Great Mother Earth made all the animals, her children, and set them to walk in her embrace even as their distant father, Great Warming Sky, looked on with subtle detachment. Great Mother Earth so loved to create that she was endlessly occupied with the fashioning of new creatures, but her greatest joy was when her creations had offspring of their own, and loved one another.

But over time, she grew troubled. Great Mother Earth could not make her creations eternal, as their father had forbidden it. So as her creations grew old or sick and died, Great Earth Mother herself became sick with grief. When one of her creations, Vulture, approached her, he found her weeping.

“What is wrong, O Great Earth Mother?” asked Vulture.

“When my creations die, they are no longer loved,” she lamented. “They are forgotten and left to rot, even by their own families. If only someone could take these lost children in and care for them.”

“That is indeed very sad,” said Vulture. “It is also of a kind with my purpose in coming to you. My flock and I tire of the slaughter of our brothers, and we would ask that we no longer have to kill in order to survive.”

Great Earth Mother was perplexed. “How are you, a bird of the hunt, a bird of prey, to survive without killing?”

“You have given me an idea,” said Vulture. “Allow my family and I to take in the lost and forgotten children, to give them rest and purpose, to love them as we would our own. We will pay them that dignity unto the ends of the earth, and in exchange we ask only that we not add to their number.”

And so it was set forth that Great Mother Earth tasked Vulture with the tender care of all her forgotten children. In taking them into his bosom, in feeding them to his young, Vulture paid them the highest and ultimate compliment. In their death, they became his children too, and he loved his children very much.