Page:Myths of the Iroquois.djvu/54

88 which he crept. The steps came nearer and nearer, until at last he felt the strokes of the dead man's hatchet, and heard the dead man's voice saying, "Ah! you are here. I have caught you." Then the dead man took a pole and tried to poke the hunter out of the hollow, but he could not. At last his hatchet broke, and then the hunter heard him say, "I must go; my night is coming on." So, after a while, the hunter crept out of the hollow log and went after his wife and child, and returned to the settlement and told all about it; and the chief sent and burnt up the dead man's wigwam until it was nothing but ashes.

This was told by Mr. Snow, Seneca Reservation: A hunter far from home had expended all of his arrows, when he arrived at a lake. He saw a great number of wild geese. Having been unsuccessful, he now reflected upon the best means of capturing some of these geese, and he finally concluded to pursue the following plan: He procured a quantity of second-growth bass-wood bark, which he tore into withes. These he fastened to his belt, then, swimming out into the lake, he dove down under the floating flock and succeeded in tying a few of the geese to his belt, whereupon the struggling geese, with their companions, flew up into the air, carrying the hunter with them. While unfastening a few of the tied ones, so that he might be let down to the ground in a gradual manner, the whole of the captured ones broke away, and the poor hunter fell into a tall and hollow stump, from which he found it impossible to free himself.

He remained in this miserable prison nearly two days, when he with joy heard a thumping sound upon the outside of the stump, and also the voices of women choppers, who were cutting down the stump for wood, but the cries of the man on the inside of the stump frightened the women so much that they went away in search of aid to secure the game which they supposed they had found in the stump.

The hunter was finally delivered safely from his perilous situation, and he remained with his kind rescuers until he had again provided himself with a large stock of arrows, when he started anew for a hunt farther to the south. Having arrived at his destination, he built a lodge and had excellent luck in killing large numbers of deer, bears, and other game, the oil of which he carefully preserved in leathern bottles. When he concluded to return to his home and friends he remembered his experience in flying, so he prepared wings for himself, which wings he made from thinly-dressed deer-skin. Taking his bottles of oil for ballast, he started homeward, but as he passed over the lodges of the good women who had rescued him, he threw down several bottles to these his good friends, who to this day do not know from whence they came. After