An Iroquoian Story of Creation

Continued from last week.

There was a young woman who had never taken part in this contest before. And then she decided to so this, this one year. And they say on the third day on an her last chance of guessing the dream, she did guess the correct dream, And I’ve never heard what that dream was, but they say that she did guess the correct one.

And so right way all of the villagers got extremely excited that somebody had actually got the answer right. And it had been so many years that they had been wishing that this would happen. So the Chief could have a partner and have children and pass hi knowledge on to them. So the village was very excited that this young woman got the right answer. And immediately they started planning a wedding, and not once stopping to ask this young woman is she would like to marry the Chief, is she indeed wanted to do that.

So she was kind of swept up in all of what was going on in planning the wedding and all the excitement. Everything was planned for the following spring there was a large wedding and much celebration. And people came from all over – all of the best speakers. And they cam and they spoke in the village and the Chief and the young woman – and lots of celebration. And so they were married, the Chief and this young woman.

And some time went on. And in time the young woman began to think about what had happened. And she began to find out that she really didn’t love this Chief. She realized she was just swept up in the emotion of everything that was going on around her at the time. And so she never really had a chance to say or think about it; she just went along with it. And she found out that she had fallen in love with another young man in the same village. And she became pregnant by this other young man. And so she knew now she had to go and tell the Chief how she felt, and that she was expecting a child by another man.

And they say that these people did have special gifts. And the gift that the Chief had was that he knew what was going on in the village all the time. And he had already known all this. He understood this; but he wanted this young woman to come and tell him by herself. He didn’t want to approach her with it. So she did. She went and she explained everything how she felt and how she didn’t love him; she loved another man. And they were going to have a child. So the Chief listened to her and he understood all the circumstances surrounding it. But he said they did have to to together and tell the rest of the village what was happening. So they did. They called a village council together. And, of course the entire village was very sad at the turn of what had happened there. So they were also reminded – the people reminded the Chief and the woman – that there was – even at that time in this history – I guess an ancient law that was put in place for this type of event or situation. The young woman and her new spouse would be banished. And they’d be banished not just from the village, but they were going to be banished from that entire world.

And the place that they were going to be sent to was a place that we would become very familiar with today.

In the center of the village there was a large tree. And they had dug a hole beside this tree (this is one of the versions I have heard) and they say they dug a hole down beside it. And once they dug down so far, they broke through all of the earth. And then you could see light coming up from the bottom and when you looked way down through the hole, you could see very, very far down there was a lot of air. And then way down at the bottom was rough seas like the ocean, and it was all water. There was a complete globe of water down there, and they say that it was slat water and it was also fresh water down there. That’s where they were going to send this young man and woman.

Continued next week