IROQUOIS MYTHS AND LEGENDS 



53 



OD-JE-SO-DAH AND JI-HEN-YAH, THE DANCING STARS AND THE 



SKY WITCHES 



An Indian hunter was teaching his eleven sons 1 the secrets of the 

 forest, and had led them into its innermost density where game 

 strode unafraid in its stillness. He had taught them the hunter's 

 step, which must fall light as the leaf that drops from its branch, 

 and had shown them the haunts and the foot signs of all the animals, 

 and on the morrow would find for them the deep pools where the 

 fish shoaled in secret or hid from the sunshine; and as night had 

 shadowed the forest in its darkness, the hunter and his sons lay 

 down to rest. 



As they slept, soft singing voices floated through the still trees, 

 nearer and nearer approaching till they awakened Hai-no-nis, 

 the eldest of the eleven brothers. Charmed by the weird chanting, 

 he aroused his brothers to listen to the sorcerous song, and they 

 followed as it led through bewildering paths to a large tree where 

 under its branches a great circle widened its moon shadows. For a 

 time the voices ceased, but as the brothers waited, the song was 

 resumed in a quicker strain that tuned them to swift dancing till 

 in the frenzy of its measure, they could not cease. They implored 

 the Night Wind to guide them back to their father, but it passed 

 heedlessly by, and the voices led the brothers still further as, 

 delirious with motion, they danced onward and upward till they 

 had left the earth far beneath in their skyward flight. 



Day after day the brothers danced, and day after day the troubled 

 Sun glanced after them but could not reach them. Night after 

 night the stars grew dizzy as the dancers swirled round the sky, 

 when Hai-no-nis disappeared and the song- voices fainted far away. 



Yet the dancers could not rest, and the pitying Moon, thinking to 

 quiet them, left her path and led them to her procession of stars 

 which was marching across the night sky. But their ceaseless 

 dancing set the stars whirling till the Moon, frightened at the con- 

 fusion, transformed them to a group of fixed stars and assigned 



1 Another version states that the dancing party consisted of eleven young men and boys, 

 the oldest of which was chosen the chief. They were training for battles which the future 

 should bring and requested the parents to furnish them food to eat during their period of 

 training. The request was refused several times. The chief kept up their spirits by singing 

 and beating the water drum whose ringing rhythm charmed their feet to the war dance. 

 Their spirits were high when they finished their dance and they again implored their several 

 parents for food. The chief was angry when it was refused, and grasping the wet drum 

 again said : " We will dance ourselves away from earth and leave it forever." He sang the 

 Ji'-ha-ya (the witch) song and roused the dancers to high enthusiasm, bade them dance 

 and look upward and listen to no plea that might be wailed up through the trees. Thus 

 they danced up to the sky, all unheeding of the cries of terror and distress from below, save 

 one who looked down and fell. 



