Man-Above is the highest being of Arapaho cosmology, the sky-dwelling father to whom prayer, fasting, and the offerings of the Sun Dance are directed. In the tribal cosmogony he existed upon a limitless primeval water and, weeping in his solitude, determined to fashion dry land; he sent the water-birds and animals diving until one brought up a fragment of earth, which he spread and enlarged into the world before shaping its people. Sources differ on whether the acts of creation belong to Man-Above himself or are mediated through the Flat-Pipe that accompanies him upon the waters, the two being closely bound in narrative. In later worship he merges with the general Plains conception of a supreme father whose pity sustains the living.