Part 2 also consists of Seneca legends and myths, which are

translations made expressly for this work from native texts recorded by

Mr. Hewitt in the autumn of 1896. Two of the texts so translated appear

here, revised and edited, with a closely literal interlinear

translation in English. The matter of Part 2 constitutes about

two-fifths of the whole, containing only 31 items, while there are 107

in Part 1; but the latter narratives are uniformly much longer than the

former.

The Seneca informants of Mr. Hewitt in the field were Mr. Truman

Halftown, Mr. John Armstrong, and Chief Priest Henry Stevens, all of

the Cattaraugus Reservation, N. Y. These worthy men, who have all

passed away, were uniformly patient, kind, and interested. They were

men whose faith in the religion of their ancestors ennobled them with

good will, manliness, and a desire to serve.

Special attention is drawn to the freedom of these Seneca narratives

from coarseness of thought and expression, although in some respectable

quarters obscenity seems to be regarded as a dominant characteristic of

American Indian myths and legendary lore. This view is palpably

erroneous and unjust, because it is founded on faulty and inadequate

material; it is, moreover, governed largely by the personal equation.

To form an impartial and correct judgment of the moral tone of the

myths and legends of the American Indian, a distinction must be made

between myths and legends on the one hand and tales and stories which

are related primarily for the indecent coarseness of their thought and

diction on the other; for herein lies the line of demarcation between

narratives in which the rare casual references to indelicate matters

are wholly a secondary consideration and not the motives of the

stories, and those ribald tales in which the evident motive is merely

to pander to depraved taste by detailing the coarse, the vulgar, and

the filthy in life.

It is, indeed, a most unfortunate circumstance in the present study of

the spoken literature of the North American Indians that the headlong

haste and nervous zeal to obtain bulk rather than quality in collecting

and recording it are unfavorable to the discovery and acquisition of

the philosophic and the poetic legends and myths so sacred to these

thoughtful people. The inevitable result of this method of research is

the wholly erroneous view of the ethical character of the myths and

legends and stories of the American Indian, to which reference has

already been made. The lamentable fact that large portions of some

collections of so-called American Indian tales and narratives consist

for the greater part of coarse, obscene, and indelicate recitals in no

wise shows that the coarse and the indelicate were the primary motives

in the sacred lore of the people, but it does indicate the need of

clean-minded collectors of these narratives, men who know that the

obscene can not be the dominant theme of the legendary lore of any

people. Such men will take the necessary time and trouble to become

sufficiently acquainted with the people whose literature they desire to

record to gain the confidence and good will of the teachers and the

wise men and women of the community, because these are the only persons

capable of giving anything like a trustworthy recital of the legendary

and the poetic narratives and the sacred lore of their people.

Should one attempt to acquire standard specimens of the literature of

the white people of America by consulting corner loafers and their ilk,

thereby obtaining a mass of coarse and obscene tales and stories wholly

misrepresenting the living thought of the great mass of the white

people of the country, the procedure would in no wise differ,

seemingly, from the usual course pursued by those who claim to be

collecting the literature of the American Indian people by consulting

immature youth, agency interpreters, and other uninformed persons,

rather than by gaining the confidence of and consulting the native

priests and shamans and statesmen.

To claim that in American Indian communities their story-tellers, owing

to alleged Christian influence, are editing the mythic tales and

legends of their people into a higher moral tone is specious and is a

sop thrown to religious prejudice for the purpose of giving color to

the defense of an erroneous view of the moral tone of such myths and

legends.

It is notorious that in this transition period of American Indian life

the frontiersman and the trader on the borderland have not been in

general of such moral character as to reflect the highest ideals in

thought or action. Few genuine native legends and myths show any

so-called “moral” revision from contact with “white people.” It is, of

course, undeniable that the coarse, the rude, and the vulgar in word,

thought, and deed are very real and ever-present elements in the life

of every so-called Christian community; and they are present in every

other community. But this fact does not at all argue that it is useful

to collect and record in detail the narratives of these indecent

aspects of life in any community, because the wholesome, the

instructive, and the poetic and beautiful are, forsooth, far more

difficult to obtain.

Except in the case of novices in the work it may be stated that the

moral tone or quality of the mythic and legendary material collected in

any community is measurably an unconscious reflex of the mental and

moral attitude of the collector toward the high ideals of the race.

It is a pleasure to make reference here to the work of Mr. Frank

Hamilton Cushing, Dr. Washington Matthews, and Mr. Jeremiah Curtin,

who, in order to study with discrimination and sympathy the spoken

literature of the American Indians, took the necessary trouble to learn

the motif of the narratives of mythic and legendary origin of these

people; hence they did not feel it incumbent upon them to apologize for

the moral tone of the legends and myths they recorded and published,

for their own mental attitude toward the wholesome, the worthy, and the

noble was such as to enable them to discover and to appreciate the same

qualities in the thinking of the people they studied. To expound like

the priest, to speak like the prophet, and to think like the

myth-maker, were among the gifts of these men which enabled them to

understand the motives underlying the myths and legends of the tribal

men of the world, while they were at the same time fully alive to the

scientific use and value of these same poetic narratives when analyzed

and interpreted sympathetically.

Mr. Curtin obtained his Seneca material from the following persons of

the Seneca tribe, many of whom have since died: Abraham Johnny-John,

Solomon O’Bail, George Titus, John Armstrong, Zachariah Jimeson, Andrew

Fox, Henry Jacob, Henry Silverheels, Peter White, Black Chief, and

Phoebe Logan. He recorded an extensive vocabulary of the Seneca, with

which he had become familiar by intensive study of its structure.

Mr. Curtin, with the mind of a master, fully grasped the importance and

the paramount significance of the intelligent collection, and the

deeper sympathetic study, of legends and myths in general, and of those

of the American Indians in particular, in the final establishment of

the science of mythology.

To the editor it is one of the delightful memories of his early

official life to recall the many instructive hours spent with Mr.

Curtin in discussing the larger significance and the deeper

implications which are found in the intelligent study and

interpretation of legends, epics, and myths—the highest type of poetic

and creative composition. And for this reason he has so freely cited

from the writings of Mr. Curtin the meaning and the value which such a

study and analysis had for Mr. Curtin and has for those who like him

will fully appreciate that “the Indian tales reveal to us a whole

system of religion, philosophy, and social polity. ... the whole mental

and social life of the race to which they belong is evident in them.”

The following quotations give all too briefly, perhaps, his philosophic

views on these questions in his own deft, inimitable way. It is

believed that these citations will enable the reader and the student to

gain some clear idea of the pregnant lessons Mr. Curtin drew from the

analysis and interpretation of the legends and myths which he recorded,

as well as of his method of studying and expounding them. The Seneca

collection herewith presented forms only a small portion of his

recorded mythic material.

A few tens of years ago it was all-important to understand and

explain the brotherhood and blood-bond of Aryan nations, and their

relation to the Semitic race; to discover and set forth the meaning

of that which in mental work, historic strivings, and spiritual

ideals ties the historic nations to one another. At the present

time this work is done, if not completely, at least measurably

well, and a new work awaits us, to demonstrate that there is a

higher and a mightier bond, the relationship of created things with

one another, and their inseverable connection with That which some

men reverence as God, but which other men call the Unknowable, the

Unseen.

This new work, which is the necessary continuation of the first,

and which alone can give it completeness and significance, will be

achieved when we have established the science of mythology. [4]

Again, he asks: “How is this science from which men may receive such

service to be founded?”

On this point Mr. Curtin is clear and instructive, maintaining that

such a science of mythology can be founded—

In one way alone: by obtaining from races outside of the Aryan and

Semitic their myths, their beliefs, their view of the world; this

done, the rest will follow as a result of intelligent labor. But

the great battle is in the first part of the work, for the inherent

difficulty of the task has been increased by Europeans, who have

exterminated great numbers among the best primitive races,

partially civilized or rather degraded others, and rendered the

remainder distrustful and not easily approached on the subject of

their myths and ethnic beliefs.

Its weightiest service will be rendered in the domain of religion,

for without mythology there can be no thorough understanding of any

religion on earth, either in its inception or its growth. [5]

The next citation shows Mr. Curtin’s complete mastery of the subject in

hand, and his conclusions are well worth the careful consideration of

every student of mythic and legendary lore. In reference to the

collection of myths and tales and beliefs he presents the following

wise conclusions:

There is everywhere a sort of selvage of short tales and anecdotes,

small information about ghosts and snakes, among all these races,

which are easily obtained, and most Europeans seem to think that

when they have collected some of these trivial things they have all

that the given people possess. But they are greatly mistaken. All

these people have something better. There was not a single stock of

Indians in America which did not possess, in beautiful forms, the

elements of an extensive literature with a religion and philosophy

which would have thrown light on many beginnings of Aryan and

Semitic thought, a knowledge of which in so many cases is now lost

to us, but which we hope to recover in time ... if civilized men

instead of slaying “savages,” directly and indirectly, will treat

them as human beings, and not add to the labor of those workers who

in the near future will surely endeavor, singly or in small groups,

to study the chief primitive races of the earth and win from them,

not short insignificant odds and ends of information but great

masses of material; ... these races possess in large volume some of

the most beautiful productions of the human mind, and facts that

are not merely of great, but of unique, value. [6]

But we have no tale in which it is clear who all the characters

are; the modifying influences were too great and long-continued to

permit that. Though myth-tales are, perhaps, more interesting ...

in their present form, they will have not their full interest for

science till it is shown who most of the actors are under their

disguises.

This is the nearest task of mythology.

There are masterpieces in literature filled with myths, inspired

with myth conceptions of many kinds, simply colored by the life of

the time and the nations among which these masterpieces were

written and moulded to shape by artists, made strong from the

spirit of great, simple people, as unknown to us as the nameless

heroes who perished before Agamemnon. How much mythology is there

in the Iliad and the Odyssey, in the Æneid, in the Divine Comedy of

Dante, in the works of the other three great Italian poets? How

much in Paradise Lost? How could “King Lear” and “Midsummer Night’s

Dream,” or the “Idylls of the King,” have been written without

Keltic mythology? Many of these literary masterpieces have not

merely myths in their composition as a sentence has words, but the

earlier ones are enlarged or modified myth-tales of those periods,

while the later ones are largely modeled on and inspired by the

earlier. [7]

Again he declares:

It should be remembered that whatever be the names of the myth-tale

heroes at present, the original heroes were not human. They were

not men and women, though in most cases the present heroes or

heroines bear the names of men and women, or children; they perform

deeds which no man could perform, which only one of the forces of

Nature could perform, if it had the volition and desires of a

person. This is the great cause of wonderful deeds in myth-tales.

[8]

With reference to the work already done in American Indian mythology,

Mr. Curtin remarks:

We have now in North America a number of groups of tales obtained

from the Indians which, when considered together, illustrate and

supplement one another; they constitute, in fact, a whole system.

These tales we may describe as forming collectively the creation

myth of the New World.... In some cases, simple and transparent, it

is not difficult to recognize the heroes; they are distinguishable

at once either by their names or their actions or both. In other

cases these tales are more involved, and the heroes are not so

easily known, because they are concealed by names and epithets.

Taken as a whole, however, the Indian tales are remarkably clear.

[9]

As to the content of these American Indian tales and legends, Mr.

Curtin says:

What is the substance and sense of these Indian tales, of what do

they treat? To begin with, they give an account of how the present

order of things arose in the world, and are taken up with the

exploits, adventures, and struggles of various elements, animals,

birds, reptiles, insects, plants, rocks, and other objects before

they became what they are.... According to the earliest tales of

North America, this world was occupied, prior to the appearance of

man, by beings called variously “the first people,” “the outside

people,” or simply “people,”—the same term in all cases being used

for people that is applied to Indians at present.

These people, who were very numerous, lived together for ages in

harmony. There were no collisions among them, no disputes during

that period; all were in perfect accord. In some mysterious

fashion, however, each individual was changing imperceptibly; an

internal movement was going on. At last a time came when the

differences were sufficient to cause conflict, except in the case

of a group to be mentioned hereafter, and struggles began. These

struggles were gigantic, for the “first people” had mighty power;

they had also wonderful perception and knowledge. They felt the

approach of friends or enemies even at a distance; they knew the

thought in another’s heart. If one of them expressed a wish, it was

accomplished immediately; nay, if he even thought of a thing, it

was there before him. Endowed with such powers and qualities, it

would seem that their struggles would be endless and indecisive;

but such was not the case. Though opponents might be equally

dextrous, and have the power or the wish or the word in a similar

degree, one of them would conquer in the end through wishing for

more effective and better things, and thus become the hero of a

higher cause; that is, a cause from which benefit would accrue to

mankind, the coming race. [10]

... Among living creatures, we are not to reckon man, for man does

not appear in any of those myth tales; they relate solely to

extra-human existences, and describe the battle and agony of

creation, not the adventures of anything in the world since it

received its present form and office. According to popular modes of

thought and speech, all this would be termed the fall of the gods,

for the “first people” of the Indian tales correspond to the

earliest gods of other races. [11]

In the theory of spiritual evolution, worked out by the aboriginal

mind of America, all kinds of moral quality and character are

represented as coming from an internal movement through which the

latent, unevolved personality of each individual of these “first

people,” or gods, is produced. Once that personality is produced,

every species of dramatic situation and tragic catastrophe follows

as an inevitable sequence. There is no more peace after that; there

are only collisions followed by combats which are continued by the

gods till they are turned into all the things, animal, vegetable,

and mineral—which are either useful or harmful to man, and thus

creation is accomplished. During the period of struggles, the gods

organize institutions, social and religious, according to which

they live. These are bequeathed to man; and nothing that an Indian

has is of human invention, all is divine. An avowed innovation,

anything that we call reform, anything invented by man, would be

looked on as sacrilege, a terrible, an inexpiable crime. The Indian

lives in a world prepared by the gods, and follows in their

footsteps—that is the only morality, the one pure and holy

religion. [12]

This creation myth of the New World is a work of great value, for

by aid of it we can bring order into mythology, and reconstruct, at

least in outline, and provisionally, that early system of belief

which was common to all races: a system which, though expressed in

many languages and in endlessly varying details, has one meaning,

and was, in the fullest sense of the word, one—a religion truly

catholic and œcumenical, for it was believed in by all people,

wherever resident, and believed in with a vividness of faith, and a

sincerity of attachment, which no civilized man can even imagine,

unless he has had long experience of primitive races. [13]

The war between the gods continued till it produced on land, in the

water, and the air, all creatures that move, and all plants that

grow. There is not a beast, bird, fish, reptile, insect, or plant

which is not a fallen divinity; and for every one noted there is a

story of its previous existence.

This transformation of the former people, or divinities, of America

was finished just before the present race of men—that is, the

Indians—appeared. [14]

In some mythologies a few personages who are left unchanged at the

eve of man’s coming transform themselves voluntarily. The details

of the change vary from tribe to tribe, but in all it takes place

in some described way, and forms part of the general change, or

metamorphosis, which is the vital element in the American system.

In many, perhaps in all, the mythologies, there is an account of

how some of the former people, or gods, instead of fighting and

taking part in the struggle of creation and being transformed,

retained their original character, and either went above the sky or

sailed away westward to where the sky comes down, and passed out

under it, and beyond, to a pleasant region where they live in

delight. This is that contingent to which I have referred, that

part of the “first people” in which no passion was developed; they

remained in primitive simplicity, undifferentiated, and are happy

at present. They correspond to those gods of classic antiquity who

enjoyed themselves apart, and took no interest whatever in the

sufferings or the joys of mankind. [15]

Everything in nature had a tale of its own, if some one would but

tell it, and during the epoch of constructive power in the

race,—the epoch when languages were built up and great stories

made,—few things of importance to people of that time were left

unconsidered; hence there was among the Indians of America a volume

of tales as immense, one might say, as an ocean river. This

statement I make in view of materials which I have gathered myself,

and which are still unpublished,—materials which, though

voluminous, are comparatively meager, merely a hint of what in some

tribes was lost, and of what in others is still uncollected....

From what is known of the mind of antiquity, and from what data we

have touching savage life in the present, we may affirm as a theory

that primitive beliefs in all places are of the same system

essentially as the American. In that system, every individual

existence beyond man is a divinity, but a divinity under

sentence,—a divinity weighed down by fate, a divinity with a

history behind it, a history which is tragedy or comedy as the case

may be. These histories extend along the whole line of experience,

and include every combination conceivable to primitive man. [16]

During eight years of investigation among Indian tribes in North

America, I obtained the various parts of that Creation myth

mentioned in this introduction, from tribes that were remote from

one another, and in different degrees of development. Such tales I

found in the east, in the central regions, and finally in

California and Oregon. Over this space, the extreme points of which

are 3,000 miles apart, each tribe has the Creation myth,—one

portion being brought out with special emphasis in one tribe, and

another portion in a different one. In tribes least developed, the

earliest tales are very distinct, and specially valuable on some

points relating to the origin and fall of the gods. Materials from

the extreme west are more archaic and simple than those of the

east. In fact the two regions present the two extremes, in North

America, of least developed and most developed, aboriginal thought.

In this is their interest. They form one complete system. [17]

To sum up, we may say, that the Indian tales reveal to us a whole

system of religion, philosophy, and social polity....

Those tales form a complete series. The whole mental and social

life of the race to which they belong is evident in them. [18]

The results to be obtained from a comparison of systems of thought

like the Indian and the Gaelic would be great, if made thoroughly.

If extended to all races, such a comparison would render possible a

history of the human mind in a form such as few men at present even

dream of,—a history with a basis as firm as that which lies under

geology.... We must make large additions indeed to our knowledge of

primitive peoples. We must complete the work begun in America....

The undertaking is arduous, and there is need to engage in it

promptly. The forces of civilized society, at present, are

destroying on all sides, not saving that which is precious in

primitive people. Civilized society supposes that man, in an early

degree of development, should be stripped of all that he owns, both

material and mental, and then be refashioned to serve the society

that stripped him. If he will not yield to the stripping and

training, then slay him. [19]

In the United States, little was accomplished till recent years; of

late, however, public interest has been roused somewhat, and, since

Major Powell entered the field, and became Director of the Bureau

of Ethnology, more has been done in studying the native races of

America than had been done from the discovery of the country up to

that time.[18]

Of course there is no true information in the American ethnic

religion as to the real changes which affected the world around us;

but there is in it, as in all systems like it, true information

regarding the history of the human mind. Every ethnic religion

gives us documentary evidence. It gives us positive facts which, in

their own sphere, are as true as are facts of geology in the

history of the earth’s crust and surface. They do not tell us what

took place in the world without, in the physical universe, they had

no means of doing so; but they do tell us what took place at

certain periods in the world of mind, in the interior of man. [20]

An ethnic or primitive religion is one which belongs to people of

one blood and language, people who increased and developed together

with the beliefs of every sort which belong to them. Such a

religion includes every species of knowledge, every kind of custom,

institution, and art. Every aboriginal nation or human brood has

its gods. All people of one blood and origin are under the

immediate care and supervision of their gods, and preserve

continual communication and converse with them. According to their

own beliefs, such people received from their gods all that they

have, all that they practice, all that they know. Such people,

while their blood is unmixed and their society unconquered, adhere

to their gods with the utmost fidelity.

The bonds which connect a nation with its gods, bonds of faith, and

those which connect the individuals of that nation with one

another, bonds of blood, are the strongest known to primitive man,

and are the only social bonds in prehistoric ages. [21]

A good deal has been given to the world of late on mythology by

able writers who with good materials would attain good results; but

as the materials at their disposal are faulty, much of their work

with all its cleverness is mainly a persistent pouring of the empty

into the void.

We have seen attempts made to show that real gods have been

developed by savage men from their own dead savage chiefs. Such a

thing has never been done since the human race began, and it could

never have been imagined by any man who knew the ideas of primitive

races from actual experience or from competent testimony. The most

striking thing in all savage belief is the low estimate put on man

when unaided by divine, uncreated power. In Indian belief every

object in the universe is divine except man. [22]...

Vegetable gods, so called, have been scoffed at by writers on

mythology. The scoff is baseless, for the first people were turned,

or turned themselves, into trees and various plants as frequently

as into beasts and other creatures. Maize or Indian corn is a

transformed god who gave himself to be eaten to save man from

hunger and death. When Spanish priests saw little cakes of meal

eaten ceremonially by Indians, and when the latter informed them

that they were eating their god, the good priests thought this a

diabolical mockery of the Holy Sacrament, and a blasphemous trick

of Satan to ruin poor ignorant Indians.

I have a myth in which the main character is a violent and cruel

old personage who is merciless and faith-breaking, who does no end

of damage till he is cornered at last by a good hero and turned

into the wild parsnip. Before transformation this old parsnip could

travel swiftly, but now he must stay in one place, and of course

kills people only when they eat him.

