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STANDS STILL AND OTHER INDIAN LEGENDS":
"...Narro-Gwe-uap
- Paiute storyteller speaking in I-oo-goone (
"’The
first home of the Paiute’s was in the land of the setting sun. It was in the
high mountains of the far west where the Indians could look out over waters
wider than their eyes could reach. They lived with Tobats and Shinob, the
Indian gods, in a great cave that was warm in the winter and cool in the
summer, and it was always dry when everything else was wet with the rains. The
cave was a good home and they loved to be there.’
“Not many
years ago the Paiute’s sent out a party of men to find their legendary place of
emergence, traveling many days across the desert, and upon finding the mountain
from which they were expelled in ancient times, they met one of their Gods,
Shinob, who, according to the legend, said to them:
"’Well, you boys look like my boys. Where have you been? I thought
all you people died in the desert or were killed a long time ago. Where are you
going? How did you find this place anyhow?’
“He then told his Paiute children that it was
not yet time for them to return. The top of the mountain where the ancestral
cousins of the Paiute’s live looks similar to the head of an Indian. Atop this
formation is an outcropping of rock resembling what seemed to be a hand, bent
forward as if saying ‘go back’. According to the legend, it is near this
formation, high among the steep rocks, where the entrance is supposed to be
located.
“In this
story, Shinob continues to say that they may not enter the mountain since the
rocks leading to the Cave entrance are too steep: ‘...Then Shinob called the
Indians close to him. As they came, he put an eagle
