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

38. The circumstances mentioned in this statement are not peculiar to this story; with a change of names they appear in other stories. In this paragraph, cannibalism is described as a habit of certain wizards. Human flesh is preferred to that of elk, which are here a pest.

40. Tradition relates that Hatʻhondas remained at the home of his sister during the following winter and that during this time he was visited by a stranger, who advised him to attend the great New Year festival, at which one or more white dogs are immolated, not as a sacrifice, as some report, but only as messengers to bear the thanksgivings of the entire people to the Master of Life for the rich gifts of life and welfare; he was further advised to walk around the “new fires,” as ritually prescribed for persons suffering from the evil effects of enchantment. This advice he followed, but he received no immediate relief. As spring came, however, his sister was able to draw out the bark dart from his spine, and Hatʻhondas at once recovered from the malign influence of the evil spell cast upon him by Tehdoonh Oisʻha (i.e., Woodchuck Its-Leggings), or, in the meaning of the tale, The-Little-Old-Man-With-The-Woodchuck-Leggings, who was in collusion with the notorious Great Witch to destroy this young man. [793]

Tradition further says that on the first day Hatʻhondas heard the clarion notes of the blue jay, Cyanocitta cristata (Dihdih); on the second day the gleeful notes of spring made by the robin, Merula migratoria (Djoñiaik); on the third day the notes of the chickadee, Parus atricapillus (?Djidjoñkʹ­ʻhwĕⁿʼ); and, on the fourth day, the drumming of the partridge, Bonasa umbellus (Djoqkweʹʼiăniʼ). These facts are interesting because it is said that the women came seeking Hatʻhondas in the spring of the year; with his friends he followed the women two days after their departure.

The people who shot at the eagle perched on the top of the tall hickory tree went home before the beginning of the following winter. Such tests of orenda or magic power following the acceptance of the challenge of some great sorcerer or witch often lasted several months, and sometimes were renewed in later years. The narrative relates that Hatʻhondas shot the eagle by shooting through the lodge’s smoke hole. The old woman in the lodge asked him to desist after he had made two attempts, saying, “That will do for a while.” It is also said that when Hatʻhondas parted from his uncle, Dooeʼdanegĕⁿʼ, the uncle told him that in the event anything evil befell him the uncle would know it by the sky in the west becoming red. See also Note 44.

43. It was customary for women who went to make proposals of marriage to take with them loaves of corn bread of a specified form, prepared from pounded corn meal and boiled, wrapped in corn husks; the form of the loaves resembled modern dumb-bells.

The name Hatʻhondas, in which th do not form a digraph, may be more correctly written Hatʻhondās; it is a modified form of the combination Hatʻhonʻdāts, “He holds out his ear customarily.” As a name it signifies, “The Listener,” and “The Obedient One.”

Dooehdanegen having a presentiment that a well-known witch, for the purpose of attempting the destruction of his nephew, was about to make a proposal of marriage between her youngest daughter and his nephew who had been under his tutelage and protection since his nephew’s birth for the purpose of teaching him the family medicines and orenda or magic power of their fetishes, sent his nephew to the ravine to listen for any premonitory sounds of the approaching messengers from the great witch, since it was a custom to chant on the way words declarative of their mission.

Dooehdanegen smoked not only tobacco but also potent medicines mixed therewith, whose orenda or magic power was designed to thwart the malign influences emanating from the great witch which had for their object the destruction of Dooehdanegen and Hatʻhondas, for the old uncle was the sole surviving custodian of the medicines and fetishes of his ohwachira or blood kin, and was therefore solicitous of the safety of his nephew until after reaching the age of puberty, when he could demonstrate his ability to employ them fortified by his own inherent orenda.

44. De LaMothe Cadillac (ca. 1703), in speaking of the tribes in the neighborhood of “Missilimakinak et Pays Situés au dela,” writes that at the feasts held periodically for the propitiation of the names of the dead of the entire community they erect a cabin about 120 feet in length of pieces of bark which are new and which have not been used before for any other purpose; at either end of the structure they set a pole, and another, exceeding these in height, in [794]the middle; these poles are greased, oiled, and painted; and at the top end of each is fixed a prize, which belongs to the first who can reach and seize it with the hand. (Margry, Découv., V, 104, 1883.) A similar erection of a pole, which was greased and which held a prize at its top, is mentioned in an account of a feast for the dead held by the Nipissings, Hurons, and the Chippewa in 1642. (Jesuit Relations for 1642, 95, ed. 1858.) It was on the top of a similar pole that the eagle was perched at which Hatʻhondas was required to shoot to test his orenda or magic power.

47. This is a ritualistic phrase which is a summary of the statement that there are grades of beings classified spatially; i.e., some live and work below the surface of the earth, others on its surface, others in the waters, others among the grasses and weeds and low shrubs, others among the bushes and taller shrubs, others among the trees, others in the air and winds, others in the clouds, and still others in the sky where stands the lodge of the Master of Life.

52. This taboo of certain regions, places, directions, and times, is clearly based on the well-known doctrine of tribal men that the jurisdiction or sphere of action of the spirits or the nonhuman beings—daimons, divine messengers, and gods—was limited to specific places, regions, and times; tribal men habitually do not think in the universal terms of modern thinking in the more intensively cultured circles.

53. The words “nephew” and “uncle” in story-telling do not always denote real kinship or relationship by affinity or consanguinity, but rather a male person living in the same neighborhood with another who is “uncle” or “nephew” according to relative age. The neighborhood usually includes all accessible territory. This statement is true of Iroquoian reciters and, perhaps, others.