-1 to 23 AS-

Walin-Inuhin felt a sense of existential boredom stemming from what he considered to be his simple life. Most chiefs of individual tribes within the Payómkawichum were content to fulfill their various civil and religious duties, but not Walin-Inuhin. Frequently, his mind would drift to the story of the first humans’ westward migration by sea, long before they were the Payómkawichum.

At the very beginning of the world, when even time itself was an unknown concept, the only humans who existed lived together on a single small island. During this time, each day was the same as the preceding day – the humans never aged, nor did the plants wither or the animals die by nature’s hand around them. In turn for never being able to leave the island, the humans would stay ageless for eternity. Eventually, though, some of the humans started to grow tired of living on a single small island forever. One of the humans had an idea – to ride a log out to sea.

After much iteration and numerous attempts, the humans refined the original idea into a raft, comprised of several logs tied together by ropes made of plant fibers. This raft proved successful at floating in the seas, but it drifted about rather uncontrollably once there. Indeed, as the raft approached the transition between shallow and deep ocean, a sudden gust blew it back to shore. The humans who wished to leave the island thus realized that their makeshift raft would not work for that purpose.

It was at this point that the Eagle appeared to the humans who wished to leave the island, explaining that all the humans who remained on the island in one month’s time would be wiped out by a great flood. The only way to avoid this fate would be to construct a boat capable of harnessing the wind, in order to escape the island. The humans who wished to leave the island were alarmed upon hearing this, and attempted to inform the other humans, only to be met with mocking disbelief. And so, over the next month, the humans who had listened to the Eagle’s words learned how to construct such an implement atop a log-hewn boat that could support the weight of both the implement and the humans themselves.

Finally, the day came when the few humans who had listened to the Eagle needed to escape the island. Using the boat with the implement that could harness the wind’s power, the humans who had heeded the warnings survived, even as all the other humans perished in the everlasting storm. Finally, after days of alternating sailing, the surviving humans reached the land currently inhabited by their descendants, who call themselves the Payómkawichum.

Unfortunately for Walin-Inuhin, he could not recreate this primordial voyage with the current log-hewn canoes, lacking as they were a sufficient implement to leverage the force of the wind. However, pondering the story had made him realize that he needed such an implement to take off on a new voyage into the open ocean.

Ultimately, it took Walin-Inuhin another 22 years of trial-and-error to turn his original inspiration into a perfected design for an implement sewn from cloth with which to harness the wind’s might. Finally, Walin-Inuhin set off southward on his own great journey, in tandem with several others, and they all reached a great, uninhabited landmass after several days of sailing. There the whole group would stay for the next several years…