A Seneca Story

Submitted By John Kahionhes Fadden

A classic Seneca story talks about a young boy. The boy, his family, and others lived in a village on a hill above Canandaigua Lake. The boy was adventurous, as all young ones are. One day he was down by the lake exploring among the cattails, the water's edge, and surrounding area. He came across a very odd thing. He found a snake. That in itself wasn't odd. But, the odd thing was that it had two heads. He captured the snake and brought it home. He put it in a basket, and then fed it small insects. He showed it to his mother, and later showed it to his grandmother. Both women thought that he should get rid of it...let it go. It was an unnatural thing. The boy didn't listen to the advice.

As time went by he noticed that the animal was doing very well, and he had to feed it larger insects, worms, and caterpillars. It continued to grow. It reached a point where the insects weren't enough to keep the creature filled, and the boy had to feed it larger things like minnows, small frogs and toads. Increasingly he had to feed it larger animals of the size of squirrels, mice and chipmunks. The boy too was growing. As time passed he became a young teenager. Meanwhile, the snake's appetite continued to increase, and he was feeding it rabbits, woodchucks and animals of that nature. Finally, the boy asked his friends to help feed this growing snake. It reached a point where the adults too were contributing to feeding this thing. They fed it deer, bear, and even moose. It reached a point where the supply of game was very much diminished. The snake, by this time, was so large that it encircled the stockaded village. People began to try to leave, and to their horror, the two heads of the snake consumed those who attempted to escape.

Finally, it was just the boy and his sister remaining. Then, he had a dream, and in the dream he was instructed to make a bow out of a branch of a tree that grew within the village, and to make the bow string from the braided hair of his sister, plus the arrow's head to be made from a white quartz that was to be found within the village. The dream instructed him to shoot the arrow at the center of the space where the two heads of the snake met. He followed the dream and constructed the bow and arrow. When finished, and upon summoning up his courage, he stepped out of the stockade and confronted the creature. It reared up to attack him. He quickly and surely released the arrow. The arrow flew true and hit the spot as directed by the dream. The snake reared up and twisted, and then it fell backward. It rolled down the hill toward the lake, tearing down the trees as it went. The two-headed snake coughed up the heads of the Senecas that it had consumed as it entered the water, never to be seen again.

That hill is still there, and it's called Bare Hill, as no trees grow on it. They find round stones near the waters edge of a size that they could be remnants of ancient heads.