The treasure saved to science by the primitive race of America is

unique in value and high significance. The first result from it is

to carry us back through untold centuries to that epoch when man

made the earliest collective and consistent explanation of this

universe and its origin.

Occupying this vantage-ground, we can now throw a flood of light on

all those mythologies and ethnic religions or systems of thought

from which are lost in part, great or small, the materials needed

to prove the foundation and beginnings of each of them. In this

condition are all ancient recorded religions, whether of Greece,

Rome, Egypt, Chaldea, Persia, or India. [23]

Again, in speaking of the first people, the ancients, or the man-beings

of the oldest myth, or rather cycle of myths, in America, Mr. Curtin

continues his exposition of the significance of these poetic figures:

After they had lived on an indefinite period, they appear as a vast

number of groups, which form two camps, which may be called the

good and the bad. In the good camp are the persons who originate

all the different kinds of food, establish all institutions, arts,

games, amusements, dances, and religious ceremonies for the coming

race.

In the other camp are cunning, deceitful beings, ferocious and

hungry man-eaters—the harmful powers of every description. The

heroes of the good camp overcome these one after another by

stratagem, superior skill, swiftness, or the use of the

all-powerful wish; but they are immortal, and, though overcome, can

not be destroyed....

When the present race of men (that is, Indians) appear on the

scene, the people of the previous order of affairs have vanished.

One division, vast in number, a part of the good and all the bad

ones, have become the beasts, birds, fishes, reptiles, insects,

plants, stones, cold, heat, light, darkness, fire, rain, snow,

earthquake, sun, moon, stars—have become, in fact, every living

thing, object, agency, phenomenon, process, and power outside of

man. Another party much smaller in number, who succeeded in

avoiding entanglement in the struggle of preparing the world for

man, left the earth. According to some myths they went beyond the

sky to the upper land; according to others they sailed in boats

over the ocean to the West—sailed till they went out beyond the

setting sun, beyond the line where the sky touches the earth. There

they are living now free from pain, disease, and death, which came

into the world just before they left, but before the coming of man

and through the agency of this first people....

This earliest American myth cycle really describes a period in the

beginning of which all things—and there was no thing then which was

not a person—lived in company without danger to each other or

trouble. This was the period of primæval innocence, of which we

hear so many echoes in tradition and early literature, when that

infinite variety of character and quality now manifest in the

universe was still dormant and hidden, practically uncreated. This

was the “golden age” of so many mythologies—the “golden age”

dreamed of so often, but never seen by mortal man; a period when,

in their original form and power, the panther and the deer, the

wolf and the antelope, lay down together, when the rattlesnake was

as harmless as the rabbit, when trees could talk and flowers sing,

when both could move as nimbly as the swiftest on earth.

Such, in a sketch exceedingly meager and imperfect, a hint rather

than a sketch, is the first great cycle of American mythology—the

creation-myth of the New World. From this cycle are borrowed the

characters and machinery for myths of later construction and

stories of inferior importance; myths relating to the action of all

observed forces and phenomena; struggles of the seasons, winds,

light and darkness; and stories in great numbers containing

adventures without end of the present animals, birds, reptiles, and

insects—people of the former world in their fallen state....

To whatever race they may belong, the earliest myths, whether of

ancient record or recent collection, point with unerring indication

to the same source as those of America, for the one reason that

there is no other source. The personages of any given body of myths

are such manifestations of force in the world around them, or the

result of such manifestations, as the ancient myth-makers observed;

and whether they went backwards or forwards, these were the only

personages possible to them, because they were the only personages

accessible to their senses or conceivable to their minds....

Since they had passions varying like those of men, the myth-makers

narrate the origin of these passions, and carried their personages

back to a period of peaceful and innocent chaos, when there was no

motive as yet in existence. After a while the shock came. The

motive appeared in the form of revenge for acts done through

cupidity or ignorance; strife began, and never left the world of

the gods till one quota of them was turned into animals, plants,

heavenly bodies, everything in the universe, and the other went

away unchanged to a place of happy enjoyment.

All myths have the same origin, and all run parallel up to a

certain point, which may be taken as the point to which the

least-developed people have risen. [24]

And Mr. Curtin further says:

At that period the earth ... was occupied by personages who are

called people, though it is well understood at all times that they

were not human; they were persons, individuals. [25]

To trace the ancestral sources of a people’s thought and character, a

careful and critical study of the myths, and later of the mythology of

that people, first exclusively and then comparatively, is required.

This study deals with ideas and concepts expressed by three well-known

Greek terms, mythos, epos, and logos, and also with those expressed by

the term resulting from the combination of the first and the last of

these words. These are among many words of human speech which comprise

all human experience and history. It is remarkable also that each may

be translated into English by the term “word.”

The word “mythology” is a philosophic term composed of two very

interesting and instructive Greek words, mythos and logos.

The first term, mythos, denoted whatever was thoughtfully uttered by

the mouth of savage and barbaric men—the expression of thought which

had been shut in to mature—a story of prehistoric time, a naïve,

creative concept stated in terms of human life and activity—a poem. In

matters of religion and cosmogony such an utterance was final and

conclusive to those men.

The second term, logos, having at the beginning approximately the same

meaning as mythos, became in Greek philosophic thinking the symbol or

expression of the internal constitution as well as the external form

and sign of thought, and so became “the expression of exact thought—...

exact because it corresponds to universal and unchanging principles,”

reaching “its highest exaltation in becoming not only reason in man but

the reason in the universe—the Divine Logos, the thought of God, the

Son of God, God himself” (Curtin). The logos is thus the expression of

the philosophy of men measurably cultured; it is the intelligent

exegesis of the content of the mythos in terms of objective and

subjective reality; it is scientific because it is logical; it is the

later literary criticism—the analytic and synthetic treatment of myths

and epics. So, in the experience of every people having an ethnic past,

mythos and logos represent two well-defined stages of human thought—the

naïve and the philosophic—and also the elder time and the modern. So

mythology may be defined as the science or the logic of the myth; it

belongs to times of relatively high culture and does not flourish in

savagery, for savages have only myths. It may be well to note that a

third stage of thought is expressed in the Greek term epos, which is

the adornment or garbing and dramatizing of the myth concepts in poetic

form, in story, saga, and legend—the epic.

Only modern research with its critical exegesis and sympathetic

interpretation brings down the study of the concepts of the myths of

the fathers measurably to the character of a science.

The highest type of poetry expresses itself in myth, in the epos, and

in the logos. For men of undeveloped thought, of inchoate mentation,

this is the mental process through which they dimly apprehend the

significance of the complex and closely interrelated phenomena of life

and of environing nature, and the medium by which they harmonize the

ceaseless functioning of these with their own experience, with the

activity of their own subconscious mind, and with the divine promptings

and visions vouchsafed them by the dawn of their own superconscious

intellect.

The initial step of the process is the ingenuous act of the imagination

in personifying, yea, in ideally humanizing, the bodies, elements, and

forces of environing nature; as, for instance, the picturing by the

Iroquois and their neighbors, the Algonquian, of snow as the living

body of a man formed by the God of Winter, whose breath was potent

enough to drive animals and birds into their winter retreats and some

even into hibernation, represented as the hiding of the animals from

his brother, the Master or God of Life.

The next step in the process is the socialization of this vast

company—the imputation of life, soul, purpose, and a rational rôle to

them constitutes the epic, which is also the poet’s handiwork.

As the basis of religious expression, Seneca-Iroquoian myths and

legends, in common with those of all other men, are to most people the

empty tales of superstition, the foundations of idolatry, because its

gods and deities, forsooth, have never actually existed. But myths are

fictitious only in form and dress, while they are true in matter and

spirit, for truth is congruity between reason and objects, and hence is

eternal and universal.

The human side of these personifications of the processes and phenomena

of nature in some instances has become so real and so natural that

these beings no longer act or function in terms of the processes of

nature only, but as the thaumaturgic fetishes of potent sorcerers,

performing wonderful feats of orenda, as they are represented as doing

in a large number of these narratives. Now, these accounts are

certainly not myths and are not legends in the true sense of the term,

but are, rather, fictitious narratives or tales of reputed individual

human achievement, quite incredible, of course, as authentic acts of

mankind. They center about the reputed affairs of a human being, or do

so at least in the view of the modern story-teller.

In the collection of Seneca narratives of Mr. Curtin eight relate to

the Genonsgwa (the Stone Coats or Stone Giants), six to Hiʹʼnoⁿʼ

(Hinon) or the Thunder People, six to the Dagwanoenyent or Whirlwind

People, five to the Shagodiioweq or Wind People, and three to the

Djogeon or Dwarf People. It is probable that the two groups of “wind”

peoples originally arose from a single personage. From single

personages like Hiʹʼnoⁿʼ or Thunder, Shagodiioweq or the Wind, and

Dagwanoenyent or the Cyclone or Whirlwind, the story-tellers of to-day

have created large bodies of fictitious people, representing a reversal

of the original process by which the first great concepts were formed.

But truth seemingly was not readily appreciable by primal men until it

was dramatized in saga, in legend, and in myth, in formulas, rites,

ceremonies, customs, and material symbols based on those narratives; in

short, it had to be couched in terms of human expression and activity.

These symbols and figurative expressions bore the fashion and impress

of the time and the place, and so before truth so dramatized can be

fully understood it must be carefully freed from the garb and trappings

of local and temporal use and need; in brief, the literal unreality of

myth must be lifted from the substantive and the spiritual realities it

symbolizes.

And, for this reason, a deity embodying or representing one of the

great recurrent processes of nature or one of the seemingly changeless

features of the universe is something vastly more than a mere figment

of the human brain; for, although conceived in terms of man, the

“deity” in his own sphere and function is limitless in power,

incomprehensible in mode of life and action, and abides without

beginning of days or end of years—properties which make the god divine

and infinitely superior to man, the creature of divine power.

One of the fundamental teachings of the study of the myths of the

American Indians is that the so-called Genesis or Creation myths relate

the activities and exploits, in more or less detail, of the “elder

people,” the “first people,” whom men later call the gods. Rightly

understood and sympathetically conceived, these events are not

predicated of human beings as such. These narrations explain in just

what manner the present order of things in nature arose; they detail

what took place in a condition of things different from the present,

and which were, in the minds of their relators, the necessary

antecedent processes resulting in the establishment of the present

order of nature. They treat only of the “first people.” None relate to

human beings and none treat of things done since man appeared on earth.

