After this the old man said to the people, “All can go where they like.” They separated, but he and his wife with their son-in-law and daughter went home. Then the mother-in-law said to the man, “Now you must get ready and go to see your mother.” They started, the man, his wife, and mother-in-law. They were ten days on the road. It was the time of sugar making. When they got near his mother’s lodge his wife said, “My mother and I will stop in these woods; your mother is making maple sugar and we will help her all we can.” The young man saw his mother and at night went to the lodge, leaving his wife and her mother in the woods.
In the night the wife and mother collected all the sap and brought a great pile of wood. The next morning when the mother and her son went to the woods they found no sap in the troughs under the trees, but when they got to the boiling place the big trough was full and a great pile of wood was near by. The work continued for some days. Then the old woman said to her son-in-law: “It is time for me to go home to my husband, and now you may be free. Have no hard feelings. I shall take my daughter with me. You must stay with your mother. There are many women about here who want to marry you, but do not marry them; there is but one that you should marry—the granddaughter of the woman who lives in the last lodge at the edge of the village. They are very poor and the girl takes care of her grandmother. You may tell the people when you get home that you saw buffalo tracks in the swamp; let them come out and shoot; the more they shoot the sooner we shall get home.”
The man told the people that he saw tracks in the swamp. The people went out, but did not get far before they overtook the Buffaloes and killed them. The man knew all the time that they were Buffaloes, but in his eyes they seemed like people. As he had been absent from his people so long, and as the rest of his company had [[102]]been killed, the Seneca thought him a great man. The women sought him as a husband for their daughters, but, refusing every offer, he married the granddaughter of the old woman who lived in the last lodge on the edge of the village.
When the Buffaloes were shot the people thought they had killed them, but in reality they had not done so. The Buffaloes left their carcasses behind, which the people ate, but their spirits went back to the old man and they were Buffaloes again.[19b]
9. A Woman and Her Bear Lover
A man and his wife with two sons—one on the cradle-board yet, and the other three or four years old—lived in the woods.
After a while the elder boy became puny and sickly. The man was much troubled by this and began to think that his wife was to blame. Every day he set out to hunt, and the woman went to get wood and to dig wild potatoes.
One day the man resolved to watch his wife; so he hid himself near the lodge instead of going to hunt. In a couple of hours the wife came out, gayly dressed, her face washed, and her hair oiled; she walked quickly to the woods. He followed her stealthily. She stopped at a large tree on which she tapped with a stick and said, “I am here again.” Presently a noise as of scrambling was heard in the tree, and a great Bear came out of the hollow in the trunk and slipped quickly to the foot of the tree. After a while the woman went away, and the Bear again climbed the tree. The man set off, seeking wild potatoes. Finding a place where there were many good ones, he dug up a large quantity.
The next day he took the woman there and dug up as many as she could carry; he then sent her home, saying that he would go hunting so that they could have a good supper. The hunter then went straight to the tree in which lived his wife’s lover, the Bear, and, tapping twice on it, said, “I am here again.” The Bear soon stuck his head out, and the man shot an arrow at him which brought him to the ground. The hunter left the skin of the Bear; he merely opened his body and took out the entrails, which he carried home.