Thus the terraced pyramids are the clouds, for the clouds appear to the Indian as staircases leading to heaven, and they in turn support the rainbow.

The two principal beasts of prey, who feed upon game, like man, and whose strength, agility, and acute senses man hopes to acquire, are represented as the bear in the colour symbolic of the east, and the panther in that of the south.
Farther away from the sun-father are the two monstrous water-snakes, genii of the fish-bearing and crop-irrigating water-courses.

The sun-father stands surrounded by all these elements and beings; he fixes his blissful magic gaze upon the nourishing maize-plants, that they may grow and that their ripe fruit may sustain the tribe.

Thus much for the allegory on the wall.
But in order that the wish and hope which this allegoric painting expresses on the part of man may become realized, invocation rises before the picture in the shape of the screen, denoting an altar on which the rainbow has again settled down as a messenger from above.

Both are green, since it is summer; and the summer sun, or summer home of the sun-father, is green also, like the earth, covered with luxuriant vegetation.
Invocation alone does not suffice to incline the hearts of Those Above kindly toward mankind; gratitude is required as an earnest of sincere worship.