IROQUOIS MYTHS AND LEGENDS 



79 



KO-NEA RAW-NEH, THE FLYING HEADS 1 



The Long House was new and the people were tranquil in its 

 peace when they were terrorized by the visitations of the Flying 

 Heads. 



These odious Heads were enveloped in long, fire-flaming hair 

 which streamed to the wind in their flying, dazzling and blinding 

 those who dared look at them ; and armed with two great bearlike 

 paws, which were ever in motion as if clutching at prey, they shot 

 through the air like meteors. 



When flying, these Heads were of enormous size, yet, upon the 

 land or among the forest trees, they could become no larger than 

 the head of a bear, for which, but for their flaming hair and repul- 

 sive visage, they might sometimes be mistaken; but whether in 

 the air or upon the land, there seemed no human power able to 

 combat them, and the people fled in horror whenever they ap- 

 peared. 



Many of the medicine men said they were bad spirits ? who had 

 escaped from some place of confinement, and, angered that the 

 people should be dwelling in peace, were seeking to destroy them, 

 while others belie\^ed their coming portended some dire calamity 

 that would befall them; but, whatever the cause of their coming, 

 the people were powerless to restrain them. 



Feasts, invocations and incantations were of no avail; drums, 

 rattles and loud screaming shouts gave forth no sound when the 

 Heads appeared, and they heeded them not. Arrows and spears 

 would glance from their fiery hair, or break like a dead branch 

 wind-blown from the tree, and there seemed no succor for the 

 people. 



Happily these dread visitations would be interrupted for varying 

 periods often extending through several months, when the people 

 would return to their quiet, always hoping the Heads had departed 

 forever. 



A long time had passed, so long that the people had nearly for- 

 gotten their affliction, when one night at the sundown, De-wan-do, 

 an Iroquois woman, with her infant wrapped in a blanket and 

 swung across her shoulders, was paddling her canoe across a broad 

 river. She was hastening before the darkness should set in when, 

 as she neared the shore, a long shadow swept across her canoe and a 

 big face lifted from the water, a face whose flaming hair streaked the 



1 This is one of the legends which David Cusick included in his History of the Six Nations. 



2 In some myths the flying heads are false faces. The Mohawks instead of making the 

 Stone Giant the founder credit the Flying Heads with being the original False Faces. 



