How The Dove Got Its Color And Its Song – Wyandot Se’ sta made the doves. They were gentle. They lived near him. They sang to him all the day. They were white and had long graceful feathers. When they flew they seemed to float in the air. Their soft feathers trailed in the wind. The doves were very beautiful. In those days there was a chief who had no wife. Once when he came back from war, he brought prisoners from the towns of the enemy. One of these was a girl. The prisoners were divided at the council house. But no one wanted the beautiful girl. So she was in danger. For if she should not be adopted by some one of her captors, she would be killed. Then the chief took her and thus saved her life. When she was grown up he made her his wife, and they were happy. The chief and his wife had but one child. This child was a lovely little girl. Her name was A yu’ ra, which means “a dove flying.” She loved the birds. But she loved the doves more than all the others. They came fluttering down when she called them. They sat upon her head, her shoulders, her arms. They clung to her clothing. She held them in her hands and talked to them. The doves knew what A yu’ ra said to them. One day A yu’ ra was very sick. Nothing could be done to cure her. In a few days she passed on to the land of the Little People. It was hard to give her up. Her mother held her in her arms while her father and the hookies tried to call her back to this life. While the hookies were singing and beating on their little drums, the people saw A yu’ ra coming back. She came like a dove, floating above them. They heard her chanting the dove songs. When they heard her singing, the doves rose in the air and gathered about her. Then, singing with her, they turned and went toward the city where lives the Woman who fell down from Heaven. They came to the city. It was built under the ground. Great fires burned below it. The Woman let A yu’ ra come in. But the cloves she kept out. She said that A yu’ ra must now go on to the Land of the Little people, but that the doves could not go there. The doves were not pleased. They would not go away. They sat on the branches of the trees above the city. There they mourned day and night for A yu’ ra. When the doves would not go away, the Woman came out of the great stone gate of the city. Then she said to the doves, “I am sorry. For I must make you go away. You frighten the souls who come here on their way to the Land of the Little People. I must loose the black smoke of the fires under the city. And you shall never again sing any but the mourning song.” Suddenly the black smoke burst forth and almost smothered the doves. When they got out of it, they found that their long graceful feathers were singed off and that their beautiful white color was smoked to a soft gray. From that day doves have had only the color you now see. Their trailing plumage is gone. They sing only the mourning song they chanted at the gate of Heaven. Indian myths, by William Elsey Connelley...illustrated by William Wallace Clarke. New York, Chicago [etc.] Rand McNally & company [c1928}, and is now in the public domain.