One day a stork paid this happy couple a visit and left them a fine
big boy. The boy cried "Ina, ina" (mother, mother). "Listen to
our son," said the mother, "he can speak, and hasn't he a sweet
voice?" "Yes," said the father, "it will not be long before he
will be able to walk." He set to work making some arrows, and a
fine hickory bow for his son. One of the arrows he painted red,
one blue, and another yellow. The rest he left the natural color
of the wood. When he had completed them, the mother
placed them in a fine quiver, all worked in porcupine quills, and
hung them up over where the boy slept in his fine hammock of
painted moose hide.
At times when the mother would be nursing her son, she would look
up at the bow and arrows and talk to her baby, saying: "My son,
hurry up and grow fast so you can use your bow and arrows. You
will grow up to be as fine a marksman as your father." The baby
would coo and stretch his little arms up towards the bright colored
quiver as though he understood every word his mother had uttered.
Time passed and the boy grew up to a good size, when one day his
father said: "Wife, give our son the bow and arrows so that he may
learn how to use them." The father taught his son how to string
and unstring the bow, and also how to attach the arrow to the
string. The red, blue and yellow arrows, he told the boy, were to
be used only whenever there was any extra good shooting to be done,
so the boy never used these three until he became a master of
the art.
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