Curtin in 1883, 1886, and 1887 on the Cattaraugus reservation, near
Versailles, New York, including tales, legends, and myths, several
being translations of texts belonging to this collection made by the
editor. This work of Mr. Curtin represents in part the results of the
first serious attempt to record with satisfactory fullness the folklore
of the Seneca.
The material consists largely of narratives or tales of fiction—naïve
productions of the story-teller’s art which can lay no claim to be
called myths, although undoubtedly they contain many things that
characterize myths—narratives of the power and deeds of one or more of
the personified active forces or powers immanent in and expressed by
phenomena or processes of nature in human guise or in that of birds or
beasts. They do not refer to the phenomena personified as things
unique, but as equaled or fully initiated by human personages made
potent by orenda, or magic power, hence they describe a period long
after the advent of man on earth, and in this respect do not exhibit
the character of myths.
Again, in some of the narratives the same incident or device appears as
common property; that is to say, these several stories employ the same
episode for the purpose of expansion and to glorify the hero as well as
his prowess. An instance in point is that in which the hero himself, or
others at his order, gathers the bones of the skeletons of other
adventurous heroes like himself, who failed in the tests of orenda and
so forfeited their lives to the challenger, and, hastily placing them
in normal positions with respect to one another, quickens them by
exclaiming, “This tall hickory tree will fall on you, brothers, unless
you arise at once,” while pushing against the tree itself. Sometimes it
is a tall pine that so figures in these accounts. Again, a pupil of a
sorcerer or a noted witch is forbidden to go in a certain direction,
while permission is given to go in any other direction. But at a
certain time the budding hero or champion wizard goes surreptitiously
in the forbidden direction, and at once there is collision between his
orenda, or magic power, and that of the well-known wizards and
sorcerers dwelling in that quarter. This pupil is usually the only
living agent for the preservation of the orenda of some noted family of
wizards or witches. The hero, after performing certain set tasks,
overcomes the enemies of his family and then brings to life those of
his kindred who failed in the deadly strife of orendas.
The identifications and interpretative field notes accompanying Mr.
Curtin’s material by some mischance were not made a part of the present
collection. Their loss, which has added greatly to the work of the
editor, is unfortunate, as Mr. Curtin possessed in so marked a degree
the power of seizing readily the motive and significance of a story
that his notes undoubtedly would have supplied material for the
intelligent explanation and analysis of the products of the Indian mind
contained in this memoir.
The texts recorded in the Seneca dialect by Mr. Curtin were very
difficult to read, as they had been recorded with a lead pencil and had
been carried from place to place until they were for the greater part
almost illegible. The fact that these texts were the rough field notes
of Mr. Curtin, unrevised and unedited, added to the difficulty of
translating them. Fortunately, in editing a large portion of one of
these manuscripts, the editor had the assistance of his niece, Miss
Caroline G. C. Hewitt, who speaks fluently the Seneca dialect of the
Iroquois languages.