The fisher made a great feast for
the animals that he thought could help him to find summer. The
otter, the lynx, the badger, and the wolverine came. After they had
eaten, the hunter told them what he wished to do, and they all set
out to find summer.
For many days they traveled, and at last they came to a high
mountain upon whose summit the sky seemed to rest.
"That is where summer is," declared the badger. "All we have to do
is to climb to the summit and take it from the heavens." So they all
climbed and climbed, till it seemed as if they would never reach the
top. After a long time they were on the very highest summit, but the
heavens were above them.
"We cannot reach it," said the fisher.
"Let us try," said the lynx.
"I will try first," said the otter. So the otter sprang up with all
his might, but he could not touch the heavens. He rolled down the
side of the mountain, and then he ran home. The badger tried, and
the beaver tried, and the lynx tried, but not one of them could leap
far enough to reach the heavens. "Now I will try," said the
wolverine. "I am not going to climb away up here for nothing." The
fisher watched most eagerly, for he thought, "There's my boy at home
crying, and what shall I do if I cannot get the summer for him?"
The wolverine leaped farther than any wolverine ever leaped before,
and he went where no animal on the earth had ever been before, for
he went straight through the floor of the heavens. Of course the
fisher followed, and there they were in a more lovely place than any
one on the earth had ever dreamed of, for they were in the land of
summer, and summer had never come to the earth.
The soft, warm air went down through the hole in the floor and
spread over the earth. Birds flew down, singing happily as they
flew, and all kinds of flowers that are on the earth to-day made
their way through the hole as fast as they could, for they knew all
about the little boy in the wigwam who was wishing that summer would
come.
Now there were people in the heavens, and when they found that
summer was going down to the earth through the hole in the floor,
they cried out to God, "Take summer away from him, take it away from
him!" and they shot their arrows at the fisher and the wolverine.
The wolverine dropped through the hole, but the fisher was not quick
enough, and he could not get away.
God said, "The heavens have the summer all the year, but the earth
shall have summer half the year. I shall close the hole in the floor
so the fisher cannot go down to earth again, but I will make him
into a fish and give him a place in the heavens."
When the Indians look up at the sky, they see a fish in the stars,
and they say, "That is the good fisher who gave us the beautiful
summer."