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I. PINE-MARTEN MARRIES THE BEAD SISTERS

THE two Bead girls were sent by their mother to marry Cocoon-Man's son. He was wrapped up and put away. He had never been outside, and had never eaten anything.

The Bead sisters came from a place far off in the ocean. They came on the water, brought by the wind, and they always sang the song of the wind. It took just one day for them to reach Cocoon-Man's house. His daughters liked the two girls and gave them food. All the men were out hunting, and the daughters sent the two girls into the sweathouse and told them to sit by Pine-Marten's bed.

They could not get Cocoon-Man's son, the one their mother had sent them for. Cocoon-Man would not listen to it, so they took Pine-Marten, and stayed three days with him. At the end of that time they wanted to go home. Pine-Marten asked all his people for blankets and shells to give his wives to carry home. They started. Cocoon-Man made a trail to the west to walk on. He sent his words out west, put his hand out west and east to make a trail, and immediately it was open. Cocoon-Man sat on the ground in the centre, and made a rainbow reaching from the place where he sat to the home of the girls.

The company started. Weasel went with Pine-Marten up to the top of the rainbow, and the women went under it. While they were travelling, Weasel made a flute out of a reed, and made sweet music that sounded through the world and was heard by every living being.

The two sisters walked on the lower rainbow, the reflection, and reached home safely. Next year Pine-Marten had children. He made a boy of bead-shells, and from a round shell which he threw into his wife a girl was born. In the spring of the second year, he came back on the same trail that Cocoon-Man had made. His children grew very fast. Then he left his boy at home, and sent his girl to her grandmother in the ocean. The boy stayed with Cocoon-Man. The third year he had two sons and two daughters.

Now Pine-Marten's wife took one son and one daughter to her mother

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in the ocean; and Pine-Marten kept one son and one daughter, and they lived with him at Fall River.


Next: 2. Kangaroo-Rat Races with Coyote and Others