Seneca Fiction, Legends, and Myths Thirty-Second Annual...

After all the women were either dead or stretched out unconscious with fractured skulls, the lads cautioned the warder, Haneʹʻhwăʼ, not to inform Degiyanēʹgĕñʻ, their father, what he had seen them do, should he come there inquiring about his sisters. They told him to sing for their father the following song:

The warder consented to do what his boy friends had asked him to do. Thereupon the lads quickly entered the lodge to which was attached the fox skin clan badge. They soon found the cradle board on which was fastened the female child, even as their uncle had told them, but they were greatly astonished when they saw that the eyes of many persons adorned the swaddling clothes (wrappings). Quickly but carefully examining these eyes, which served [555]as the breast ornaments of the child, they soon found the eyes of their uncle, which were partially bloodshot. When they had secured these they removed also the others, in pairs, and, tossing them up into the air, said to them: “Return to the place whence you were taken by stealth.” At once these eyes took flight and returned to their owners. After killing the female child and compassing the death of the treacherous Haneʹʻhwăʼ, the lads started for home with their uncle’s eyes.

When the boys reached the point whence they must descend they assumed the size and form of fleas, and, using the seed heads of the dandelion as parachutes, they easily floated down from cloudland to the earth. Going directly to the lodge of their uncle, they returned to him his eyes. He was delighted beyond measure when he found that his nephews had been successful in their expedition and had so speedily brought back his eyes.

The lads had killed the baby in cloudland by means of potent drugs given them by their uncle while they were still on the earth. Before starting their uncle had told them not to fail to put this deadly drug on the baby, for he knew that the child was the life itself of the great witch, Gahoⁿʻdjiʼdāʹʻhoⁿk. Through its death the witch herself necessarily died, because the child was her life, not her baby, as it appeared to be. Thus, Gahoⁿʻdjiʼdāʹʻhoⁿk was destroyed and the young deanoäʹdoⁿʼ man at last was revenged on her, partly through the potent orenda of his nephews and partly by means of the potent “medicine” with which he had armed them before they had started on their expedition into cloudland.