Cold!
Times were pretty good. The People had fire by then, and warm clothes, and good tents, and they knew where they stood in the world. But this winter it just got colder and colder. One day when the first man who woke up went out to take a pee, everyone heard a cracking noise. The man came back in crying, "Owoo, my penis froze and fell off!"
Another man and another had to go out to piss, and each time there was this awful crack! and ker-plunk! and the man came back in without his manhood.
The women had no problem, of course. After the men were finished, they went out and squatted, and let out their water under their skirts as they always do. Then they looked around to see if they could find what their men had lost, but there wasn't a penis in sight. There were bird tracks in the snow, though--Raven had been there. He'll pick up anything.
The men were very unhappy. "What are we going to do without our piss-rods? We'll have to squat like women from now on."
"Tish-tish," the women said, "isn't that too bad," and they laughed.
There was a lot of talk then that heated up the tents more than the fires. Bye and bye it came down to this--the men wanted their "little brothers" back, one way or another, but Raven had flown off with them. Manobaz was Raven's friend, so it was his job to get them back. "All right," Manobaz said, "I'll go ask him to give them back. Then we can thaw them out and the women can sew them back on."
He bundled up and went stomping through the snow to Raven's home in Spirit Valley. Raven was asleep on his nest on a rock ledge, so he hollered up, "Hai, Raven. Have you seen any penises? We"ve lost some."
Raven popped his head out from under his wing. "Penises? Crawkk! I thought those were sausages that you put out as a nice treat for me."
"What, you didn't eat them, did you?"
"Rrawwkkk..." Raven shuffled his feet and feathers and looked around sideways. He could see that Manobaz was not too happy about this, and the man was his friend, after all.
"Well, we want them back." Manobaz stood firm, hands on his hips.
"You don't want what they are now," Raven said, and he turned around to shoot out a big plop that made another long white streak down the rock.
"Well, what are you going to do about it?"
"Ahm...let's go talk to Beaver, ah?"
Manobaz didn't know what good that would do, but he knew that Raven always came up with pretty good ideas, even if some of them got him in trouble. So he went with Raven to Beaver's lodge. They were invited in and sat and talked a while. Beaver agreed to help.
"I will carve new penises for you," he said, "because Raven is my friend and you are Raven's friend. Just tell me how many you want, and how big."
Manobaz was very happy. He returned home with a sack full of very nicely carved wooden penises. The women managed to get them all fastened onto their men. Everything was fine for a while.
But while the men liked having such fine, big willies, there were a few problems. It was awkward to have their lone limb always sticking out stiff. For one thing, they needed much larger breechclouts, and their outer clothes didn't fit well either. They looked funny with their tunics and parkas held out like tents. Then they kept bumping them into things too, knocking down the drying racks, poking people in the butt. Sometimes the women hung the wash out to dry on them when the men took a nap.
"What are we going to do," they asked Manobaz. "Why me," he thought, and off he went to have another chat with Raven.
After thinking a bit, Raven said, "What you have to do is soak them, then they'll get soft and they won't stick out."
"Nah, that won't work," Manobaz said. "We pee through them six times a day and take baths and none of that has any effect."
"No, pee and water won't do it, you need the right kind of wetness and a little magic. You have to put them inside a woman."
That was certainly an odd idea, but Manobaz thanked Raven for his advice and went home. He told the other men and they decided to try it. The women were willing, since if it worked it would make the men easier to get along with. They spread their legs and showed them where to put it. Sure enough, a good soak in a woman's well did the trick. But it also shrunk the "little brothers" down to half their original size!
However! Such is the magic part of it, that after a while the "lower head" rises up hard again. The soft little worm turns into a mighty tent pole at the very sight of a woman, it so longs for another good soak.