Greater despair than before settled over the remaining Lakota people in the aftermath of the Battle of Wounded Knee. Wovoka’s vision had given them hope that that the Wasichu would be driven away and the buffalo would return in vast numbers, along with all the dead Lakota of the past to repeople the plains.
When he came to see that by dreaming the dreams of other peoples, even the dreams of the enemies who had taken their lands by force, he knew he held the key to the future that had eluded generations since Wounded Knee. But it would not work without one thing. If that one thing was missing, there would be no change, and the Lakota would remain locked in the prison of hopelessless, drunkenness, and dependence on the Wasichu.
What were they? As the Dream Canoe pierced through the heavens, even the heavens of the far distant past, bringing him back to the very roots of divine existence, before there even existed the Twin Earths, he was shown the Chronicles the angels kept to aid their own understanding of the Deity and His mighty acts.
Horace, of course, was not shown portions that he could not have possibly understood, but just those that dealt with the Creation of the Twin Earths and the Creation of his own species.
All the chronicles of the angels regarding the Earths and men, for Horace anyway, begin here: when in the course of time the Almighty Elohim, the Creator God, saw fit to restore the Twin Earths that Lucifer had ruined with his Titanic-Luciferan civilization and the fallen archangel decided he would have to go in person, however, to investigate. What was he going to see? It was a certain poison cloud the Enemy formed on two places on the surface of the planets. The cloud was the same in shape and substance on both Earth I and Earth II. What was it protecting? What was in it, that was so precious to the Enemy? What was the Enemy hiding from him? Always curious about the Almighty’s secret plans, Lucifer could not overlook an opportunity to possibly find out what the Enemy was cooking.
As he observed the cloud, there came a time when he saw it visibly thinning. It no longer appeared quite so thick and threatening. Finally, the cloud grew so weak it completely evaporated, and Lucifer could look directly in! What a discovery that was! Even his Atlantis could not boast so beautiful a garden as the Enemy’s! No wonder, he thought, the Enemy had sought to keep him out! Heaven was, of course, far greater in splendor, but this was as close to the Heavenly Paradise as one shut out could wish. It was absolutely superb, with trees in it you could find no where else on the planets! And there were other inhabitants, all sorts of birds and animals. And one animal was unique in appearance: it looked and acted like a sort of king of the garden. It walked and talked with the Enemy day after day. The creature wore no robes of office or position, and had no need of any, for it carried itself like a king without need of any covering.
Going to his throne room to ponder this new development, Lucifer was surprised one day to encounter the Enemy in the form of a blazing candle that was too bright for anyone present to look upon. It infurated Lucifer that the Enemy would invade his dominion without an invitation, but he quickly realized he could do nothing to stop such intrusions.
“Yes, what is it you want?” he said rudely to the Enemy, shielding his eyes with his arm.
The candle flamed all the brighter, growing by billions of candlepower in strength so that Lucifer and his millions of courtiers cringed and clapped hands and wings (if they had wings) over their faces. It was if a nuclear blast had struck in their midst, only the deadly radiation was that of holiness, not gamma and neutron rays.
“Yes, I have,” replied the archangel, still shielding his dazzled eyes with his blackened wings. “What about it? I see nothing remarkable in it, nothing at all.”
“I fashioned him from the clay of the ground, and his name is Adam.”
Without warning, Lucifer broke into uproarious laughter that filled the throne room and set the smallest devil present back on the balls of his feet.. Just as abruptly, he ceased.
“Pardon me, if I find this creature’s very name amusing! Now, what do you purpose to do with this clay pot of yours? Is he to take over the planets that have conceded to me the Light-Bringer as my rightful dominion? If that is so, I must strenuously protest this violation of the terms of our agreement. According to the treaty to which we both were signatories--”
Actually, while saying this and covering himself with laughter and scorn, Lucifer’s mind, always preyed upon by anxiety, was racing. Called “Adam” after the clay from which the Creator fashioned it, it was a puzzle to Lucifer. What use could a walking, talking clay pot be? The Enemy seemed to spend a lot of time appearing to it, and talking to it. How could the Almighty enjoy talking to such an inferior vessel of clay as Adam? Even though he could claim a golden glaze, Adam could not fly, or throw lightning bolts, or slay whole worlds with fiery bursts of rage--he was nothing but a weak clod of clay--fashioned, as he was, from soil the Almighty had taken from a riverbank! Why the Enemy would go to the trouble to restore two entire worlds so this dirt clod could have a home, Lucifer could not imagine.
