{"collection":"Sacred Texts: Native American","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_nam_iro_sim_sim83_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_nam_iro_sim_sim83_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_nam_iro_sim_sim83_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/nam/iro/sim/sim83.htm","summary":"This is an Indigenous oral narrative, almost certainly Seneca (Haudenosaunee/Iroquois), presenting a hero tale structured around a young man's quest westward to obtain a wife from a distant chief. The elder of two orphaned nephews sets out with his younger brother Turkey \u2014 a toddler who wears an actual turkey skin and can fly \u2014 equipped by their uncle with a suite of enchanted objects: a roaring meteor-skin coat, singing feathers, and a biting fisher-skin pouch. Despite warnings, the hero is deceived by a shape-shifting thief (Woodchuck Leggings, \"the Deceiver\") who tricks him into stripping his magical outfit, then pushes him into a hollow tree full of bones \u2014 from which he escapes only through two childhood dream-helpers, a great spider and a black snake. The thief arrives at the chief's village disguised in the stolen regalia and marries the eldest daughter, while the hero arrives looking like a feeble old man in the thief's rags; the chief's perceptive youngest daughter nevertheless recognizes the true hero and chooses him. The two men's natures are then exposed through a recurring wampum test: the genuine hero produces first black, then white wampum, while the impostor produces only lizards and filth. The story is distinctive for its emphasis on perception over appearance, dream-granted spiritual allies, and vividly inventive enchanted objects \u2014 and it includes a comic etiological aside explaining why wildcats have singed, yellowish coats.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Seneca Indian Myths: Turkey's Brother goes in Search of a...","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Native American","translated_text":null,"word_count":2699}