Long ago, there were no peoples, no land upon the waters; they stretched endlessly beneath the sky. This was before Crane Woman gave birth to the winds, and before the whales sang the currents into the deep places; before even the great hearth fire of the Sun was lit in the sky as home to the Sky peoples.

The first of the sky people to come upon the waters was Fisherman, who took his net and tossed it upon the waters to feed the Sky people. Many times he tossed it, pulling up schools of wonderful, silver fish, which he baked in baskets woven from many colors.

However, the more that Fisherman threw his net, the more he angered the Great Waters, for he had not asked, nor spoken to them before taking from them their treasures of silver fish, of crab and seaweed. So when once again Fisherman returned and threw his net, the Great Waters roared in fury, casting the weights of the net into the rocks below them, where they snagged in the rocks and the mud. Fisherman, displeased, gave a great heave, but the net had become stuck fast. Again, he heaved, but the net refused to give way, though the very stones of the ocean floor groaned at his fury.

Finally, calling upon all of his might, and singing a spell to call upon the strength of the heavens, Fisherman gave one last, mighty heave. Rock cracked, the waters churned, and with a great gout of fire the bones of the ocean floor buckled, rising to the surface as new land, the first land, smoking and red hot from Fisherman’s strength and the blood of the earth. In the same moment, the net shattered, falling upon the land in great heaps and piles. Fisherman lost his balance, tumbling into his baskets of many hues, breaking them open and scattering their colors across the sky, along with shoals of squirming, silver fish, which escaped to swim the heavens as the stars.

The Great Waters rushed in, soothing the hurt of the newly broken land, their waves smoothing the rough shores and quenching the red hot earth in a great gout of steam, which rose up in a shroud about the island. When Fisherman rose, cursing, from where he had fallen, he found himself blinded, unable to even see the Great Waters, for they were shrouded now in a thick blanket of mists. Dismayed, he left to tell the Sky peoples of what had occurred. His net, forgotten, lay mounded in great heaps and piles upon the First Island. Over many ages it sank into the land, becoming the hills, the mountains, and the deep valleys. Some fibers, fraying and tangling, twisted into themselves until they took on new forms. These were the trees, the plants, the many fungi, and in time, the People themselves.