Human in form and in feeling, and yet most divine, were the gods and

deities of the ancient Seneca and the other Iroquoian peoples. While

the divine social and political organization was necessarily for

psychological reasons a close reflex or replica of the human, and

although both gods and man derived descent from an original first

parent, yet the first divine ancestor was a self-existing god, and the

first man was the creature of one of these divine Powers.

The expression of the mythic—the cosmogonic, the cosmologic—in terms of

human function and attribute and activity is well illustrated in the

legends and myths of the Iroquoian peoples. In these sagas the

personifications of the elements and forces of nature are classified as

human by the use of the term oñʹgwe, “a human being or mankind” (for

the word has both a singular and a plural signification), to designate

them.

The task of classifying these narratives, even tentatively, is not an

easy one, for the proportion of these stories which seem to be

unquestionably fiction to those which are myths and legends is

relatively much larger than might be suspected without some

investigation. It is clearly wrong to call everything legend or myth

when the evidence from the facts seems to forbid such action. For it is

evident that very many of the narratives are fiction—stories composed

and related to amuse, to mystify, or to glorify some hero, or perhaps

to spread the fame of some noted sorcerer and his fetishes.

The setting and the framework of the narrative or story may be taken

from a myth and one or more myth episodes incorporated in it, but the

result is a fabrication because it does not rest on facts of human

experience.

Now, for example, the narratives concerning the so-called Stone Coats,

Stone Giants, or the Genonsgwa are not myths but legends. These beings

do not figure in the Creation Myth of the Iroquois, but are a brood of

beings whose connection with Stone is due to false etymology of a

proper name in a myth. [26] This is an interesting and instructive

example of forgotten derivations of words and names and the resultant

new conceptions.

In the Genesis myth of the Iroquoian peoples the Winter Season, by

personification, was placed in the class of man-beings with the name,

“He-who-is-clad-in-ice,” or “He-who-is-ice-clad.” Now it so happens

that the word for ice and for chert or flint stone is derived from a

common stem whose fundamental meaning is “glare,” “crystal,” or “what

is ice-like.” But the myth-tellers, in order to add an air of the

mystical to their recital, did not fail to play on the double meaning

of the word for ice, and so represented the Winter Man-being as “The

Flint-clad Man-being” rather than as “The Ice-clad Man-being.” And the

results of Winter’s cold and frost were told in terms of flint or chert

stone, and so bergs and cakes and blocks of ice became in the narration

objects of flint and chert stone. Winter’s cold is conveyed from place

to place by means of cakes and bergs of ice, which are transformed by

the poet into canoes of flint or stone. And in time the stone canoe is

transferred from myth to the realm of fiction and legend to glorify the

fame of some human hero.

And in the thinking of the Iroquois the Flint-clad Man-being became

separated and distinct from the Man-being of the Winter. At this point

the fictitious Man-being who was Stone-clad parted company forever with

the personified nature force or process that was frost-bearing and

ice-clad. The former was gradually reduced to a peculiar species of

mankind—the stone giant, for he was represented as stone-clad, while

the latter retained his first estate as one of the chief characters in

the Genesis myth of the Iroquoian peoples.

The ordinary Iroquoian concept of the Stone Coat or Stone Giant

indicates, to the student at least, that the Winter God, the Great

Frost Giant of the common Iroquoian Genesis myth, was its source. Aside

from the evident etymologic connection, the most significant feature is

the constant tradition that the home land of these anthropoid monsters

is in the regions of the north where this same authority usually places

the burial place of the Winter God after his defeat and death at the

hands of his twin brother, the Life God, sometimes called the Master of

Life.

The tales which relate how the Stone Coat people are made from perverse

men and women first by carefully covering the body with pitch and then

by rolling and wallowing in sand and down sand banks repeatedly, shows

how utterly forgotten is the true source of this interesting concept

among the story tellers and their hearers. There is no doubt that the

original “Stone Coat” was the “Ice-Clad Winter God.” In the Curtin

collection there are eight stories which refer to the Genonsgwa, or

Stone Coats, sometimes called Stone Giants, but there is nothing in

them to connect these peculiar fictitious monsters with the original

conception. In none are the operations of the winter process predicated

of these fictitious beings. They are merely exaggerated human figures

and not symbols of a process of nature, their deeds are the deeds of

men, and are not the acts of a process of nature expressed in terms of

human activity.

And thus is founded the race of the Stone Giants or Stone Coats, or

more popularly the Giants. When once these fictitious beings were

regarded as human monsters they soon became confused with cruel hermits

and bloodthirsty sorcerers who because of evil tastes were cannibals

and dwelt apart from the habitations of men, who shunned and feared

them, and the tales about them became narratives that do not detail the

activities of the Winter God—the personified process of nature; and so,

like their human prototypes, they increased and multiplied mightily,

and so were as numerous as the leaves on the trees.

The persons or figures produced by the attribution of human life and

mind to all objective and subjective things were, by virtue of the

reality of the elements they embodied, the deities or the gods of this

system of thought. In brief, they were composed of both the

metamorphosed and of the unchanged first or ancient people who in

distinctive character were conceived of as the formal and outward

expression of human mind. In the course of time these deities or gods

are said to have taught their people the arts and crafts and the

elements of their culture and their faith, thus revealing their will

and the things which were to be in the future. This divine knowledge,

this wisdom of the gods, was obtained or revealed in dreams or visions

and by theophanies. But a knowledge of the activities of the people

holding these views makes it evident that the doctrines and the arts

and the crafts taught by the gods and the institutions founded by them

for the people are in fact the activities of the people themselves

which had been unconsciously imputed to these deities. Of course, the

gods can teach and can reveal only what has been before imputed to them

by the people.

The original and chief person in the myth was not a human being,

although he was represented as possessed of the form, the desires, and

the volition of a person. He is reputed to have performed acts which no

human being had the power to perform, acts which only the functioning

of a process of nature or of life could accomplish.

In some of these narratives human beings, bearing human names, have

been substituted and the heroes and heroines of these stories are men,

women, and children.

The substitution of human beings in the stead of the personified forces

or processes of nature supplies the reason that apparently wonderful

superhuman deeds are accomplished by the human substitutes, whereas the

acts portrayed are those of natural forces, not of human brain and

brawn.

The stories of the Dagwanoenyent, or Flying Heads, Cyclones, and

Whirlwinds, of the Genonsgwa, or Stone Coats (the Frost Giants, or Gods

of Winter, but originally named Tawiskaron), and of the

Sʻhagodiyoweqgowa, or Wind God, purport to relate historical events,

although they are mythic and legendary in form. But unlettered peoples

do not transmit history. The writing of history presupposes not only

the art of writing but also some kind of permanent social and political

organization. Individual experiences fade rapidly, for lacking the

needful general interest they do not unite with others in forming even

some phase of the local history of a group. The experiences of

individuals and even of small unimportant groups of people also lack

the interest necessary to bring about their transmission as history.

Hence such uncivilized peoples leave to their posterity no authentic

accounts of the events of their times, for only in song and saga, where

poetry mingles with fact, do they attempt to transmit the narratives of

historical events and experiences.

But with the organization and development of society into greater

complexity of social and governmental organization there arises the

need for the transmission of a record of tribal or communal experiences

in which a certain number of persons are intensely interested—tribal

wars, feats and acts and sayings of great leaders and reformers, and

other noteworthy public events claim permanency of record, and thus

history is written.

Popular tradition treats historical events in a naïve poetical way, and

authentic historical experiences may thus be preserved. Through poetic

treatment oral tradition becomes legend, so that one of the clearest

criterions of legend is the fact that it frequently relates things that

are not credible. Legend is the tradition of men who have not the art

of writing and is a particular form of poetic narrative. So that in

origin and nature history differs from legend because of difference of

spheres of interest. Private and personal affairs and experiences and

things that are of some interest to the common people and heroes, great

personages, and public events and affairs are made attractive to the

popular minds by means of poetic treatment. Legend is oral tradition in

use among folk who do not make use of writing or other graphic art to

secure permanency of record, while history is the written record of

events and achievements and thoughts of men, which always presupposes

the existence and the practice of graphic or scriptorial art.

Now, oral tradition, or legend, is not transmitted without important

variation in details from generation to generation, and so it is an

untrustworthy medium for the conveyance of historical events.

The saga, or popular story, may become sacred legend—that is, a

characteristically “sacred” narrative about the “first people,” or the

gods—or it may remain simply a story or tale. These two classes of

story or narrative had specific names among the Seneca and their

congeners of the Iroquoian stock. The sacred legend was called Kăʹkāāʼ,

or Kăʹkarăʼ by the r-using dialects of the Iroquoian tribes. The

literal meaning of this noun is not known; in the Onondaga dialect the

k-sound would be replaced by the g-sound. These legends are “sacred” to

the extent that they would not be related except during certain seasons

of the year for the fear of breaking a religious taboo, forbidding

strictly the telling of this class of narrative. The transgression of

this prohibition was punished by the offended and vexed “first people,”

concerning whom the myths or stories are related, although modern

story-tellers, with scarce an exception, who have forgotten the true

and logical reason for the inhibition mistakenly declare that the

aforesaid penalty would be inflicted by the toads or snakes or by some

other subtle animal.

The myths of the American Indian refer to an order of things which

preceded the present order, and to a race of man-beings who dwelt first

in the world above the sky and later in small number only on this earth

and who were the so-called “first people,” “the ancients.” It is

evident that myths of origins project backward to an assumed condition

of things the story of a day or of a year, and creation is described as

Spring on a universal scale, that is, it explains the manner in which

the order of things, existent where the stories are told, came about,

as a Rebirth of Nature. But no one will contend that there were human

eyewitnesses of what the narratives report.

The wise men, prophets, and priests of tribal men painted these tales

with the glamour and witchery of poetry. Myths are the poetic judgments

of tribal men about the phenomena of life and the outside world and

embody the philosophy of these men about the problems and mysteries of

the universe around them and in their own lives. So, in order to

understand these narratives, it is necessary to study them with the

deepest sympathy. But our sympathy with the viewpoint of the myth

narratives of tribal men should not veil the realities of science from

our minds.

Piloted by science in seeking to know the truth about the universe,

scholars do not expect to discover it in the myth-lore or the folk-lore

of tribal men. To study the birth and the growth of opinions forms one

of the most instructive chapters in the science of mind or psychology.

