{"collection":"Native American","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/nam/iro/sim/sim64.htm","path":"nam/iro/sim/sim64.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/nam/iro/sim/sim64.htm","text":"Characters\n| TONDAYENT | White Rabbit | \n| NOnGWATGWA | FOX | \nONE day a hunter was going along over a light, freshly fallen snow. His footsteps made no noise.\nAll at once he saw a man coming toward him and that man shouted, \"I am a man-eater!\"\nThe hunter ran for his life. He circled around and around to escape, but the man followed and was gaining on him. When the hunter saw that he was losing ground, he took off his moccasins and said to them, \"Run ahead as fast as you can.\" Then he lay down and became a dead rabbit, dirty and black.\nWhen the man-eater came up and saw the black, dirty old body and the fresh tracks going on, he followed the tracks. When he came to the end of the trail and saw only moccasins, he was angry, and thought, \"That fellow fooled me, the next time I will eat anything I see.\"\nThe man-eater turned back and sure enough the dead rabbit was gone. He followed the tracks and soon came upon a man who sat rolling pieces of bark, making rope.\nHe asked, \"Have you seen a hunter pass?\"\nNo answer. He asked again and pushed the rope-maker till he fell over, then the rope-maker said, \"Some one passed just now.\"\nThe man-eater hurried away. The rope-maker sprang\nup, ran forward, made a circle and was ahead of the man-eater, then he turned himself into an old tree with dry limbs.\nWhen the man-eater came to the tree, he said, \"Maybe he has turned himself into a tree.\"\nHe punched the tree and broke off a twig that looked like a nose, but it was dead wood.\n\"I don't think it is he,\" said the man-eater, and again he followed the moccasin tracks.\nWhen he overtook the moccasins he said, \"That tree was the man and he has fooled me again.\"\nHe hurried back and when he came to where the tree had been, it was gone, and where he had thrown down the twig there was blood, then he knew the tree was the man, and he followed the tracks that he found there.\nJust as the hunter saw that his enemy was near he chanced to come upon a dead man; he pushed the body on to the trail and when the man-eater came up, he said, \"I will eat him this time! He won't fool me again, I'll finish him.\" And he ate the putrid carcass. The hunter escaped.\nThe man with the moccasins was a rabbit; the man-eater was a fox.","title":"Seneca Indian Myths: The Fox and Rabbit","type":"page"}