This remark threw Lucifer into a state of mind that could not be imagined—he was absolutely overwhelmed with amazement and wonder. The Enemy had just invited him into his precious little garden? Whatever for? Was it a trap of some kind? It had to be a trap! But for what purpose? What was the reason for the Enemy’s invitation? Lucifer had to find out! And the only way to find out was to go, obviously! He could sit in his throne room forever and learn nothing—since his slaves only knew as much as he told them!
Having decided to go, and how to go, Lucifer turned back to his unbidden Guest. But the Candle was gone! As instantly as it appeared, His Holiness, the Spirit of God, vanished. Despite all the hellish red glow of the assembly, deep, palpable, not very fragrant Darkness settled back into the Light-Bringer’s throne room, and everyone heaved a sigh of great relief.
This gave h im great hope he was on to something he could use. A tree whose fruit would give the eater knowledge of both good and evil? He himself didn’t need such knowledge, since he already had knowledge in abundance, but to this new species such knowledge would no doubt be something to be desired, for they seemed such childlike, innocent things in their actions and speakings.
He then found out there was yet another special tree, which they had also spurned so far, though the Enemy had invited them to eat of it. It was the so-called “tree of life,” and did not look as nice as the forbidden tree. If only he could trick them into eating the fruit of the forbidden tree! That little bit of disobedience would bring big trouble to them for disobeying the Enemy, or so the Enemy had warned Adam.
Crossed, the Enemy would get very angry and then cast the clay people from the garden, and possibly destroy them on the spot with a blast of his holiness! The Enemy had not spared his chief angel, so it was highly unlikely he would spare these vastly inferior clay-people. There was no hope for them once they unleashed God’s anger! And if the Enemy didn’t slay them, then he certainly would!
One day Adam was surprised to see smoke rising from that same high point of land by the river Pison. Was it Cain stoking up fire in a new oven? It was early morning, however, and Adam knew Cain would not yet be up. Abel, however, tending his flocks as he did, remained awake most of the night to protect them from the prowlers that often tried to snatch away his lambs. Once or twice he had lost lambs that way and was determined not to let it happen again. He had even traded Cain for a long smoothed stick with a sharp metal dart at the end. But he didn’t like it after using it, and went back to throwing stones with a sling Cain had made for him.
Then he saw Abel lying face down on the ground. Adam’s eyes widened. Their was an oven, but it was a strange sort of thing Cain would have laughed at. It lay open, with the fire upon a high heap of stones. And on the stones, in a burning fire, lay several lambs, their throats cut.
“What are you doing?” Father Adam cried, rushing up to Abel. He pulled Abel to his feet. “You have slain your best lambs! What--?”
Abel looked down at his own feet. “I had to do something, Father! We sorely offended the Creator, did we not? He drove us out of his garden with his own men of fire, and so we had to come here to this place in Havilah to abide. I had to speak with Him, and so I thought I would do this thing and see if it would please Him. And, dear Father, it pleased him! He is not angry with us as he was! He told what I had done was reckoned to me and my family as righteousness! He told me he had been waiting for us to come to him and do this thing I did without being told. What is ‘righteousness,’ Father? It must be something good if the Creator values it so much!”
Cain seemed to understand better when Adam his father told his mother and his eldest son. “I can please God too, and even better than he!” Cain declared when they finished speaking, and then he stomped out of Adam’s shelter.
On the same high ground, which Cain was careful to clear completely of Abel’s piled rocks, Cain spread a mat he had asked his mother to weave, for her fingers were good at such weavings. Then on the mat he spread some of his fruits from the ground he cultivated. At first he thought to offer the best fruits he had, but he greatly desired them for himself, and loathed to waste them by giving them up. Would the Creator discern the difference? Cain thought not, since man cultivated plants, not God. After that he waited for God to speak and approve the offering.
Only then did the Creator speak to Cain, who jumped as if he had sat on a thorn.
God said, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen between your knees? If you do well, will you not be accepted too? And if you do not well, sin is lying at your door; it is out after you to enslave you, but you must master it to remain free.”
That was not what Cain wished to hear said to him. Of course, he didn’t like hearing anything from the Creator. He rose up immediately from his chair, for he refused to sit upon the earth like his family. He went straight to Abel. But Abel was gone to his flock, and wouldn’t go walking with him, so Cain returned to his own house, and there he sat, doing absolutely nothing.
Then came the dread day Father Adam later named Day of the Slain Lamb. Cain went to Abel and asked him to go on a walk together, and this time Abel decided he could leave his flock safely. And when they had gone out beyond the river and were in the wide fields where no one could see them, Cain dropped back to following his brother, waiting for the best moment.
