AN ONONDAdA VERSION 



The Manner in Which it Established Itself, in Which it 

 Formed Itself, in Which, in Ancient Time, it Came about 



THAT THE EaRTH BeCAME ExTANT 



He who was my gmiidfather was wont to relate that, verily, he had 

 heard the legend as it was customarih- told l)y five generations of 

 grandsires, and this is what lie himself was in the hal)it of telling. 

 He customarih' said: Man-l)oings dwell in the slvv. on the farther side 

 of the visible sky [the ground separating this from the world above it]. 



Tca'' Dediodiea'da"'gwi' Tca" Deio'denda"i" Tca" Wa'wadon'nia' 



The Therefkom it it employed The It was The It itself formed 1 



where therefor where established where 



Tca" Io'^'hwendjia'de" wa'wa'do"' ne" oi'hwaga'io"'. 



The It EARTH EXTANT is It came The It matter (is) - 



WHERE TO BE ANCIENT. 



Ksoda'ha'-ge"''h:i", hwi'ks nwa'hondi;Vdi"sa' tea" hodikstefiTr- 



My grand- was, (ivo so many they matured the they ancient '^ 



father in Ijody where 



ge""ha' na'ie' ne" honthoiri'ha"gwsv ne" hi'ia' ge'"s hothon'de' 



were that the they it tell diil the yerily custom- he it heard "^ 



(it is) habitually ' arily 



tea" ni'hadii'ho"de"". na'ie* ne" hao""hwti" o""ke"" hathoia- 



the such their relation that the he himself next in he it tell 



where (is) kind of. liti^) order 



'ha"gwa". I'ha'do"k ge"'s: Ena'gee" ne" oii'gwe'" gao° lii, g,)fi'wa' „ 



did. He it said custom- They abide the man- it sky in 



habitually arily: being 



oThe classific conceptual term oiigwe*, having no diseernablc grammatic affix, is what gramma- 

 rians call a j>rimitive word, and has both a singular and a collective denotation. It signifies "man- 

 kind, man, human beings: a human being, a person." But its original meaning was "man-being" or 

 " primal being," which signified collectively those beings who preceded man in existence and 

 exceeded hiiii in wisdom and effective powc?, the personified bodies and elements of nature, the gods 

 and demigods of later myth and legend, wlio were endowed by an imputative mode of reasoning 

 with anthropic form and attributes additional to those normally characteristic of the particular 

 bodies or elements that they represented. But, after the recognition of man as a species different from 

 nil others, consequent upon wider human exi>erience and more exact knowledge, and after these had 

 I>ushed back from the immediate fireside and community nujst of the reified fictions of savage men- 

 tation, a time came when it became needful to distinguish between the man-being, a human being, 

 and the man-being, a reified personification of a body or element of nature: in short, to distinguish 

 between what human experience had found to be "real, genuine, native," and what was the con- 

 verse. Hence, the limiting term oflwe'. signifying "native, real, genuine, original," was combined 

 with oiigwe', thus forming ongwe'-ofiwe', which signifies "native, real, or genuine man-being," 

 hence, "man, human being." But after the advent of trans-Atlantic peoples the antithesis was 

 transferred unconsciously from the " primal being," or "man-being," the reified concepts of myth 

 and legend, to "white human being," denotive of any trans-Atlantic person. So, in this legend, 

 when applied to times previous to the advent of man the word ofigwe' usually denotes a man-being 

 that is a personification, one of the gods of the myths, one of that vague class of primal beings of 

 which man was regarded by Iroquoian and other sages as a characterislic tvpe. 



141 



