FOUR SKY DWELLERS PROPHECY
There are four winds in the four directions that bring the changing of the seasons: the east and the north, the south and west wind. And there are the four sacred beings, called Sky Dweller beings, sent at the beginning of time, commissioned by the Creator as his helpers, and his messengers. And the four winds, and the four Messengers, and the four directions, and the four seasons that we know in this part of the world, are all intertwined; all have an association with four.
Sometime we refer to the four Sky People as the Four Brothers, or we just call them the north, east, south and west. Some say there are two sets of twins. And they’ve got different jobs to do. For example, Mother Earth gets tired of giving birth by the millions every day, and feeding all her children – the corn gardens, the grass growing, all the plants and creatures. So when she gets tired, her sons, the winds from the east and the north, bring a white blanket of snow to cover her, so she can rest. And then, when she has sufficiently rested, her other sons, or the twins from the south and the west, will come and take that snow blanket off, and then her body will become a carpet of green grass and rebirth. And that’s the job of the four brothers.
But the Four Brothers are also messengers of the Creator. Because the Creator himself is so powerful that He can never appear to us; if we saw him, we’d burn up, disintegrate in a split second. We’re not strong enough to be in his direct presence. So he has these messengers. That’s why you would hear some Indians long ago say, after fasting, “The tree talked to me.” Well, that’s the Creator talking, but He goes into a tree so he won’t kill you – or maybe he would go through the birds, or the lightning. Only after we’re done here, maybe it will be all right to see our Creator directly, but with the power that we have on this Earth, we can’t.
Sometimes we think of the four Sky People as if they were human beings, and it’s all right to do that. But they don’t have faces or bodies as we would know them. They are powers that dwell in the Sky World, from the Earth to the atmosphere. And their job is to carry the messages of our Creator, and protect us from the dangers of the universe. They can manifest themselves as humans when they’re messengers, born like a baby, from an actual woman. And when they’re growing, or grown up, that’s when they teach the message the Creator sent through them. Then they die, and go back to their jobs.
There are only certain times in history when these beings would come. One of them was the Peacemaker himself. Another time, a baby was born that came to give us all our Longhouse ceremonies. Another time, one came into a man that was already grown and took his body, and became the one that gave us our clans and clan structures.