Cain jumped, as if he had been struck with a wand of thistles across his naked back. He peered around, his eyes wild, then gave it up. He knew he couldn’t see the Speaker with the voice he could not shut out. Hanging his head, he stood, as if before a hateful judge who would never cease punishing him, not matter how well he did. “I do not know,” he said between gritted teeth. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Cain began to weep and cover his face with his hands, as the terrible words sank into his soul. He cried out to the Creator, “My punishment is more than I can bear! Behold, you have drive me this day away from the ground I till for my livelihood, and from your face too I shall be hidden; and I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will slay me.”
Then the Creator replied to the words and, mercifully, not to the hidden thoughts of Cain, “Not so! If anyone slays Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.”
Cain then felt the most strange sensation, like finger pressed to his forehead, burning hot. It was instantly gone, but Cain cried out in surprise and jumped back. He felt the spot with his fingers, wondering what new, terrible thing the Creator had done to hurt and molest him.
Cain looked and looked at the reflected image in the water-mirror. He decided not to veil it or take a burning brand and destroy it. By it his life was preserved from those who might seek to slay him. Who would dare touch him, who had received such a sign imprinted by the Creator himself? Slowly the triform tree relieved his great fears, and they subsided back into his heart where the darkness covered them—the same darkness that had gripped his heart and mind and led him to slay his young brother.
But it was one thing to know all these things, and another to believe on God. On the very Day he was passing from this life, old Father Adam received from the Spirit of God that came to him in his gathering darkness, touched him, and Adam’ s heart took hope in the words spoken to the serpent by the Creator God so long before. He reached out to the Creator as his Creator, he believed even as Abel his slain son had long before believed. “Forgive me, O my Creator! And Come, O Seed of Woman!” he cried. “Come and save us from the Serpent’s power! Oh, come soon!”
For Adam, his decision finally made, it was better late than never. But for others, four to ten, some say 100,000 or so years later, and over one hundred and sixty billion descendants of his to come, it would be decision time, individually, that many times.
He had seen many things, good and evil. But he had not foreseen all the evil that would be produced by his sin in the garden, nor could he have imagined that man would ever carve stone and wood into various images, and devise beings with silver and gold that they would fall down and worship as gods in place of the Elohim! That continued to amaze him right up to the end of his days on earth, though he knew the Serpent—always covetous of God’s worship--had something to do with it as he continued to beguile and entrap fallen men and women into committing folly after folly.
Adam, hearing of Lamech’s boast stirred himself. How could his own issue not fear God’s wrath? They were all in great trouble once everyone started speaking like this foolish Lamech, Adam reasoned. What if the Lord should come down and destroy the whole earth? God told him he had done so once before, when the earth’s races grew corrupt and violent. Would he hesitate to do it again if they acted in the same way as the first races acted? So Adam made a long, slow foot-journey to Lamech’s city of Fara (he never could get used to the speed of ox-drawn wagons and horse-drawn chariots, and refused to buy his second, third, and fourth wives such luxuries, after Mother Eve had died).
Father Adam found robbers four times blocking his path from Havilah to Fara in the land of Nod. The first three, hearing who he was, took his gifts he brought for Lamech and his household—bdellium, gold, and onyx washed out in the sands of the river Pison flowing out of the garden—and let him go with their blessing. Only the third had thought he was lying, that he was not Adam until he showed him his belly, which had no navel. The fourth believed he was Father Adam but bore him (and all humankind, it seemed) a bottomless grudge and proved more dangerous. He had dug a pit and only Father Adam’s turning aside at the last moment saved him from falling in, though he did not see it, the pit being covered with sticks and a layer of dirt.
So Father Adam quit the bustling and prosperous but corrupt land of Nod where so many of his seed now resided, continually building bigger houses and giving their sons and daughters in marriage. He went away, thinking not so much about Lamech and his foolish wives and children but his own first-born. Cain! How many white hairs had his misdeeds had put on Adam’s old head? He had accomplished such mighty things--building cities and beautiful houses and constructing high towers, palaces, defensive walls, forts, canals, water sluices, ships, wagons, chariotry--what couldn’t he do? But a covetous man, envious of Cain’s reputation and attainments, murdered him, who was not afraid of God’s vengeance and the mark God had put on Cain to preserve his life. Then descendants of Cain who felt more loyal to him had pursued the man and slain him in turn, with all his family! Would the bloodletting never cease on the earth. It was, to Adam’s eyes, a scene of continual violence and killing, despite all the wonderful things men were building on the earth.
