Afterwards Hih-noh said, Yonder is another thing which we cannot kill, and he led them a long way till they came to a monstrous big whitewood tree, and from a large limb projecting from near the top there was a creature sitting and Hih-noh said Shoot that, and Shot-de-gas drew his bow and shot it through the body. It crawled along the limb and finally fell, (bum!) and was stone dead. It proved to be a monstrous porcupine with quills as large as one’s finger, which the Hih-noh family had tried in vain to kill.
They staid a long time, when at last Hih-noh said, they are about to take you home, but let Shot-do-gas remain with us, we will take care of him. Shot-do-gas was willing and his friend gave his consent. They went out and saw a very big Mortar, (gä-ne-gah-tah,) and Hih-noh called them to it. Shot-do-gas climbed into it and there he was killed, but Hih-noh restored him to life and he also became a hih-noh. Then the five men were about to start, and all at once there commenced a terrible thunder storm and Hih-noh said now take them home, and suddenly they were taken up on the backs of as many men and carried along with the storm and down at Smoke’s Creek where they started. They then washed off their paint and started to go home, but they found the trail grown up with bushes; they kept on to where there was a bark shanty, it had been rebuilt,—to the council house, it was gone, every(thing) was changed they kept on and at last met a man whom they did not know, he asked them where and whither they were going, they replied we went from here and have come home, he said wait and I will go and tell the people. He found the chief and told him here are men whom I never saw before, saying that they have come home. The chief gave the call implying important business,—the people rushed together into the council house, the man told what he had seen, the chief said to him go call these men, they came, no one knew them and they knew no one. The chief asked the leader of the party for his name, we may perhaps remember that, he would not tell his own name but the rest of the party told it and each others names, but nobody recollected them. Then said the chief there is a very old woman living yonder, go call her, if so be she can recollect them. She came and they told her their names and that one of the party named Shot-do-gas had remained behind. She recollected the leaving of the party a long, long time ago, and recalled their names, and said that when they went away, there was a poor miserable little boy, on that account called Shot-do-gas, who left with them. It proved that one of these men was elder brother of this old woman, and he returned in all the freshness of youth, as when he left, while his younger sister had become a superannuated old woman. All the rest of the people had grown up since they left and therefore did not know them. She, the sole survivor of her generation, was the only one to recognize them and remove the unbelief of those that did not believe that they had ever gone from this region of country.
D. EMBLEMATIC TREES IN IROQUOIAN MYTHOLOGY.[[83]]
By Arthur C. Parker.
A student of Iroquoian folk-lore, ceremony or history will note the many striking instances in which sacred or symbolic trees are mentioned. One finds allusions to such trees not only in the myths and traditions which have long been known to literature and in the speeches of Iroquois chiefs when met in council with the French and English colonists, but also in the more recently discovered wampum codes and in the rituals of the folk-cults.
There are many references to the “tree of peace” in the colonial documents on Indian relations. Colden in his Five Nations, for example, quotes the reply of the Mohawk chief to Lord Effingham in July, 1684. The Mohawk agree to the peace propositions and their spokesman says: “We now plant a Tree who’s tops will reach the Sun, and its Branches spread far abroad, so that it shall be seen afar off; & we shall shelter ourselves under it, and live in Peace, without molestation.” (Gives two Beavers).[[84]]
In a footnote Colden says that the Five Nations always express peace under the metaphor of a tree. Indeed in the speech, a part of which is quoted above, the Peace tree is mentioned several times.
In Garangula’s reply to De la Barre, as recorded by Lahontan are other references to the “tree.” In his “harangue” Garangula said:
“We fell upon the Illinese and the Oumamis, because they cut down the Trees of Peace—.” “The Tsonontouans, Gayogouans, Onnotagues, Onnoyoutes, and Agnies declare that they interred the Axe at Cataracuoy, in the Presence of your Predecessor, in the very Center of the Fort; and planted the Tree of Peace in the same place; ’twas then stipulated that the Fort should be us’d as a Place of Retreat for Merchants, and not as a Refuge for Soldiers.... You ought to take Care that so great a number of Militial Men as we now see ... do not stifle and choak the Tree of Peace.... it must needs be of pernicious Consequences to stop its Growth and hinder it to shade both your Country and ours with its Leaves.”[[85]]