The Seneca name Sʻhagodiioweʹʻgōwā or Sʻhagodiioweʹqgōwā designates one

of the famous “man-beings” who are of the lineage of the “first

people.” Some unknowing Indian interpreters render this term

erroneously by the English words “false face,” which is a translation

which effectually conceals the literal meaning of the expression, which

is freely “The Great Ones Who Defend Them.” But as an appellative the

term is also applied to a single one of these fictitious beings. The

plural concept is evidently a late development, and probably arose

after the establishment of societies whose members, when ceremonially

attired, must for one thing wear a wooden mask having as its essential

mark a wry mouth. So it is clear that the expression “false face”

applies to the members of such societies and not at all to the

man-beings so impersonated. The Iroquoian myth of Creation knows only

one man-being, who assumed the duty of protecting mankind from

pestilence and disease. He was the God of the Air or the Wind,

sometimes appearing as the Whirlwind. Ceremonially he is addressed as

Sʻhedwásōʹdăʻ or as Etʻhiʻsōʹdăʻ, both meaning “He Who Is Our

Grandfather.”

It would seem that the pluralizing of the concept has resulted in a

marked forgetting of the original objective reality represented in the

concept, which in turn detracts from the high esteem in which the

original Wind God was held. The Onondaga name of this personage is

Haduʹʼiʼ; the Mohawk, Akoñʹwărăʼ. Both these names have arisen from

something peculiar to members of the so-called “False Face Societies,”

the first meaning, from the common postures assumed by the members,

“hunch-backed,” and the second, “mask,” from the wooden mask worn by

the members of the society when in session. So the expression of the

evil side of the manifestations of the Power of the Wind or Air,

Pestilence, Disease, and Death may safely be predicated of this member

of the “first people.”

A god or deity exerts or maintains its influence over the mind and

heart of man because it is something more than a mere creature of the

human brain. The god exercises certain attributes, peculiarities and

forces which place him outside the sphere of human knowledge and

experience and competence into a class by himself; he embodies in

himself, according to belief, the power to function as a process or

force of the universe plus the attributed human faculties and aspect.

Some of the French writers among the early explorers in North America

refer to a native belief in “the ancients of animals,” which, it was

stated, were regarded as the type and the progenitors of each

particular species of animal. But this statement gives only a glimpse

of a larger faith. These so-called “ancients of animals” were indeed

only a part of the great company of “the ancients,” “the ancestors,” or

“the first people,” each being a personified element or process of life

or of outside nature, who became by fated metamorphosis the reputed

progenitors of all faunal and floral life on the earth.

But an interpretative understanding of the Genesis myth of the American

Indians shows that these “ancients,” these primal “ancestors,” were

regarded as “human beings,” as belonging to that class of animate

beings to which the Indian himself belonged. Yet, these “ancients” were

the “gods,” “the beings,” or “the existences,” of anthropic form,

character, and volition, whose metamorphosis later produced, according

to the Indian philosophy, the present order of things on earth. So, the

“first beings,” conceived as “human beings,” were indeed the gods—the

personified agents of the powers, processes, and phenomena of nature.

It is this principle of transformation, or metamorphosis, that in part

explains why there are represented largely “anthropic gods” with

“animal masks” in Central America, Mexico, India, China, Egypt,

Babylonia, and Assyria, and not many true “animal gods” with “human

masks.”

But in some places there arose confusion between these poetic creations

of a childlike faith and the lineal ancestors of men. When pride of

birth and of position dominated the minds of aristocratic men they

sought to trace their pedigree to the gods, and so they blindly claimed

descent from these primal gods, who, in their anthropic aspect, were

mere fictions of the mind, and so in time and in some lands this

process resulted in what is usually called “ancestor worship.” This is,

therefore, never a primitive faith, but only a decadent culture.

All early men of inchoate mentation, of self-centered thinking, shared

their needs and afflictions, their woes and ambitions, their sufferings

and aspirations, and their joys and blessings with their gods, feeling

that their gods who bore their own likeness by the unconscious

imputation of human nature to them were endowed with the attributes,

whims, virtues, and frailties of human nature. They believed that their

gods must be men—man-beings, men like themselves—else these deities

could not foresee and understand their necessities and so could not

sympathize with men everywhere. Hence an Iroquois, thinking and

speaking of their deities only in terms of human speech and thought,

designates a god or other spirit of his faith by the word denoting man,

human being, or mankind.

Of the gods and deities of Iroquois myths the editor has written:

Like most American Indian mythologies, the Iroquoian deals with

three great mythic cosmical periods. In the first dwelt a race of

gigantic anthropic beings—man-beings, let them be called, because

though they were reputed to have been larger, purer, wiser, more

ancient, and possessed of more potent orenda (q. v.), than man, and

having superior ability to perform the great elemental functions

characterizing definitely the things represented by them, they

nevertheless had the form, mien, and mind of man, their creator;

for unconsciously did man create the gods, the great primal beings

of cosmic time—the controllers or directors, or impersonations, of

the bodies and phenomena of nature—in his own image. To these

man-beings, therefore, were imputed the thought, manners, customs,

habits, and social organization of their creators; notwithstanding

this, man regarded them as uncreated, eternal, and immortal; for by

a curious paradox, man, mistaking his own mental fictions, his

metaphors, for realities, explained his own existence, wisdom, and

activities as the divine product of the creations of his own

inchoate mind. The dwelling-place of the first great primal beings,

characterized by flora and fauna respectively identical with the

plant and animal life appearing later on the earth, was conceived

to have been the upper surface of the visible sky, which was

regarded as a solid plain. Here lived the first beings in peace and

contentment for a very long period of time: no one knows or ever

knew the length of this first cosmic period of tranquil existence.

But there came a time when an event occurred which resulted in a

metamorphosis in the state and aspect of celestial and earthly

things; in fact, the seeming had to become or to assume the real,

and so came to pass the cataclysmic change of things of the first

period into that now seen on the earth and in the sky, and the

close of this period was the dawn of the gods of this mythology.

[27]

So the character and the nature of the deities and spirits of the faith

of the Iroquois peoples were a direct reflex of those attributes of the

people themselves. It may be inferred in general that the more

primitive and cultureless the people are the more crude, the more

barbaric and savage will be their conceptions of their gods and the

nature and functions of these naïve creations, but, conversely, it is

only with the possession of a higher degree of intelligence that come

nobler, more refined, grander, and more spiritual ideas of their gods.

This admits of no exception.

Whatever, therefore, the final terms are in which men at any time and

place define their deities, the premises of their reasoning about them

is always quite the same—namely, to define the unknown man in terms of

the known men themselves—but this known quantity, man, is variable and

inconstant, changing with time and place. All powers and functions and

attributes of mind and body, inherent in man and distinctive of him—no

matter whether beneficent or evil—men imputed to their gods in more or

less idealized form.

Guided by inchoate reasoning, the crude thinking of unscientific minds,

all early men, responsive to external stimuli and the internal yearning

for truth, ascribed to their gods and spirits not only all human

functions and attributes measurably idealized, but also all their arts

and social and religious institutions were likewise attributed,

probably quite unconsciously, to their gods and deities. These

anthropic features and activities and anthropopathic mind were not

ascribed, of course, to other men, but rather to the so-called “first

people”—the personified, animated and humanized phenomena and processes

of nature, of the environments of their experience. Thus, the social

and institutional organization of the gods becomes a somewhat idealized

epitome or reflex of the human society as it existed and exists among

the people in whose minds these divine organizations had their origin.

By so doing men painted, either consciously or unconsciously, in their

religious activities and in their god-lore a faithful picture of the

earliest culture and civilization of their own ethnic progenitors.

Hence, when authentic historical records are wanting the student may by

close and sympathetic analysis and interpretation of the myths and the

religion of a people acquire a fairly accurate knowledge of the history

and culture of such a people. In this manner, indeed, the gods verily

become the revealers of all history and the teachers of the arts and

crafts and industries and the true founders of the institutions—human

and divine—to that people. In this interaction of the human mind with

the forces and phenomena of life and environing nature lies the true

source of inspiration and prophecy. The history of the gods is the

history of man. Because the gods, in general, symbolize universal

processes in life and nature they and their attributes and functions in

time become more or less highly idealized creations of the conscious,

the subconscious, and the superconscious thinking of men.

The lesson of these myths and legends is that man is other than the

material world; that while he is in it he is not of it; that while he

feels nature’s elemental activities impelling him and impinging on his

senses, his apprehensive yearning heart sees the beckoning finger of a

higher and nobler destiny.

All bodies of myths agree perfectly on one fundamental principle,

transformation, through which all things on this earth have become what

they are.

This principle of metamorphosis indicates the mental process by which

these things were represented as becoming what they seemed to

be—animated things, subjectively endowed with human form, thought, and

volition, to explain the phenomena of life and surrounding nature.

I desire to record here my grateful acknowledgment of the assistance

rendered by Mr. F. W. Hodge, ethnologist in charge of the Bureau of

American Ethnology, in the form of valuable suggestions in connection

with the work and in other ways. I wish also to express my appreciation

of the courtesy of Messrs. Little, Brown & Co., of Boston, in giving

the bureau permission to use freely the material contained in the

instructive “Introductions” written by the late Jeremiah Curtin for his

interesting books, published by that company under the titles: “Myths

and Folk-Tales of the Russians, Western Slavs, and Magyars”; “Myths and

Folk-Lore of Ireland”; “Hero-Tales of Ireland”; and “Creation Myths of

Primitive America.”

PHONETIC KEY

a as in father

ā preceding sound, prolonged

ă as in what

ä as in hat

ǟ next preceding sound, prolonged

â as in all

ai as in aisle

au as ou in out

c as sh in shall

ç as th in wealth

d pronounced with the tip of the tongue touching the upper teeth, as

in enunciating English th in with; the only sound of d employed in

writing native words

e as in they

ĕ as in met

f as in waif

g as in gig

h as in hot

i as in pique

ī next preceding sound, prolonged

ĭ as in pit

k as in kick

n as in run

ñ as ng in ring

o as in note

q as ch in German ich

r slightly trilled; this is its only sound

s as in sop

t pronounced with the tip of the tongue touching the upper teeth, as

in enunciating the English th in with; this is its only sound

u as in rule

ŭ as in rut

w as in wit

y as in ye

dj as j in judge

hw as wh in what

tc as ch in church

ⁿ marks nasalized vowels, thus eⁿ, oⁿ, aiⁿ, ĕⁿ, äⁿ, âⁿ

ʻ indicates an aspiration or soft emission of breath

ʼ marks the glottal stop, äʼ, ĕⁿʼ

tʻh In this combination t and h are separately uttered, as th in the

English words hothouse, foothold.

