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Prelude The Beginning They Told *l3%CS Q%y2l n Stories came first. They spun the earth into being and gave it shape. When their work was completed, they disappeared into what they had just created. After the stories were safely hidden, Holy People and animals appeared on the earth’s surface and made everything useful and good. Finally humans arrived. Some of them found their way here by tunneling up from the dark narrative worlds below. Others fell to earth’s surface from the overcrowded upper stories. That is how narrative, earth, people, and other living creatures became one. The primal stories, which are indistinguishable from the earth they formed, still exist and can be found in sacred rocks, mountains, caves, and trees because such land monuments are their dwelling places. The first humans on this land called themselves a%c+b, the Aniyvwiya, or the 0riginal People, because they were here before others like them. a(_ or lx%& (Water Beetle) and I# (Buzzard) helped them settle in. The a%c+b later became known as a%vfT, Chalakees or Cherokees, for the reason that their new neighbors, the a%aWk or Creeks, could not pronounce a%c+b easily and, furthermore, had no desire to pronounce it. Because the a%c+b are the Original People, they have perfect knowledge .1 They can see beyond mimetic forms. Since their language is first among all human tongues, they speak the truth for they are closest to it. It follows, therefore, that a%c+b have intellectual authority, and intellectual authority , like Kiowan memory, is in the blood. That is simply the way it is as the old people have repeatedly told it. n ...

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