792 IROQUOIAN COSMOLOGY . [eth. ann. 43 



DE'HODYA'TKA'EWE"' ' 



(THAT IS, HE WHOSE BODY IS DIVIDED IN TWAIN) 

 A TRADITIONAL JOURNAL OF AN EXPEDITION TO THE SKYLAND 



This is a Saga concerning the First People — tlie Ancient People — 

 the People of the Beginnings — who live now and who lived also when 

 the Earth was new, and, therefore, was young. 



In the land of the Sunrise, at a place called Diyo'hnyowa'ne"' 

 (i. e., There At the Great Lowland Cape), there was situated a village 

 of these First People, when the Earth was young. 



There came a day when one of the young men, De'hae°'hyo'we'"s 

 (i. e., He-Who-Cleaves-the-Sky-in-Twain), dwelling in the village at 

 Diyo'hnyowa'ne"' resolved to form an expedition to make a raid 

 westward into the distant regions through which passes the daily 

 path of the Sun. 



So to promote his design De'hae"'hyo'we"'s induced his friends to 

 prepare a great war feast, to which he invited all the First People 

 of that village. It being the custom of the country, he announced 

 to the public assembled there his purpose of leading a troop of war- 

 riors far into the west, following the path of the Sun and going beyond 

 the end of the earth to slaughter unknown men and to obtain the 

 scalps of alien peoples as tokens of their prowess and their courage 

 in warfare. 



The feast having been prepared and the people having received 

 the notched sticks of invitation — white for the children and the 

 general public, green for tlie young warriors and Women Chiefs, and 

 red for the Chiefs, Sorcerers, Elder Men, and the Elder Chiefs — all 

 then assembled in the long-lodge of public assembly. ^'V^lile the 

 guests were enjoying the good things provided for their entertain- 

 ment, their host, De'hae'"hy6'we°'s, arose in his place and in a set 

 speech announced his purpose to lead an expedition of a war party 

 into the west, even througli the regions over which the Sun follows 

 his path, for the purpose of destroying and scalping all the alien 

 peoples whom they might find on their way thither. 



In his address he urged the young men to volunteer to accompany 

 him and to share with him tlie hardships of his enterprise; but he 

 asked only for voung men who had reached manhood's estate, just 

 after maturing from the age of puberty. He further informed those 

 who would volunteer as members of his war party that they would have 

 to renounce their kith and kin, and even their lives; and that they 

 must also agree to observe strict adherence to a unanimity of pur- 



' The Onondaga Iroquoian text of this myth was dictated by the late Chief John Arthur Gibson, a Seneca 

 Federal Chief, in the winter of 1899, and recorded by J. N. B. Hewitt, on the Six Nations Land Grant on the 

 Grand River, Ontario, Canada. The accompiinying interlinear and free translations were made by the 

 recorder in Washington, D. C. A free translation of a Seneca version of this myth was published in the 

 Thirty-second Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. 



