From Seneca Folklore
Shodieonskon went on a journey in visits of adventure. In the first place he came to he found a large number of lodges. Here he told the people that in his village everyone was ill of a certain disease; that the same disease would come to them, too: and that his people had discovered but one cure for it – all persons who were married slept with other men’s wives and other women’s husbands, and this saved them. Believing this, the people did as he had told them.
Then Shodieonskon started off in another direction. When he came in sight of the second village he began to call out according to the custom of runners, Go’weh! Go’weh! So the people knew that news of some kind was coming. As they gathered around him after his arrival, he told them that a plague was upon the place from which he had come, and that if they wished to prevent or cure this plague they must cut holes in the bark walls of their lodges and close these by putting their buttocks into them, and that all the families must do this. Going home, the people defecated into their lodges through these holes in the walls, whereupon Shodieonskon mocked them for being fools, and thrust his walking-stick through the holes as he went, jeering at them, from lodge to lodge, before his departure.
In the next adventure he met a crowd of men; this time he wore long hair reaching to the ground. All looked at his hair, wondering how he got it. When they asked him, he said that he had climbed a tree and, after tying his hair to a limb, jumped off. In this way the hair became stretched as much as he wanted. Further, they could do likewise if they wished. After Shodieonskon had gone his way one of the men, saying, “I am going to make my hair long,” climbed a tree, and, having tied his hair to a limb, jumped down. His scalp was torn off, and, falling to the ground, he was killed. The other people, enraged, said, “That man is Shodieonskon; we must overtake and kill him.” Running after him, they soon came in sight of a creek, in which they saw a man spearing fish. Every little while, raising his foot, he would pull off a fish, for he had sharpened his leg and was using it for a spear. They watched him take several fish from his leg. When they reached the bank he came up out of the water. They were astonished at the number of fish he had caught and asked him how he had taken so many. “You can all see,” he replied. “I have sharpened my leg and use it for a spear; when I get all the fish I want I spit on my leg, and it becomes as well as before.” Then he showed them how he did it. He put the fish as he speared on a string. Then the men wanted to spear fish, so they asked him, “Can not you sharpen our legs, so that we may spear fish?” After he had sharpened their legs, entering the water, they went to work, while he disappeared. Presently they began to feel sore and had caught nothing. So they all came up, and sitting on the bank, they spat on their legs and rubbed them, but this treatment was of no efficacy in healing their wounds. Meanwhile Shodieonskon was far out of sight on his way to a new village.
When Shodieonskon drew near to the third village he called out, Go’weh! Go’weh! The people fathered around him, asking what had happened. He told them that in the place whence he had come the young men were killing all the old ones, who could be saved only if the women would give themselves tot eh young men; so the women did so, and nothing happened to the old men.
Shodieonskon then hurried to another place. When he arrived there, all asked what the matter was in his place. “Another sickness,” he said, but he had the medicine to cure it. This medicine was bear’s oil, which he carried in a bark bowl (it was his urine). He sold it to the villagers to be drunk with their food. When warm it crackled like salt. Although they knew it was not oil, they drank it. As he left the village he said that he had never seen such stuff eaten before, and ridiculed them.
Continuing his journey, Shodieonskon met a man, and they sat down by the trail. He offered the man a cake which corresponded to the oil he had just sold, but the man refused to eat it and went his way.
Shodieonskon, not to be baffled, called up a couple of bears. When they came to him he said: “I want you to carry me. I will rest one foot on one of you and the other foot on the other. We will go in this direction, running around until we meet a man. I will tell this man that I will give you to him to mount, and when he places one foot on each of you his feet will become fastened to your backs, whereupon you must go in opposite directions, tearing him apart.” Having agreed to do this, they soon ran around ahead of the man, to whom Shodieonskon said, “I have ridden these bears so long that I am tired of them; if you would like, I will give them to you.” They seemed so tame and were so fine-looking that the man gladly took them and jumped on their backs, whereupon his feet grew fast to them in a moment. After running together a little way the bears ran in different directions. The man, badly injured and half dead, finally became free from the bears. He said to himself, “Well, I have found Shodieonskon.”
Shodieonskon, having journeyed farther, met a party of young women. Stopping them, he said: “It is not best for you to continue on that road – it is dangerous, for when you meet a man dressed in hemlock boughs you must not be afraid, but must do everything he wants you to do, so as to keep on friendly terms with him.” Going on through the woods, the women soon saw something moving in front of them, which they noticed was covered with hemlock boughs. They were frightened, but after a while one of them, saying, “I will not be afraid,” went straight up to him and talked with him some time behind a tree. Then she came back, telling the others to go, that there was nothing to be afraid of. So they went, one by one, and after all had been there he went away. One of the women whistled out his name and called him, but he had gone after foolish them all. Shodieonskon and the man in the hemlock boughs were one.
Shodieonskon went on again, soon coming to an opening where there was a number of bark lodges. Going into the lodges he said, “There is a man coming to destroy all the people, and to escape him they must cover all the smoke-holes, for he has a long spear which he thrusts into them to spear the people.” Then he invented a name for the man. All went to work covering the smoke-holes of their lodges. The chief of the village had two beautiful wives. Shodieonskon coveted them and did not tell the chief the story of the man with the spear. When all the other lodges were covered and full of smoke, Shodieonskon ran over the roofs, frightening everybody almost to death; not daring to go out, all remained half stifled in the smoke. At last Shodieonskon, climbing the roof of the chief’s lodge, speared him to death and took his wives and all he had.
In due time the funeral of the chief was held, and all came to bury him. Shodieonskon, appearing among the mourners, cried, saying: “I am sorry for the chief; he was a friend of mine, and now he is dead and gone. I am so sad. I do not wish to live. You must bury me with him.” So they put Shodieonskon in the ground beside the chief. The next day some boys who were out at play heard a man calling for help, his voice seeming to come from the graveyard, whereupon they went to the spot. The voice seeming to come out of the grave, they ran and told the people. The people agreed to dig him up. When they had done so Shodieonskon, standing on the ground, said: “There is a very important thing to be done. I came back because the chief had two wives; they mourn for their husband, and I feel sorry for them. I am sent back to marry the two widows.” After talking over the affair the people said it was a great thing that a man should be sent back from the other world to marry the widows of their chief, so they consented to the arrangement, and Shodieonskon, having married them, settled down.
Source:
Seneca fiction, legends, and myths, F.W. Hodge, 1918
Kotharian Lightning 