-158-

     "...Then they planned some rivers, Toh-bakahni, the male (San Juan) river, and Toh-ba-ad, the female (Rio Grande) water; then a lake, Hahjeenah, where the people came out of the ‘bamboo’ (from the underworld - near Silverton, Colorado)."

 

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The next accounts can be found on pages 201-209 of "TRADITIONS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS"(Vol. I) by James Athearn Jones:

 

     "...The Minnatarees, and all the other Indians who are of the stock of the grandfather of nations, were once not of this upper air, but dwelt in the bowels of the earth. The Good Spirit, when he made them, no doubt meant - at a proper time - to put them in the enjoyment of all the good things which he had prepared for them upon the earth. But he ordered that their first stage of existence should be within it, as the infant is formed, and takes its first growth in the womb of its natural mother. They all dwelt underground, like moles, in one great cavern, which covered the whole island. When they emerged, it was in different places, but generally near where they now inhabit..."

     "...On first emerging from the caverns, they came, they said, into a world where all was light and beauty. It was directly over that part of the cavern where our tribe dwelt. They saw a great round ball of fire, which gave light and heat to the earth, and whose beams it was which had shot down through fissures of the rock, partially illuminating the cavern..."

     "...When the Indians had determined to leave their habitation under ground, they agreed to do it at different points, that they might sooner be on the surface. The Minnatarees began - men, woman, and children - to clamber up the vine. One half of them had already reached the surface of the earth, when a dire mishap involved the remainder in a still more desolate