ion.

TA-VWOTS CONQUERS THE SUN

The Indian is a great story-teller. Every tribe has its traditions, and
the elderly men and women like to recount them, for they always find
listeners. And odd stories they tell, too. Just listen to this, for
example. It is a legend among the tribes of Arizona.

While Ta-Vwots, the hare god, was asleep in the valley of Maopa, the Sun
mischievously burned his back, causing him to leap up with a howl. "Aha!
It's you, is it, who played this trick on me?" he cried, looking at the
Sun. "I'll make it warm for you. See if I don't."

And without more ado he set off to fight the Sun. On the way he stopped
to pick and roast some corn, and when the people who had planted it ran
out and tried to punish him for the theft he scratched a hole in the
ground and ran in out of sight. His pursuers shot arrows into the hole,
but Ta-Vwots had his breath with him, and it was an awfully strong
breath, for with it he turned all the arrows aside. "The scamp is in
here," said one of the party. "Let's get at him another way." So, getting
their flints and shovels, they began to dig.

"That's your game, is it?" mumbled Ta-Vwots. "I know a way out of this
that you don't know." With a few puffs of his breath and a few kicks of
his legs he reached a great fissure that led into the rock behind him,
and along this passage he scrambled until he came to the edge of it in a
niche, from which he could watch his enemies digging. When they had made
the hole quite large he shouted, "Be buried in the grave you have dug for
yourselves!" And, hurling down a magic ball that he carried, he caved the
earth in on their heads. Then he paced off, remarking, "To fight is as
good fun as to eat. Vengeance is my work. Every one I meet will be an
enemy. No one shall escape my wrath." And he sounded his war-whoop.

Next day he saw two men heating rocks and chipping arrow-heads from them.
"Let me help you, for hot rocks will not hurt me," he said.

"You would have us to believe you are a spirit, eh?" they questioned,
with a jeer.

"No ghost," he answered, "but a better man than you. Hold me on those
rocks, and, if I do not burn, you must let me do the same to you."

The men complied, and heating the stones to redness in the fire they
placed him against them, but failed to see that by his magic breath he
kept a current of air flowing between him and the hot surface. Rising
unhurt, he demanded that they also should submit to the t