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

Part 1 comprises the matter recorded in the field by the late Jeremiah Curtin in 1883, 1886, and 1887 on the Cattaraugus reservation, near Versailles, New York, including tales, legends, and myths, several being translations of texts belonging to this collection made by the editor. This work of Mr. Curtin represents in part the results of the first serious attempt to record with satisfactory fullness the folklore of the Seneca.

The material consists largely of narratives or tales of fiction—naïve productions of the story-teller’s art which can lay no claim to be called myths, although undoubtedly they contain many things that characterize myths—narratives of the power and deeds of one or more of the personified active forces or powers immanent in and [49]expressed by phenomena or processes of nature in human guise or in that of birds or beasts. They do not refer to the phenomena personified as things unique, but as equaled or fully initiated by human personages made potent by orenda, or magic power, hence they describe a period long after the advent of man on earth, and in this respect do not exhibit the character of myths.

Again, in some of the narratives the same incident or device appears as common property; that is to say, these several stories employ the same episode for the purpose of expansion and to glorify the hero as well as his prowess. An instance in point is that in which the hero himself, or others at his order, gathers the bones of the skeletons of other adventurous heroes like himself, who failed in the tests of orenda and so forfeited their lives to the challenger, and, hastily placing them in normal positions with respect to one another, quickens them by exclaiming, “This tall hickory tree will fall on you, brothers, unless you arise at once,” while pushing against the tree itself. Sometimes it is a tall pine that so figures in these accounts. Again, a pupil of a sorcerer or a noted witch is forbidden to go in a certain direction, while permission is given to go in any other direction. But at a certain time the budding hero or champion wizard goes surreptitiously in the forbidden direction, and at once there is collision between his orenda, or magic power, and that of the well-known wizards and sorcerers dwelling in that quarter. This pupil is usually the only living agent for the preservation of the orenda of some noted family of wizards or witches. The hero, after performing certain set tasks, overcomes the enemies of his family and then brings to life those of his kindred who failed in the deadly strife of orendas.

The identifications and interpretative field notes accompanying Mr. Curtin’s material by some mischance were not made a part of the present collection. Their loss, which has added greatly to the work of the editor, is unfortunate, as Mr. Curtin possessed in so marked a degree the power of seizing readily the motive and significance of a story that his notes undoubtedly would have supplied material for the intelligent explanation and analysis of the products of the Indian mind contained in this memoir.

The texts recorded in the Seneca dialect by Mr. Curtin were very difficult to read, as they had been recorded with a lead pencil and had been carried from place to place until they were for the greater part almost illegible. The fact that these texts were the rough field notes of Mr. Curtin, unrevised and unedited, added to the difficulty of translating them. Fortunately, in editing a large portion of one of these manuscripts, the editor had the assistance of his niece, Miss Caroline G. C. Hewitt, who speaks fluently the Seneca dialect of the Iroquois languages. [50]

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 [51]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 [52]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.

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: