WHY I WAS CALLED THE STORY-TELLER
Some time ago the writer of these stories was asked to speak for an Indian Society. She accepted the invitation, and that night made her first Indian friends.
Her new friends told her many beautiful things about the Red Children. The more the writer learned about the Iroquois people, and things Indian, the more interested she became. After a time she began to tell the Paleface the things she had learned.
Soon, one of the tribes, the Senecas—the tribe to which her new friends belonged—heard that she was speaking for them. They wished to honor her, so they asked her to be present at their Green-Corn Feast, and become one of them.
So when the Green-Corn moon hung her horn in the night sky, the writer found the trail to the Land of the Senecas. There the Senecas adopted her into the Snipe clan of their nation. She was called Yeh sen noh wehs—"One who carries and tells the stories."
Thus it was that the writer became one of the Red Children, Yeh sen noh wehs—the Daughter of the Senecas.
The more Yeh sen noh wehs learned of the Red Children, and their simple stories, the more she loved them. One day, Yeh sen noh wehs said she would be the story-teller not only of the Senecas, but of all the tribes of the Iroquois. There are six great families of this people. Each family is called a tribe or nation.
Once, the council fires of these six nations burned from the Hudson on the east, to Lake Erie on the west, and they were a great and powerful people.