A band of Onondaga once set out to do their fall hunting. They travelled to the shores of a large lake full of fish that was surrounded by rich forests and green meadows where the deer and bears were plentiful. As they walked through the forest, the sound of ripe nuts falling among the leaves sounded like a hailstorm.

When they arrived at the lake, they paused to give thanks for their safe journey and to ask for a successful stay along the beautiful lakeshore.

Then they made a large camp in a grassy clearing a little way from the lake and began to collect and prepare food for the winter.

There was so much good food in the forest, and the hunting and fishing were so good, that the adults soon settled down to preparing everything for the winter.

The older children had to help with all this work, but the smaller ones no longer had to gather nuts and were free to play. One day, eight of them thought of a new game.

They went down to the shores of the lake and started to dance. It was so much fun that they did it again the next day, and the day after that.

Finally, when they were dancing one day, they saw an old man coming up to them. He looked very old, with silver white hair, though he did not walk slowly, and he was dressed all in white feathers.

The children were a little frightened because he was a stranger and did not dress like anyone they had ever seen before. But when he spoke, they could understand him. His words, however, were not kind.

?You must stop this dancing!? he said. ?Bad things will happen to you if you keep doing this!?

Then he walked back into the forest again. The children looked at each other for a moment, and then one of them began to dance again.

Soon they were laughing and dancing again, just as they had been before the old man had come to stop their fun.

A little while later, the old man came back out of the woods. ?I have told you to stop dancing!? he said gruffly. ?I?m warning you!?

When he went away, one of the girls said, ?Who is he? Why does he keep telling us to stop dancing??

One of the other boys replied. ?He is not my father and he is not my uncle. I don?t know who he is,? and he began to dance again.

Soon all the children were dancing, and they danced until it was time to go home for dinner. All the dancing had made them very hungry, and while they were walking home, one of the boys had an idea.

?Tomorrow, we can bring food with us,? he said. ?We?ll eat and dance, just as if it were a real feast!?

?The hunting has been good,? another child said. ?We?ll ask our parents. They have lots of food. They won?t mind!?

But the children were wrong. When they asked for food to take to the lake the next day, their parents did not like the idea.

?It is wrong to waste food,? one of the mothers said. ?If you are hungry, come back to camp and eat with us.

?You can always have as much as you like. But you can?t take food down to the lake just to play with it.?

The children were disappointed, but the next morning they went back to the lake and began to dance again. After awhile, though, they began to get hungry, and all the dancing made them feel dizzy.

Or maybe it was something else. But whatever made it happen, the eight dancing children began to rise up into the air.

?Something is happening!? one of the girls said.

?Don?t look back!? another said. ?Just keep dancing!?

One of the mothers was coming down with a basket to get water when she saw the children dancing in the air and going higher and higher. She screamed, and then ran back up the hill to the camp.

Then all of the parents ran down to the shore, holding food up and calling to their children to come back. But the children kept dancing and rising up into the sky.

Only one little boy looked back to hear what the adults were saying.

He fell back to earth, leaving a bright trail across the sky, for he was the first falling star.

The other seven children rose high into the sky, and every night you can look up and see them still dancing together, a little circle that the white men call the Pleiedes but that the Onondaga know are their own dancing children.

@EDITRULE: