Seneca myths and folk tales

by Arthur C. Parker

Before us is a vast hall some twenty-four feet wide and eighty feet long. On either side are low platforms, scarcely more than knee high from the earthen floor. Above are other platforms, but these are six or seven feet above and form a roof over the lower platforms. On the latter we see people lounging, sitting or reclining, as suits their inclination.

An elderly woman comes forward and greets us, and as she does so, several men also come forward. Some, dressed in trader’s cloth clothing grasp our hands in welcome, while an old man, evidently a relic of an older day, places his hands on our chests and says, “Strength be within you.” This we learn is the old Indian way of greeting, in the days before hand-shaking came into vogue.

Some one points out an unoccupied seat filled with robes and we are invited to place our luggage on the platform above. From a long pole, hanging from the beams that form the roof supports, hang braids of corn, forming a curtain that nearly makes our loft inaccessible. As we push our pack basket well toward the center of the platform we hear a squeal, and a seven-year-old boy who has been sleeping there on a pile of pelts darts over the corn pole and swings himself to the floor.

The whole building is replete with stores of food, and besides the corn, we see large quantities of smoked meat, dried fish, dried pumpkins and squashes and dried herbs of various kinds. The center of the lodge is a broad aisle and at every eight paces there is a fireplace on the floor, the smoke from which rises to the roof and escapes through large rectangular holes made by leaving off the bark roofing.

We join a group of men and learn from their conversation that they are discussing the great war of the white men, in which the Thirteen Fires overcame the British King. Alas, these Indians had fought for the King and as a punishment a mighty general had come against them with a cannon, burning their villages on the Genesee and sending them terror-stricken to their red-coated allies at Fort Niagara. Here they had endured a terrible winter of privation during which time hundreds died of disease, starvation and freezing. The British King had not done well by them and his agents had deceived them. It was Town Destroyer (Washington) who was their real friend, for it was he who said they might remain in their ancient seats. So here they were on Buffalo Creek, in the land of the Wenroe and the Neutral, peoples whom they had conquered a century and a half ago. Here was their refuge, but the contrast between this and their former secure position on the Genesee had disheartened them. The war and the flight had disorganized them, their old ideals had been broken, and the only safety seemed to be to avoid the white man. He brought all this trouble and his traders brought the fire water that made the young men crazy. He had brought a new religion too, and many of the villagers of the Buffalo tract had been converted to it and were trying to live in accordance with its teachings. Some of the men thought that this spoke the doom of the Indian race, while others thought it would be better to offset this movement by embracing the religion of Handsome Lake, a sachem from Allegany who was now preaching temperance and morality among the Indians at Allegany. Most of the men, however, thought that it was best to avoid all new schemes and philosophies. “The old way is the best,” we hear them say. “In the old way we know just where we stand. We are familiar with the methods of the old way: the new way has not been tried.”

Then someone says, “Jack Berry is going to go over to Handsome Lake. Maybe this is the right way. He is an intelligent man and his father was a white man, though he is more Indian than any of us in his manners and speech.”

Long the discussion goes on, and embraces one topic after another. There is nothing to do but to talk and this soon grows tiresome, for the same old topics are worn threadbare. Brains that are hungry for new ideas and for facts find no food. The mental life of the people, we quickly discover, is circumscribed. The people crave stimulation; of physical stimulation they have plenty, but of mental stimulation there is little indeed. This is one of the reasons why in the old days the men went on long tedious hunts, sought adventure, went on war parties, and played the game of death. “Better to die in the hurricane like a young oak that has been broken in the gale,” said they, “than to die because rot has set in and eaten up the heart.”

Here among the discouraged and broken people of the Buffalo tract, bitterness gnawed at every heart, and there was a sense of having been overwhelmed by some irresistible force. The people craved amusement, excitement, and the stimulation of the imagination. It was because of the lack of healthful means to procure these things that the men gambled so much, and drank the traders’ rum.

The evening meal is now ready and we find that the matron of our fire is dipping our hull-corn hominy. Everybody grabs a bark dish and some take out neatly carved wooden bowls. These are filled with the hominy and the group begins to eat, dipping the steaming corn with wooden spoons of large size. Now comes the meat portion, and each person is given from one to three pounds of roasted venison. This we eat with boiled corn bread, dipping the bread into a bowl of grease that is passed about among us. We have no forks, and the only thing that resembles one is a sharpened splinter of bone. We have our knives, however, and the meat is cut by holding it with the hands. If our greasy fingers bother us we have a box of corn husks upon which to wipe them. We then cast our “napkins” into the fire. At the close of the meal we receive bowls of “onegadaiyeh,” or hot fluid, which we find to be a fragrant tea made from the tips of hemlock boughs mixed with a dash of sassafras. Those who do not like this drink are given wintergreen “tea” sweetened with maple sugar. As we drink our tea a bright-eyed maiden brings us a bark tray with generous slices of sugar-nut bread, made by molding white corn flour with pulverized maple sugar into which is mixed hickory and hazel-nut meats, the whole being molded into a cake held into shape by husks, and then boiled until done. Everyone exclaims, “Oguhoh,” meaning “Delicious.”