MATERIAL COLLECTED BY JEREMIAH CURTIN

FICTION

1. THE SISTER AND HER SIX ELDER BROTHERS

Once there was a lodge, which extended east and west, with two doors,

one at each end. The fire burned in the middle of the lodge, which was

occupied by a sister and her six elder brothers. Three of the brothers

used the eastern doorway, and the other three the western doorway, for

entering and leaving the lodge, while the sister made use of both

doorways.

The eldest brother said, “What would you say, my brothers and sister,

if I should take a wife?” “We do not know,” they replied; “perhaps

nothing, if she does not abuse us.” So he went to bring the young

woman. He addressed her old mother, saying, “Are you willing that thy

daughter and I should marry?” She replied, “Certainly, if you will not

ill-treat her, but have pity on her.” Then the young man went to his

home, where he said, “She will come.”

Now, the mother made marriage-bread for the occasion. When it was ready

the maiden, bearing the bread on her back by means of the forehead

strap, started for the place where abode the six brothers and their

sister. They received her bread and ate it with a relish.

Then the elder brother said to his wife: “Now, I will tell you. In this

room you must never cross to the other side of the fire; and when you

desire to go out of doors you must invariably leave by this eastern

doorway. But when you desire to enter the lodge you must enter at the

other side, through the western doorway.”

Then it came to pass that the brothers began to hunt, as was their

custom.

Some time after this event the bride said, “Oh, pshaw! What the man

[her husband] thinks is indeed of small account,” and went directly

through the lodge to the western doorway, the thing which she had been

forbidden to do.

Now, her husband, the eldest brother, was hunting, and he came to a

deep gully over which a log extended. In crossing on this log he fell

off in such a way that his body was caught so that his head hung down

into the gully.

When night came on his brothers began to fear, saying, “Oh, why does

not our elder brother return! Let us go seek him.” So they prepared

torches and started. Following his tracks, in time they arrived at the

place where the body of their elder brother was hanging. It was found

that he was barely alive. After carefully extricating him from the

perilous situation they carried him home, where they properly cared for

him, giving him food and drink and dressing his wounds.

The next morning the younger brothers said one to the other, “The woman

who is dwelling here has abused us in this matter; therefore let her

return to her home.” Overhearing this speech, the young woman replied,

“It is well. Now, I shall go home.” And, arising in her place, she

departed.

The fifth brother started in pursuit of her; and as he was about to

grasp her, she let her skin robe fly back in such a manner that it took

out the eyes of her pursuer. When the other brothers became aware of

this misfortune which had befallen him, they were very angry and

started in pursuit of the young woman. Just as they were about to grasp

her, again she let her skin robe fly back so that it took out the eyes

of all the pursuing brothers. Then, indeed, they were very miserable.

And now all the work about the lodge fell to the lot of the little

girl, the young sister of these blind brothers. These ate whatever

their young sister, all alone, was able to get for them—weeds and roots

of various kinds. She was in the habit of running around out of doors.

One day when she had gone for water she saw some boys coming, paddling

in a canoe and making a great noise as they drew near, laughing and

shouting. When they arrived where she was they exclaimed, “Come hither.

Get aboard and let us have some fun.” But she replied, “No; it will not

be possible for me to do so. I will not do so, because I am taking care

of my elder brothers. They would become too miserable should I leave

them.” But they persisted, saying, “Now, anyway, for a short distance

you can leap into this canoe.” She finally decided to comply with their

request, and saying, “Indeed, yes!” she got aboard the canoe at once.

Then they started back, and when they arrived at a bend of the river

the little girl said, “Now I will get out of the canoe.” But her

captors, saying, “Come still a short distance farther,” started on.

Matters continued in this wise until they had gone a long distance.

Then the little girl began to weep. Looking back, she saw a man ugly

beyond measure, being very filthy in body and exceedingly fat, with a

very broad face and an enormous stomach. Then the little girl looked to

the bow of the canoe to see the man who had been sitting there, but he

was gone; and she wept aloud. The canoe went directly toward the middle

of the lake. While paddling along they saw an island on which stood a

lodge. On landing, the ugly man said: “Let us enter the place where thy

grandmother has her lodge. And, moreover, you must continue to reside

here. There lives here, too, another girl, who will be your companion.

You two may play together.” The little girl entered this lodge, and the

old woman said, “I am thankful that my granddaughter has arrived.”

Some time after this event the little girl who was already in the lodge

said to the newcomer: “Do you know what will happen to us in this

place? We two shall die here, for they will kill us both and devour our

bodies.” So the little girl who had just arrived began to think much

about her situation.

After a while the little girl who was first at the lodge said to the

newcomer: “Now, verily, they are about to kill one of us. It is not

certain which it will be—whether you or I. Tomorrow will decide. The

one to be killed will be ordered to bring water, and will be killed

here.” So when night came the newcomer could not sleep; she was

thinking during the entire night.

When day began to dawn the son of Dagwanoenyent [1] [28] looked down at

her through the smoke-hole, and said to her: “It is I who will aid you.

When you go after water you must look for three white chert stones as

large as you can hold in your hands, and you must take a doll with you.

When you dip up the water you must set up the doll nearby. Then your

grandmother will think that it is you standing there when she shall go

there to strike you with her club. Now, do not fail to do all these

things as I have directed you.”

In the morning the old woman raised her voice, saying to the little

newcomer, “Hurry! Arise and draw water.” Then the old woman set the

kettle over the fire. The girl went to the spring and began to draw

water. While she was drawing water she carried the three white chert

stones and placed them side by side in the designated place and set up

the doll there, too. She did all that she had been directed to do by

the son of Dagwanoenyent. She was surprised to see a canoe make a

landing there; in it was a young man. Placing the stones in the canoe,

she got aboard, as requested by the young man. Then the canoe started

off.

When the canoe was being paddled far from the island the old woman

exclaimed, “Go-o-o-oh! My grandchild has been gone a long time,” and,

calling loudly for her, she went out to search for her. She ran around

over the entire island looking for her, but was not able to find her.

Then it was that she saw the doll standing near the spring; on striking

it a blow with her club she discovered that she had been tricked.

Thereupon she said, “She is somewhat of a witch. Verily, the son of

Dagwanoenyent has stolen her away from me; and he is a very ugly and

filthy man.”

Now she went to the lodge to procure her fishhook and then to the bank

of the lake at the canoe landing. After unwinding the fishline she cast

it after the fleeing canoe; the hook caught on the canoe and she began

to pull on the line. So, while the two were paddling they felt the

canoe going backward. The young man said, “Do you overturn the canoe

for there is where the hook has caught on it.” So the young woman

overturned the canoe and, seizing one of the white chert stones, she

struck the hook, and while the old woman was pulling on the line it

gave way. Then the old woman said, “Oh, it is sorrowful! The son of

Dagwanoenyent and the young woman I shall soon punish for this.”

Then the old woman made another fishhook and it caught on the fleeing

canoe, and again the young man and the young woman felt the canoe going

backward. Again the youth said, “Turn the canoe over again and you will

find the fishhook.” So she did this, and taking one of the white chert

stones, she struck and again broke the old woman’s fishhook. Once more

the canoe went forward, and the old woman pulled on the line, which

suddenly gave way, whereupon she said derisively, “Yeʹʼhe![2]

Nevertheless I shall kill you both.”

Then she made another fishhook and, going to the shore of the lake, she

cast the line again toward the canoe, to which it became fast. Again

the young man said to his young companion, “Overturn the canoe and

there you will find the fishhook.” This she did quickly and, seizing a

white chert stone, struck the fishhook a blow which broke it. This was

the last of the three stones which the young man had told her to bring

with her. They had now arrived at a point near the mainland.

The old woman now resorted to drinking up [3] the water of the lake,

and as she drew in the water the canoe started back toward her. When

they drew near the young man, the son of Dagwanoenyent, seizing a

knife, ripped the old woman’s body in two and she died. Then the two

turned their canoe around and soon reached the mainland.

They went together to the place where stood the lodge of the young

man’s mother, who was an elderly woman of the Dagwanoenyent people.

Near the lodge stood a large hollow stump, in which the young man

concealed his wife for the time being, and then he alone went to the

home of his mother. When he entered the lodge his mother’s pets, some

wolves, began to howl. The young man reprimanded them, saying,

“Djisʹnen! [Oh, stop it!] you miserable dogs,” and, seizing a club, he

struck them several blows, whereupon they fled under the old woman’s

couch. The old woman said, “They smell you, verily, for you smell like

a human being.” The young man replied, “Oh, pshaw! You know, indeed,

that I have been in places where human beings live;” he continued,

saying, “I am not certain what your mind would think if I should marry

a woman, a person of the human race.” The old woman said, “Aha!

Certainly, I suppose. Where is she now?” The young man replied, “Over

yonder, a short distance.” Then the old woman said, “It is well. In

what place is she?” She went out of doors and her son pointed, saying,

“Yonder, in that stump.” Going to the place, the old woman took her

daughter-in-law out of the stump, and they two went into the lodge of

the Dagwanoenyent woman, and then the wolves began to bark (howl). The

young man scolded them, saying, “it is disagreeable. You wretched dogs!

you wolves!” Thereupon these domestic animals ceased and went under the

bed.

Some time after this the young woman proved to be pregnant, and in the

fullness of time she gave birth to male twins. It was not long before

the twins were quite large.

Then the old woman, their grandmother, said, “Let there be made for

them sticks—lacrosse sticks for playing ball.” This was done and they

began to play ball. Again their grandmother said, “Perhaps it is time

that there should be made also bows and arrows;” and she added, “Now,

you two must continue to shoot at this thing,” and she gave them a

raccoon’s foot, taken from the bundle which she kept hidden away. And

the two did shoot at it in great glee, and this continued for some

time.

Then the old woman, their grandmother, said to them, “Do not ever go

toward the north. It will be dangerous for you.” But one of the boys

said, “Let us go there.” So they went there. Now in that northern place

there stood a very large and tall pine tree; in its top rested the nest

of a Dagwanoenyent, who was an old man. As soon as the two boys arrived

directly under the nest the old man shouted, “Yeʹʼhe! I have detected

you two, my grandchildren.” Then this disobedient little boy in reply

said, “So be it. What then shall happen?” Now it is reported that this

old Dagwanoenyent answered, “Would you two be willing that it should

rain, and that the raindrops should be mixed with spears (darts).”

“Certainly,” replied this boy, and immediately he with his twin brother

crawled far under a rock lying not far away, where they concealed

themselves.

Verily, it did rain and the raindrops were mingled with darts. As soon

as this rainstorm ceased each of the boys picked up a spear, and then

they started for the home of their grandmother, where they soon

arrived. The boy said, “He shall suffer for this.” His grandmother saw

the spear or dart that he had. The boy continued, “Tomorrow, he himself

in his turn shall suffer for this. I in my turn shall detect this, my

grandfather.”

Next morning, when daylight came the boys started. When they had

arrived near the tree the boy requested a mole to assist him, and it

complied with his request. The two boys entered its body and it carried

them unobserved to the place where stood the tree. Then the boy came

forth and, leaping up, shouted, “Yeʹʼhe! Grandfather, I have detected

you, Yeʹʼhe!” The old man asked, “What shall it be that shall happen?”

The boy said in reply, “Would you be willing that it do so (it is hard

to tell what you would think about it, should it rain fire).” The old

man said, “Ho! Certainly, I can do nothing about it. Come then, so be

it.” And the boy shouted, saying, “Let it rain fire,” and at once it

began to rain fire.

Then the boy hid himself with his brother under the rock. In a very

short time the body of the old man took fire and the dead Dagwanoenyent

fell down there. Then the boy and his twin brother went home again to

their grandmother. Now the younger of the twins began to relate what

had taken place on their journey. He said that his elder brother, the

other twin, had killed Dagwanoenyent. The old woman said, “Now he was,

indeed, my elder brother”; and she wept and kept saying, “You two have

killed my elder brother.”

After a while, as the twins were again going from place to place to

play, they saw a cave which seemed to be a lodge. At once one of the

boys said to his brother, “Let us enter it.” On going in they were

surprised to find a number of persons who were all blind, and in very

wretched condition, for indeed they were scarcely alive. The elder twin

asked the inmates of the cave, “What great calamity has taken place

that you are all blind?” One of them answered, “It is a fact that our

eyes have been taken from us by those false women who are making a robe

spangled with human eyes, and furthermore Shagowenotha has robbed us of

our sister younger than we are.” The elder twin then asked the blind

people, “In what direction do the eye-robe-making women live?” His

uncle (his mother’s brother) replied, “Directly thither, toward the

north.” The boy said, “I shall make the attempt to go to get them.”

So they two, the twins, started. In time they arrived at the lodge of

the women who were making a robe of human eyes; and one of the twins

said, “I shall go there.” When they reached the place where these women

obtained their water, he transformed himself, becoming a very small,

young, blue duck. When the youngest of these sisters, the makers of the

robe of human eyes, came to draw water she of course saw this pretended

duck and chased it around, but failed in her attempt to catch it.

Thereupon the water became turbid and she wholly lost sight of the

duck. The young water girl started back to the lodge. Having arrived

there, she related what she had seen, saying, “Verily, indeed, I think

there must be something hidden here (in my body). I do not know what it

is that stirs about inside.” The eldest of the sisters asked her, “How

long has it been so?” The youngest sister answered, “Just now.” So the

eldest sister examined her, and then said, “Indeed, you are pregnant,

it would seem.” In a very short time she began to have labor pains, and

it became evident that she would give birth to a child. She did give

birth to a male child, a fine boy, and all the sisters were pleased.

Then, it is said, the new-born infant began to cry, and to quiet him

they showed him various things. They kept this up during the night, so

they did not get any sleep. In the early morning all fell asleep from

weariness. The infant, however, was covered with the unfinished robe of

human eyes. Just as soon as all were asleep the pretended infant

quickly rose, and, taking the robe of human eyes, he started away. He

soon arrived where he had left his twin brother to await his coming.

Then he said, “Come; let us start.”

When they arrived at the place where the lodge of their uncles stood

they at once began to put the eyes back into the heads of their owners.

Everyone first made a selection from those on the robe of human eyes of

the eyes which were his. They were able to put eyes back into the heads

of all the blind uncles. Whereupon the latter were able to recognize

one another—their nephews and their brother-in-law, the son of

Dagwanoenyent, and also their sister.

After this they began to hunt, and they dwelt there together. They were

happy and contented. And finally, it is said, they became rabbits.[4]

2. THE CHILD AND HIS UNCLE

Once there was a child who was left alone in a lodge in a forest; he

was enjoying himself by playing around the lodge. At last he was

surprised to hear what seemed to him the voice of a man, which said:

“Is there no tobacco? Is there no tobacco? I should like to smoke

again.” Then the child said to himself: “It would seem, indeed, that

there is some one around here saying, ‘Tobacco. Give me tobacco, for I

want to smoke again.’ Yet I have always thought that I am alone here.

In any event, I shall look around from place to place. It seems that

there is another story (loft) in this lodge, and that it is from that

place that this man is speaking.” But, forgetting his resolution to

look for the man, he continued to play until nightfall.

The next morning, while he was again playing around the lodge, he was

once more surprised to hear the man saying, “Is there no tobacco? I

should like to smoke again.” Then the boy said, “Oh, pshaw! I forgot

this thing, but I think that I shall search this place tomorrow to

learn what this talking may mean.”

So the next morning he looked around in many places. Finding the loft

in the lodge, he climbed up into it, and while he was searching the

place he was surprised to find a man lying down who was so lean that he

appeared to be merely dried bones covered with skin. The boy said to

him, “What is it that you want?” And the skeletonlike man replied, “The

only thing I desire is tobacco, for I want to smoke again.” The boy,

answering, said, “Where is it that tobacco may be found in abundance?”

The man replied: “It is to be found in a certain place which is, beyond

measure, one of forbidding difficulties and frightful aspect; and I

know that in that place dwell Seven Sisters and an old woman, their

mother and tutor. These people are immune from the effects of normal

orenda or magic power; and it is these people who have the tobacco.”

After a pause he added: “Along the way through which the path thither

goes are obstructions of the most appalling character. In the first

place, there stands a Tree, a Pine Tree, whose leaves drop on the

intruder, piercing his body and causing him to die. Some distance

beyond this point are two living things, which are called Osigwaon;

that is, two huge Rattlesnakes, which occupy each side of the path, and

which bite with deadly effect any intruder. Still farther beyond stands

a great rock, through an opening in which passes the path, and there

stand two great living things, two Sʻhagodiyoweqgowa, which also have

the power to kill any intruder who may succeed in reaching this point.

Farther on flows a river, on the other side of which stand two Blue

Herons, whose duty it is to give an alarm by loud cries to the Seven

Sisters and their mother on the approach of any intruder; and these, on

hearing the alarm, issue from their lodge in great fury, carrying their

war clubs, with which they quickly dispatch the unwelcome intruder.

Still farther on toward the lodge stands a tree, on which hangs the

dried skin of a human being, which, on the approach of an intruder,

sings, thereby giving the inmates of the lodge warning of the approach

of any person whatsoever, and these at once issue from their home,

bearing their war clubs, to kill the unwelcome guest.” After a long

pause the man of skin and bones continued: “This is the number of the

things which have the power to kill persons along the pathway to the

place where the tobacco is to be found.” [5]

Then the boy replied: “That is all right, for it will not prevent me

from going after the tobacco, and then you shall be able to smoke. At

all events, I will go after the tobacco; I will start tomorrow.” Early

the next morning he started on his perilous journey toward the place

where the tobacco could be found.

In time he arrived at the place where the first obstacle barred his

way, the Pine Tree having the magic power (orenda); this he found had

been transformed into a hickory tree. After looking at it for some

time, he finally rushed past it just as it was, although he boastingly

exclaimed, “It shall not fall on me.” And truly when he had got beyond

the tree he stopped and found that not a thing had touched him.

Continuing his course, finally he came to the spot where the two

Rattlesnakes stood guard over the pathway. Going into the bushes which

surrounded the path, to hunt for two chipmunks, he killed two.

Returning to the two Rattlesnakes, he gave a chipmunk to each, saying,

“You must not in any manner enchant me. I recompense you with these

chipmunks for the favor I ask of you.” Seizing the proffered chipmunks,

the Rattlesnakes began to swallow them.

Starting onward again in his journey, the boy continued his course

until startled by seeing the two Sʻhagodiyoweqgowa standing in the

narrow opening of the great rock. Going into the forest, he procured

some lichens, which he cut up. Making his way to the place where the

two Sʻhagodiyoweqgowa were standing, he said to them, “Do not enchant

me; for this favor I will recompense you with this tobacco,” and,

casting it to them, they received it, and he passed them and kept on

his journey.

He had gone a long distance when he came to the place at which the two

Blue Herons were on guard on the farther bank of the river, at the end

of the log-crossing. Immediately he went along the river a short

distance and then began fishing; soon he took two fish. Returning to

the spot where the two Herons were, he said to them, “You must not give

the alarm, for I will recompense you with these fish for the favor

which I ask of you”; he gave each a fish and then passed on.

Not far from there he came to the tree on which the entire dried skin

of a woman hung. For a moment he stood there and then he said, “Come

hither, thou mole; I am hungry (wearied).” Then the mole came forth

from out of the ground and the boy said to it, “I am entering your body

and I want you to go along beneath the surface of the ground and come

out directly under the place where that woman’s skin hangs yonder.” So

he entered the body of the mole, which went along at once under the

surface of the ground. When it reached the place where stood the tree

it came out directly under the woman’s skin. Then the boy came out of

the body of the mole and, addressing the dried skin of the woman, said,

“You must not tell that I am here. Do me this favor and I will

recompense you with wampum.” Then he went into the forest and peeled

off some slippery elm bark, which he formed into cylinders resembling

wampum; placing these in his pouch he returned to the spot where the

woman’s dried skin hung. When he arrived there he said to the dried

skin, “Now, I am bringing you a wampum belt,” [6] and he attached the

belt to the tree beside which she then stood, as he had requested her

to descend from her usual position.

