e child to the ears of its mother.

Brothers! I am that Nanticoke, and the beautiful spirit is she that
sits at my side, and the child at my feet is the child she bore me.
And this is all I have to say.

VI. THE UNIVERSAL MOTHER.

Before the world existed, and before mountains, men, and animals, were
created; while the sky was yet without a sun, ere the moon and stars
were hung up for the lamps of darkness, the Great Being, who is alike
the preserver and sustainer of the red man and his younger brother the
white man, was with the woman, the beautiful spirit, the Universal
Mother. This woman was not of the same nature as the Great Being. He
was a spirit, bloodless, fleshless, bodiless; she bore the form, and
was gifted with the properties of a human being.

At that time all was water, at least water covered all things. No eye
could have discovered aught else, had there been an eye to see. That
which existed was darkness--all was darkness--darkness.--Darkness was
all, in all, and over all. There were no sounds abroad, no winds swept
the face of the waters, which lay black, still, and stagnant, as the
slime of a pool surrounded by a thick copse. The waters were rotted by
their long continued stagnation, and the winds could not exist in the
heavy and murky air.

Upon a certain time, this beautiful woman descended from heaven, till
she came to the sleeping and stagnant waters. She was pregnant by the
Great Being; and her immense proportions denoted that she would bring
forth more than one. When she struck the waters, in her fall, she did
not sink deep into them, but where she settled down, immediately land
appeared, upon which she rested, and continued sitting. The land grew
by degrees, and increased around her, so that in a short time there was
so much spare room, that she could draw up her legs out of the water,
in which they had hung for so long a time, that they were covered with
grass, like logs which have been floating in the sea. And still wider
grew the space of solid earth, like that which would appear when the
water recedes from sand which it had previously covered. Gradually the
land spread itself from the seat of the beautiful woman, until its
extent was soon beyond the reach of the eye. And, as the land
increased, the motion of the waves, from the rush of the new-born
winds, threw it up into the heaps and piles which are the hills and
mountains, leaving, along its low spaces, the waters, which are the
ri