Foremost among the animal people was Unk-to-mee, the Spider, the original trouble-maker, who noted keenly the growth of the boy in wit and ingenuity, and presently advised the animals to make an end of him; “for,” said he, “if you do not, some day he will be the master of us all!” But they all loved the Little Boy Man because he was so friendly and so playful.
Only the monsters of the deep sea listened, and presently took his life, hiding his body in the bottom of the sea.
Nevertheless, by the magic power of the First-Born, the body was recovered and was given life again in the sacred vapor-bath, as described in a former chapter.
Once more our first ancestor roamed happily among the animal people, who were in those days a powerful nation.
He learned their ways and their language—for they had a common tongue in those days; learned to sing like the birds, to swim like the fishes, and to climb sure-footed over rocks like the mountain sheep.
Notwithstanding that he was their good comrade and did them no harm, Unk-to-mee once more sowed dissension among the animals, and messages were sent into all quarters of the earth, sea, and air, that all the tribes might unite to declare war upon the solitary man who was destined to become their master.
After a time the young man discovered the plot, and came home very sorrowful.
He loved his animal friends, and was grieved that they should combine against him.
Besides, he was naked and unarmed.
But his Elder Brother armed him with a bow and flint-headed arrows, a stone war-club and a spear.
He likewise tossed a pebble four times into the air, and each time it became a cliff or wall of rock about the teepee.
“Now,” said he, “it is time to fight and to assert your supremacy, for it is they who have brought the trouble upon you, and not you upon them!” Night and day the Little Boy Man remained upon the watch for his enemies from the top of the wall, and at last he beheld the prairies black with buffalo herds, and the elk gathering upon the edges of the forest.
Bears and wolves were closing in from all directions, and now from the sky the Thunder gave his fearful war-whoop, answered by the wolf’s long howl.
The badgers and other burrowers began at once to undermine his rocky fortress, while the climbers undertook to scale its perpendicular walls.
Then for the first time on earth the bow was strung, and hundreds of flint-headed arrows found their mark in the bodies of the animals, while each time that the Boy Man swung his stone war-club, his enemies fell in countless numbers.
Finally the insects, the little people of the air, attacked him in a body, filling his eyes and ears, and tormenting him with their poisoned spears, so that he was in despair.
He called for help upon his Elder Brother, who ordered him to strike the rocks with his stone war-club.
As soon as he had done so, sparks of fire flew upon the dry grass of the prairie and it burst into flame.
A mighty smoke ascended, which drove away the teasing swarms of the insect people, while the flames terrified and scattered the others.
This was the first dividing of the trail between man and the animal people, and when the animals had sued for peace, the treaty provided that they must ever after furnish man with flesh for his food and skins for clothing, though not without effort and danger on his part.
The little insects refused to make any concession, and have ever since been the tormentors of man; however, the birds of the air declared that they would punish them for their obstinacy, and this they continue to do unto this day.
The doctrine and worldview that natural phenomena, places, and objects possess inherent spirit, soul, or personality — and that the cosmos is populated by countless local, plural, embodied divine agents: kami in mountain and tree, sidhe in cairn and well, landwights in field and stone, nymphs in spring and grove, haltija in forest and lake, lares and penates in household and threshold, Iamblichean daemons in element and place. Distinct from monotheism (single transcendent God), pantheism (one underlying substance), and emanation_hierarchy (cascading single source); animism's signature is the plurality, locality, and embodied-in-landscape character of the divine.
The passage is a quintessential example of animism, depicting a world populated by sentient animal tribes, insects, and monsters who possess language, agency, and social structures equal to humans.
Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.
The text functions as an etiological myth explaining the origin of the separation between humans and animals, the invention of warfare, and the establishment of the hunting relationship.
A binding agreement or relationship between the divine and a people or individual, establishing mutual obligations.
The passage culminates in a formal treaty between man and the animal people, establishing mutual obligations regarding food and clothing that define their relationship for all time.
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
The Elder Brother's intervention to arm the hero and provide a fortress suggests a divine ordering of events to ensure the survival and supremacy of humanity.
The divine conceived as active, present, and dynamic—not an abstract principle but a personal responsive reality.
The 'Elder Brother' and 'First-Born' are portrayed as active, personal divine agents who intervene directly in the narrative to arm the hero, resurrect him, and manipulate the physical environment.