"
At first Kinnesasis hesitated about telling the old legend, saying that he
did not think the father and mother of the children would care for such
stories.
"Don't they, though!" cried the children. "You don't know them very well,
then, if you don't know that they like stories just about as well as we
do."
And with this they at once appealed to the parents, who of course sided
with them and expressed their desire to listen to this story that the
children had told them they were to hear from dear old Kinnesasis.
Throwing some more logs on the fire, around which the white visitors with
the Indians gathered, Kinnesasis began:
"It was long ago, when I was a young lad, that I heard the story from the
old story-tellers of our people. I had traveled with my father for many
days far toward the setting sun. We reached the land of the great
mountains, and there, with our people of those regions, we spent some
moons. It was while we were among them that I heard from the ancient
story-teller the legend of how the fire was stolen from the center of the
earth, where it was kept hidden away from the human family.
"That there was such a thing as fire was well known. It had been seen
bursting out of the tops of distant mountains, and there had been times in
great thunderstorms, when the lightning had set fire to dead trees--and
indeed in this latter way the Indians had become acquainted with its value
to the human race. But they had not taken care to keep it burning, and no
one had been appointed to specially look after it.
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