April Twenty-Second

THE CREATING POWER said to them: "The first world I made was bad; the creatures on it were bad. So I burned it up. The second world I made was bad too, so I drowned it. This is the third world I have made. Look: I have created a rainbow for you as a sign that there will be no more Great Flood. Whenever you see a rainbow, you will know that it has stopped raining."
The Creating Power continued: "Now, if you have learned how to behave like human beings and how to live in peace with each other and with the other living things -- the two-legged, the four-legged, the many-legged, the fliers, the no-legs, the green plants of this universe -- then all will be well. But if you make this world bad and ugly, then I will destroy this world too. It's up to you."
The Creating Power gave the people the pipe. "Live by it," he said. He named this land the Turtle Continent because it was there that the turtle came up with the mud out of which the third world was made.
"Someday there might be a fourth world," the Creating Power thought. Then he rested.

-- Told by Leonard Crow Dog at Grass Mountain, Rosebud Indian Reservation, 1974. Recorded by Richard Erdoes. This excerpt is from "American Indian Myths and Legends," selected and edited by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz