So the chief of the people called a council to discuss the situation and to suggest means to meet it. It was finally resolved that several stout and alert warriors should be set to watch the planted fields to see who might come to steal the ripening crops. These watchmen went into the fields in the evening. Toward the dawn of day they [[704]]discovered a number of persons who were tearing off the ears of corn and the bean pods, and also others who were stealing the squashes. These thieves they captured and held as prisoners. These prisoners were taken in the morning to the council lodge before the clan chief.
The chief, after looking the prisoners over, remarked that these thieves were their enemies because they had stolen their corn and beans and squashes. Then he asked one of the corn thieves, “Where do you live?” “A long way hence in the forest,” came the reply. “Are there many of your people?” continued the chief. “We are a large nation,” came the answer. In like manner he questioned the squash thief and the bean thieves, and these made replies similar to those made by the corn thieves.
They bound the corn thieves and daily they took them out of the lodge and all the chiefs and the people came to see them, and everyone was privileged to strike these thieves a blow with a staff, and the thieves would weep bitterly at this treatment. Then they would be taken back into the lodge. The bean thieves and the squash thieves were also daily punished in this way.
Daily the corn thieves wept loudly. After a long time had elapsed these thieves were told that if they would conduct the people to their own nation they would be set free. The corn thieves agreed to this proposition and the old chief selected a party of his warriors to lead the thieves back to their own nation.
The corn thieves led the warriors a long way into the forest. But at last they came to a settlement, and the thieves said this is a village of our people. The warriors killed many of the people, and then they set free the thieves whom they had brought back to their country. The people whom the warriors had killed were carried home.
Then some warriors were sent to the squash stealers with an order to split their upper lips so that they would not be able to eat squashes again.
It is said that the warriors whipped the corn thieves so much during their captivity that they wept so much that their faces were striped and their backs were striped and their tails were ringed, from the blows they received; and these marks have remained to this day. The corn thieves were raccoons. The squash thieves were rabbits (hares?), and their lips have remained split to this day from this punishment.
Tradition says that the ancestors of the Seneca thought that all trees and shrubs and plants were endowed with human life and were divided into families, having brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers. And that in like manner the Corn, and Beans, and the Squash have human lives, and that if one offended them they would grieve and would depart and would leave the people without food. [[705]]