
She had been a perfect person. Now, because she had spent a night with the sun, she became like other women and menstruated.
She was White-Painted Woman. The sun dressed her up as the pubescent girl is dressed now, with white paint on her dress and yellow ochre on her face. He told her to stay inside for four days and work [that is the way they used to do in the girl’s puberty rite. In the old days the girls didn’t dance at this time. Now they do, but it was only after they went to Mescalero and saw them there that they started this. (Inf.)]. And the sun told the other girl to do likewise. This girl was White-Shell Woman. And because Water gave White-Shell Woman the child, the pubescent girl cannot look up in the sky when she has her ceremony. To do so might bring rain.
The girls were in the mountains. They made a brush shelter and in this they stayed and worked. The sun gave them just a little bread to eat, a little bread made of corn-meal. The girls thought it would not be enough, but they learned that it was too much. If they ate just a little of this bread they became satisfied. [This motif, of a small amount of food or drink, given by an animal or a supernatural, becoming more than enough, recurs continually in Jicarilla tales.] This ceremony was held before they had their children. This was the beginning of the girl’s puberty ceremony.
For three days the girls carried their children, and on the fourth day the children were born. The two children were boys and they began to grow rapidly. Both were very poor. They had nothing, no good clothes, nothing at all.
Holy Boy knew what was going on at the mountain. “Those girls have become White-Painted Woman and White-Shell Woman,” he told the people.
Whirlwind always finds out what is happening and brings the message to Holy Boy. That is how he knew. Holy Boy was with the Jicarilla Apache at this time and didn’t do anything about it, for he was protecting the Jicarilla on their journey.
So the two little boys were born and began to play around. They had no playthings. They asked their mothers for something with which to play.
Their mothers told them, “You must go to your fathers; they will give you something with which to play.”
“Where are our fathers?”
The children already knew, but they asked anyway. The point on the inner margin of their ears had spoken to them and told them, “Your father is living towards the east.”
Each woman said to her son, “Go to your father and ask him for something with which to play.”
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To the north there is no light, nothing but darkness and ice. There were four tipis of people, four families who ran away from the others. They did so right after the emergence, when the people were going around the world. They went north and continued until they came to the place where there was very little light; it was just like morning light. They lived there for a long time, until all the older people had died and a new generation had taken their places.
The new generation knew nothing of the sun, nothing of the moon. The old people had not told the children stories of the light and the sun, for they thought that if they told the younger people of this, they would want to see it and would go back. So they told other stories but not these. They covered up knowledge of the sun and of light.
The children grew up to manhood and womanhood.
One time four of these young people began to travel. The reason why the sun had not come to the place where they were living was that this place was down in a hollow. In their travels these four climbed, and then to the south they saw some light. They walked for four days until they got to the place where the light shone. They sat there and watched the sun. They stayed there until the next day. They wondered at it, for they had never seen it before. As they came south they took off more and more of their heavy clothing, for it was getting too hot. They just left the clothes at the place where they took them off.
The first time they peeped over the rim and saw the sun they were afraid. They said, “That is a monster with a big eye.” They took the sun for the eye of a monster. But after watching a while they realized it was just light. Then they went to the west until dark came. They stayed there overnight.
At dawn they saw the morning glow. They wondered what it meant. They looked and looked at it. They were very eager to see what was going on in this world. And after a while they saw the light of the sun on the top of the mountain. Again they were all afraid. They ran to each other and held each other in fear. Then the sun rose in the east. It was all strange to them. They all lay down so that the monster could not see them. All day they watched the sun. As before they saw it go across the sky and to the west.
Night came again. Now they were sure. They said, “Let’s go back and tell the people that we made the sun.”
So after these two days and nights they started back. They arrived home in four days.
When they got home they told the chiefs to bring all the people together.
When all were assembled they said, “We have made light.”
The other people didn’t know what light was or what they meant.
They told a story of how they made the sun. Before they had started for home they had talked the story over. One had said,
“What shall we tell the people?”
“Let us tell them that we made a round light,” another said.
So this one said, “I will tell the people, ‘The first time you see the light we made you are going to be frightened.’”
And the other said, “Yes, that’s good. Let’s all tell it one way.”
So when they got back they gathered all the people together and told the story they had agreed on. The chiefs, when they heard it, were very eager to see what they had made.
So twelve of the best known men decided to travel first and see it. They traveled four days. On the way they, too, had to take off some clothes every day.
They arrived there. It was about noon when they got there and the light was high in the sky.
“Where is the place you made the sun?” they asked after they had seen it.
“Over here.” The four men took them to a smooth place where they had traced a round figure. They had traced a nose, eyes, and mouth on it and made it just like a head.
“How did you do it?”
“We made it here and then held it to the east and then placed it up in the sky. It will go right to the west.”
So they waited and watched. And the four showed the others how the sun was setting in the west as they had said it would.
The end of the day drew near. Night came. They all stayed there. The four who claimed to have made the sun told the others, “You must sleep only to the middle of the night and then wake up.”
So they all slept until the middle of the night. Then they arose and waited for the sunrise. At dawn the morning glow shone faintly at first.
The four who knew of it said, “Look on top of that mountain and you will see the first light.”
The light hit the mountain and came down. It came down and shone all over. So they all stayed there till the sun went down again.
Again they acted in the same way. They slept for part of the night and then rose to see the sunrise.
They waited until the sun came out and then the twelve who had come to investigate the claims of those four said, “Yes, now we believe you.”
So all of them went back. It took them four days. On the way they gathered up the clothes they had left. They told all the people. Half of them believed it and half did not. Those who believed it wanted to go to the place where the light was to be seen and started the journey. Those who did not believe it decided to stay where they were.
So those who started the journey traveled four days, and came to this part of the world again.
They stopped at the place where the others had stopped and saw the tracing on the ground. They watched the rising and setting of the sun from this place. Then they started to travel around. They didn’t know the best place to go.
As they traveled around they came on groups of the Apache. With these groups they would stop, but when they were to move on, one family would stay behind. This continued until none were left to travel on any more. They were all divided up now. So the people were mixed again.
That is the way the people are now. Sometimes a Navaho comes here and likes it and stays, and sometimes a Jicarilla goes to the Navaho Reservation for a visit but finds a good place and stays there. That’s how it started.
The place where the people lived in the north is not under ground; it is on top of the ground, but in a hollow.