Story given in English and Tuscarora with explanation
Story read by Marjorie Printup about how people talk to one another and where they live. She gives an explanation of how she created sentences for understanding. Recorded by Floyd G. Lounsbury on July 30, 1991 (7 minutes and 22 seconds, Mss.Ms.Coll.95.Cassettes.08 from the American Philosophical Society).
Planting Corn
The Seven Dancers (Origin of Pleiades)
The Good Hunter Feeds the Animals
Four Iroquois Hunters - (author Unknown)
Once, not long ago, four Iroquois hunters spent the winter together trapping in the north. They had good luck. When they brought their furs to the trading post at the end of the season, they had more than enough to buy all the things they needed for their families. In fact, there was just enough left over to buy a new rifle.
The Woman Who Married an Owl - Collected by J.N.B. Hewitt
One day a Skarure family went hunting. The father and mother took their son and daughter with them as they headed out from their home on a long hunting trip. The first they had to make was a hunting lodge of wood poles that they covered with large sheets of bark. In the front, they made an enclosed entrance. The father was a good hunter and it was not long before the front entrance was full of deer and bear meat that was dried and cured.
THE GREAT SPIRIT OVERPOWERS THE COLD AND FROST OF WINTER, STONE COATS
IN the old time when men got lost while hunting it was supposed the Winter God (Stone Coat) ate them up.
Once three Senecas started off on the war-path, going toward the West. At night they camped in a deep ravine at the head of a stream.
THE FORBIDDEN ARROW AND THE QUILT OF MEN'S EYES
THE FORBIDDEN ARROW AND THE QUILT OF MEN'S EYES.
Related by Edward Cornplanter (Great Night) and recorded as translated by William Bluesky, Ganosho.
Now (it seems), there were twin brothers one named Younger and the other Driven. The brothers were accustomed to play about two hills. Driven would go up one hill and jump to the summit of the other. Younger would stay in the valley between and amuse himself by shooting arrows at him as he jumped. Now, as Driven jumped, Younger sang a song:
"Ha-do-wi, Ha-do-wi, Ha-do-wi, O-ne-di-no-o-ha-ga-gon Ha-do-wi!"
An Honoring: A Chief for the People Corbett Sundown of the Senecas
Twice every year the skies darken over Seneca land at Tonawanda, as upwards of 50,000 Canada geese and thousands of ducks including mallards, blacks, ring-necks and others make their seasonal migratory flights. They find rest and protection in the bordering Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge and the Tonawanda and Oak Orchard Wildlife Management Areas. They spill onto the surrounding communities as well. To those who know the motions and patterns of life during the spring and fall cycles here, midwinter is quite a contrast.