284 SENECA FICTION, LEGENDS, AND MYTHS [eth. an.\. 82 



ing. 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 heal- 

 ing their wounds. Meanwhile S'hodieonskon was far out of sight on 

 his way to a new village. 



When S'hodieonskon drew near to the third village he called out, 

 Go'weh! go'weh! The people gathered 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 to the young men; so the 

 women did so, and nothing happened to the old men. 



S'hodieonskon then hurried to another place. When he arrived 

 there, all asked what the matter was in his place. "Another sick- 

 ness," 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. x\lthough 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, S'hodieonskon 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. 



S'hodieon.skon, 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, where- 

 upon you must go in opposite directions, tearing him apart." Hav- 

 ing agreed to do this, they soon ran around ahead of the man, to 

 whom S'hodieonskon said, " I have ridden these bears so long that 1 

 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. Tlie man, badly injured and half dead, 

 finally became free from the bears. He said to himself, "Well, I 

 have found S'hodieonskon." 



S'hodieonskon, 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 ort 

 through the woods, the women soon saw something moving in front 

 of them, which they noticed was covered with hemlock boughs. Thej^ 



