This was told by the Snohomish Indians who were a fairly small tribe who lived in the far North - West of North America . The Indians had lots of stories to explain natural phenomena . They had stories to explain why grass is green instead of orange , and why rain falls down instead of falling up . And they had this story to explain why the sky is so high . There was a time , a long time ago , when the sky was very low . It was probably only about as high as an average ceiling . If you climbed a tree you would bang your head on the sky and get a headache . And if you climbed the tree quickly , you would bang your head on the sky and get knocked down and break your leg on the floor . And if you climbed the tree very quickly you would break a hole in the sky and disappear into the sky world and never be seen again . Well , this state of affairs wasn ' t very satisfactory . So one day all the animals , the birds , and the people and everybody else went to see the Great Spirit and said " Great Spirit , the sky is too low . Can you please raise it ? " And the Great Spirit said " Raise it ? Well , I did make it like that but sometimes it ' s harder to change things than it is to make them in the first place , so I would need your help ". So everybody said " Oh , we ' ll help , it ' s us who wants it raising . Yes , we ' ll help ". So the Great Spirit said " Right , well , what we have to do , is to get some sky - lifting poles and the only place we can get those is in the forest . So you really need , all of you , to go in to the forest and talk to the trees and tell them that what we have to do is chop them down . " " We ' ll chop off the scruffy bit at the bottom and the fluffy bit at the top , and we ' ll chop off all their arms and legs until we ' ve got straight poles that we can use to lift the sky with . Some of the trees won ' t like it because they ' re happy with the birds nesting in their hair and so on , but most of them will agree to it because they will realise how import ! ant it is ". So all the mammals and the birds and the reptiles and everybody went into the forest and they all talked to the trees . And eventually enough of the trees agreed to be cut down and made into sky - lifting poles , for the project to be possible . The day came when everybody got together and the Great Spirit said " We need to have a rehearsal first because it is most import ! ant that we all do this together . You see if you people on the right lift first , then the sky is going to tip this way . If you people on the left lift first , then the sky is going to tip that way . And if you people in the middle lift first , then it will probably break altogether . So we must have a rehearsal . " " But now , before we do that , I ' ve got to give you a word that means ' lift the sky ' in all languages because of course you all speak different languages . And the word for lift the sky in all languages is ' yazoo '. Now you lift on the ' zoo ' not on the ' ya '. So it ' s ' yazoo '. " Then the Great Spirit said " Right , now stand all your sky - lifting poles up in front of you and get your claws or your paws or your hands or your talons or whatever together , like this . Put them under the end of the sky - lifting pole and I ' m going to say one , two , three , ' yazoo ' and on the ' zoo ' I want you to lift . But this is only a rehearsal of course ". Well it was just as well they had the rehearsal because the Great Spirit said one , two , three , ' yazoo ' and they lifted and oh , they were terrible . Everybody was out of time . Some were early , some were late and some even forgot altogether and some people couldn ' t lift the pole and it was really quite a mess . But they tried a few times until the Great Spirit felt that they were ready for the real effort . And so he gave them another talking to and said " Now you know , you must all be on time . So , now come along one , two , three ' yazoo '." They all lifted and the sky went up quite a bit . But he said " We need to do a bit more yet . one , two , three , ' yazoo '." And they lifted again and it went up even further . And he said " Perhaps , just one more time . one , two , three , '' yazoo '." And the sky went up to where it is now . And if you go outside and have a look at the sky , you ' ll see how high it is since everybody lifted it . And since they did that , no one has ever banged his head on the sky . Or her head , for that matter .