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The End Of The Second World

Categories : Hopi , Hopi Stories

After their emergence, the people of the Second World lived in harmony with each other for a time. They built villages and linked them with trails. They began to trade food and hand crafted items between villages.

This was when the trouble started. Everything they needed was on this Second World, but they began to want more. More and more they began to trade for things they didn't need, and the more goods they got, the more they wanted.

This was very serious, for they did not realize they were drawing away, step by step, from the good life given them. They just forgot to sing joyful praises to the Creator, and soon began to sing praises to the goods they bartered and stored. Before long it happened as it had to happen. The people began to quarrel and fight, and then wars between the villages began.

There were still a few people in each village who sang the song of their Creation. But the wicked people laughed at them until they could only sing it in their hearts. Even so, Sótuknang heard it through their centers and the centers of the Earth. One day he suddenly appeared before them.

"Spider Woman tells me your thread is running out on this world," he said. "That is too bad. The Spider Clan was your leader, and you were making good progress until this state of affairs began. Now my Uncle, Taiowa, and I have decided we must do something about it. We are going to destroy this Second World just as soon as we put you people who still have the song in your hearts in a safe place."

So again, as on the First World, Sótuknang called on the Ant People to open up their underground world for the chosen people. When they were safely underground, Sótuknang commanded the Twins, Pöqánghoya and Palöngawhoya, to leave their posts at the north and south ends of the world's axis, where they were stationed to keep the Earth properly rotating.

The Twins had hardly abandoned their stations when the world, with no one to control it, teetered off balance, spun around crazily, then rolled over twice. Mountains plunged into the sea with a great splash, seas and lakes sloshed over the land, and as the world spun through cold and lifeless space, it froze into solid ice.

This was the end of Tokpa, the Second World.

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