118 SENECA FICTION, LEGENDS, AND MYTHS [eth asm. S2 



was Djisdaah, the man who had challenged them, and then the snakes 

 made for the village, and the men stood and fought. Finally the 

 chief shouted that he surrendered. 



Then a snake, whose hody was as large as a mountain, and whose 

 head was as large as a lodge, came right up out of the ground and 

 said : " I am the chief of the snakes ; we will go home if you agree that 

 as long as the world stands you will not call any man Djisdaah and 

 will not maltreat my peoi)le.'' The chief agreed willingly to this, and 

 the snakes went away. 



18. The Ongwe Tas (the Cannibal) and His Younger Brother 



Two brothers were in the woods on a hunting expedition, and after 

 (hey had been on the hunt a good while they had success in finding 

 game, and they had built a good sized lodge, in which tiiey enjoyed 

 everything in common. 



The elder said to the younger brother : " Now, for the future we 

 must live apart; let us make a partition through the middle of the 

 lodge and have a door at each end, so that you shall have a door 

 to your part and I a door to mine." The younger brother agreed, 

 and they made the partition. The elder bi'other said further: " Now, 

 each will live for himself. I will not come to your room and you 

 shall not come to mine ; when we want to say anything to each other 

 we can talk through the partition. You may hunt game as before — • 

 birds and animals — and live on them, but I will hunt men and eat 

 them. Neither of us will ever marry or bring a woman to the lodge; 

 if I marry, you shall kill me, if you can, but if you marry I will try 

 to kill you." The brothers lived thus apart in the same lodge, each 

 going out to hunt alone. 



One day *while the brothers were out hunting, a woman came to 

 the younger brother's room. The elder brother tracked her to the 

 lodge, caught her at the door, dragged her into his room, and killed 

 and ate her. When the j'ounger brother came home the elder said, 

 " I have had good luck today near home." The younger brother 

 knew that he must have killed and eaten the woman, but he said 

 merely, " It is well if you have had good luck." 



On another day the elder brother tracked a woman to his brother's 

 part of the lodge and, going to the door, knocked, calling out, " Let 

 me have a couple of arrows; there is an elk out here." The woman 

 brought the arrows, and the moment she opened the door he killed 

 her and took her body to his part of the lodge, where he cooked and 

 ate it. When his brother came back they talked through the parti- 

 tion as before. The younger brother warned the ne.xt woman against 

 opening the door; he told her to open it for no one, not even for 

 himself ; that he would come in without knocking. 