Again entering the mole, the boy went to the lodge, into which he went

without anyone knowing of his presence; no one of the Seven Sisters nor

their Mother knew of his entrance into their lodge. There he found a

kettle of hominy seasoned with the flesh of the bear (gan­nyaʹgwai-geon

owa ne shaʹgat), which he began to eat. But he was surprised to hear a

voice coming out of the fire say, Odegwiyo hodekhoni. Then the old

woman said, “This is certainly provoking: it is perhaps true that

Odegwiyo has indeed come into the lodge.” At once she got her war club,

with which she furiously struck the burning fire a blow, saying that it

was probable Odegwiyo was concealed therein, as the voice issued from

the fire. Just then the boy was greatly surprised to hear outside of

the lodge the voice of the dried woman’s skin singing, “I have detected

(out-eyed) Odegwiyo.”

The old woman shouted to her daughters, “Have courage, my children, and

do your duty,” and then she derisively added, “Odegwiyo, you indeed

have courage,” signifying her contempt for the orenda, or magic power,

of the boy. Her children rushed out of the lodge, each one carrying her

war club, and they sought for the boy outside of the lodge, but could

find no trace of him. When they had about given up trying to find him,

the dried-skin figure of the woman again began to sing, “Verily, I have

told a falsehood”; and the old woman answered, “Forsooth, this is

discouraging,” and struck the dried skin of the woman a terrible blow.

The empty skin flew away, alighting on the top of another and larger

tree.

In the meantime the boy got possession of the tobacco and at once went

out of the lodge, carrying it in a band which he had around his neck.

He had not gone far when the old woman said, “I have been saying this

for a long time. Now, Odegwiyo is yonder indeed carrying away the

tobacco.” They pursued him for some distance, but as he had outwitted

them and had shown them that he possessed as powerful orenda as they

had, if not greater, they soon gave up the chase. [Text incomplete.]

3. DJOGEON (DWARF-MAN) AND HIS UNCLE

Djogeon lived in the woods with his uncle. When the boy was old enough

to learn, his uncle taught him how to shoot; for this purpose he took

him out to hunt. When the uncle grew too old to hunt the nephew then

went alone.

About noon one day while following an elk, a woman sitting on a log at

the edge of an opening in the forest called to Djogeon, saying, “Come

here and rest: I know you are tired.” At first he paid no attention to

her, but after she had called to him the third time he went to her and

sat by her side. She talked to him, and before he realized it she had

his head in her lap and had begun searching therein for vermin.

He soon fell asleep, and when she was satisfied that he was sleeping

soundly she put him into a basket which she placed on her back and

started off with great speed, traveling until the sun had almost set.

Then stopping, she put her basket down and roused the young man, asking

him, “Do you know this place?” “Oh, yes,” said he, “my uncle and I used

to hunt here. I know the place very well.” They spent the night there.

The next morning she searched again in his head until he fell asleep;

then putting him into the basket again, she hurried on as before until

late in the afternoon. She stopped at a lake and, putting the basket

down, she again awakened the young man, asking him, “Do you know this

lake?” “Yes; I have fished here many times with my uncle,” replied the

young man. Then, taking out of her basket a canoe no larger than a

walnut, she struck it with her hand repeatedly until it became large

enough to hold both. Then they both boarded it and paddled across the

lake. “We will now go home,” said she. “I have a mother and three

sisters; all the latter are married and live in the same lodge. We will

go to them,” she declared.

Djogeon and his companion traveled on until they reached her mother’s

lodge. When they stood at the door her mother saw the stranger with her

daughter and cried out, “Welcome, son-in-law. I am glad you have come.”

Djogeon became the young woman’s husband, and they lived happily until

one night the old woman had a frightful dream, rolling out of her couch

and over the floor to the edge of the fire. Then her son-in-law jumped

up and asked his mother-in-law, “What is the matter? Are you dreaming,

mother-in-law?” She paid no attention to him but rolled about,

muttering to herself. Then he said, “I will make her listen,” and,

taking the pestle for pounding corn, he hit her a heavy blow on the

head. She started up, saying, “Oh! I have had such a bad dream. I

dreamed that my son-in-law would kill the Ganiagwaihegowa.” “Oh,” said

he, “I will attend to that in the morning. Now go to sleep,

mother-in-law.” The next morning the old woman told her son-in-law he

must kill the bear and bring it back quickly. So he sought and killed

the bear without much trouble and brought it home.

The next night she dreamed that he must make a great feast for the

Dagwanoenyent,[7] and that he must invite them all to a feast and

provide so much food that they would not be able to eat it all. The

next day he hunted and killed a great many elk, deer, and bear. There

was an abundance of food, the lodge being full of meat, and still there

was more. Then he went out and called all the Dagwanoenyent to come to

a great feast prepared for them to eat their fill. They answered him,

all agreeing to be at the feast. Soon they began to appear, one after

another; they came in such numbers that the shelves, the floor, and the

seats were filled with them. They began to eat, and ate with a terrible

appetite. The old woman went around urging them, saying, “Eat, eat your

fill. I want all to have plenty to eat in my lodge.” They ate, and the

old woman still urged them, hoping that the supply would run short and

her son-in-law would be killed. The son-in-law, with his wife, her

three sisters, and their husbands went out to have more food brought in

case of need. At last the Dagwanoenyent ate until their jaws could move

no longer and their tongues refused to stir. They said, “We have had

enough. Mother, mother, enough.” When he heard these words the young

son-in-law motioned to the walls and roof, saying, “I want the roof and

walls of this lodge to become flint.” The old woman and the

Dagwanoenyent, seeing that they were caught, flew around in every

direction. The old woman begged for mercy. “Mother-in-law, you had no

mercy on me, so I will not let you out,” answered Djogeon. Then he

said, “I want this house to become red hot.” As it grew hot the

Dagwanoenyent flew about with terrible speed, knocking around the walls

and making such a noise as had never been heard in the world before. At

last all was still in the lodge.

Then the nephew with his wife and her three sisters and their husbands

set out for the lodge of Djogeon’s uncle. They went by the road over

which he and his wife had come. When they reached the lake it was

covered with thin ice, which could barely hold up a small bird. The

young man took eight puffballs from an oak tree and, making himself and

his friends small, each one entered a ball; and when the eight balls

stood side by side on the ice by the edge of the lake, he said, “Let

the west wind blow,” and the west wind obeyed, sweeping them over the

lake to the other side. Then they came out of the balls and, resuming

their natural size, continued their way until they reached the lodge of

Djogeon’s uncle.

4. THE WOMAN WHO MARRIED A GREAT SERPENT

A woman and her only daughter lived together in a fine bark lodge on

the outskirts of a village. The daughter was attractive in form and

feature, but haughty and proud in her bearing. Many young warriors had

made proposals of marriage to her through her mother. Her customary

reply was, “That man is not as fine looking and handsome as I want a

man to be.” Her mother, however, remonstrated with her often on her too

haughty manner and selfish pride, but she disdainfully disregarded her

mother’s advice.

One day the mother and daughter started off into the forest to gather

wood. When they were far from home darkness came upon them, which was

so intense that the mother said to her daughter, “I think we may as

well gather bark to make a temporary shelter and wood to make a fire,

so that we can remain overnight in this place.” So they constructed a

temporary lodge and kindled a cheerful fire, and made the necessary

preparations to stay there overnight. After preparing and eating their

evening meal they sat down on opposite sides of the fire to rest and

converse together.

Suddenly, while the mother was dozing, a man came and stood beside the

girl. When she looked up at him she was amazed and charmed by his great

beauty of face and form. He wore a wampum sash around his body and a

fine headdress with black eagle plumes waving over it. His entire

person seemed to shine with paint and oil. Without ceremony he informed

the young woman that he had come to marry her and that he would await

her answer. Answering him, the young woman said, “I will first tell my

mother what you have said, and when I get her reply I will talk to you

again.” The strange man stood near the fire while waiting for an answer

from the two women.

The young woman told her mother what he had said to her, and her mother

answered, “You must do as you yourself like. You have already refused a

great many men without good cause, so far as I know. Now, therefore, it

is for you to decide what you must do in this case. You must please

yourself.” With this equivocal response the girl went back to the man

and gave him her mother’s answer, adding, “I have decided to become

your wife. You may follow me to my mother”; then she took her seat at

his side. When they had been to talk to the mother they returned to the

fireside. He seemed to the mother also a very handsome man; so she

agreed to the marriage and the two became husband and wife.

Then the young man said to his young wife, “I want you to accompany me

to my own lodge tonight.” Then removing the beautiful wampum sash, he

gave it to her for her mother, saying, “This shall be a sign for your

mother that we are married.” The mother received it and hung it up, for

she was much pleased with it. Then the man and his wife started off

toward his lodge. As they traveled on the wife could see in the

distance a large clearing, at one end of which she saw a lodge which

her husband pointed out to her as his. They went into it, and the

people within seemed to be delighted to see her; so she sat down in her

husband’s seat. They passed that night and the next day together. On

the second day the young husband said, “I am going out to hunt.”

He went out. When he closed the door the young woman heard a very

strange noise; she did not know what to think of it. Then all became

still. In the evening she heard sounds of the same kind. Then the door

was flung aside and a tremendous serpent, with his tongue darting from

his mouth, entered the lodge and placed his head in the lap of the

young woman, asking her to hunt in it for vermin. She found in his head

a large number of bloodsuckers, angleworms, and other noisome

insects.[8] She killed all she found, whereupon then the serpent slowly

withdrew from the lodge and disappeared.

In a moment the young woman’s husband came into the lodge and he

appeared to her handsome as ever. He asked his wife, “Were you afraid

of me when I came in a short time ago?” She replied, “No; I was not

afraid at all.” The next day he went hunting again. As he started out

of the lodge and closed the door she again heard the same strange

sounds that she had heard the day before. About midday she went forth

to get fuel for the fire and to bring water to the lodge. While thus

engaged she saw a huge serpent sunning himself upon the rocks; then

another, and soon another; and she began to be very homesick and

disheartened.

In the evening her husband came home as before. After he had gone out

to hunt the third time she began seriously to think of escaping from

the terrible place in which she found herself, and firmly resolved to

try to do so. She went into the forest to gather wood, and while

standing there she heard a voice; turning toward the direction from

which it seemed to come she saw a very old man. When she looked into

his face he said: “My poor grandchild, you are very unfortunate. The

seeming man to whom you are married is evil and wicked. We have tried

many times to kill him, but he is very cunning and crafty, hence we

have not yet been able to destroy him. He is one of seven brothers.

They are all great sorcerers, and like all such evil persons their

hearts are not in their bodies. Their hearts are tied in a bunch of

seven, which is carefully hidden [9] under the couch of the eldest one.

You must now get it and escape with it. My friends and I will help you

all we can. Do as I have instructed you.”