702 SENECA FICTIOX, LEGENDS, AND MYTHS [ eth. ANN. 32 



and the squashes would wither away before the time to harvest them. 

 The people went hungry, for they had no food from their fields and 

 game was very scarce. 



One day a very old woman, who was Matron and Chief of her 

 clan, M-as walking near her planted field, meditating on the misfor- 

 tune of her people. As she walked she heard bitter weeping out in 

 the field, and she at once decided that some one must be in deep dis- 

 tress. So, walking into the planted field, she was surprised to find 

 that it was the corn that was weeping; and the beans were weeping 

 too ; and the squashes were weeping also. The old woman had great 

 compassion for the corn and the beans and the squashes for their 

 weeping. She stopped beside a hill of corn and asked, " Oh, you 

 dear Corn, why do you weep? Tell me the reason." The Corn be- 

 tween sobs said, " You place us in the gi'ound to grow, but you do not 

 perform your further duties to us. You do not cover us with suffi- 

 cient earth as you know you should; and you do not hill up the 

 earth about our feet so that we can stand firm ; and you fail to dig up 

 the earth sufficiently around us to give us water; so it is that many 

 of us have remained only a few hours or a day or two and then have 

 gone home; only a small number of us remain and now we are all 

 dying because of your neglect. You even permit our enemies to 

 strangle us to death." 



As the old Matron listened to this pitiful story she was bitterly 

 grieved. She then went to the Bean people and to the Squash peo- 

 ple, and from both she heard the same painful story of neglect by 

 her people. She was deeply moved, and so she went to her lodge 

 and wept along the path homeward. Having seated herself on her 

 couch in her lodge, she kept on weeping. Her people having heard 

 her sobbing were much jjuzzled by it, and they being moved by .sym- 

 pathy also began to weep with their Matron. Soon many persons 

 had assembled at her lodge, and they all were mourning with the old 

 woman. 



Finally, the chief of the clan came to the lodge and addressing the 

 people he told them to cease their weeping and to be of good cheer; 

 and that he would ask their Matron what had caused her to return 

 from the planted field with such grief. So the people ceased their 

 weeping, and then the chief, addressing their Matron, who was still 

 sobbing bitterly, asked, "Mother, what caused you to weep while 

 you were in the planted field ? " After somewhat composing herself 

 she replied to this question by saying that she had heard bitter 

 wailings in the planted fields and that on going there to learn the 

 cause the Corn people, and the Bean people, and the Squash people 

 had complained to her that she and her people had not properly 

 cared for them by not covering them with sufficient earth to enable 

 them to live and by permitting their enemies to grow up around 



