Sacred Texts: Native American

Seneca Indian Myths: A Race Between Bear and Turtle

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This is a Native American trickster tale, likely from an Iroquoian or Haudenosaunee tradition, featuring named animal characters — Turtle (Hanówa), Fox (Nongwatgwa), and Bear (Dasidowanes). The story follows a fat old Turtle traveling east, who twice tricks a lean Fox with false advice: first claiming he stays fat by sucking fat from sleeping villagers (which gets Fox kicked by an animal), then claiming he fishes through ice with his tail (which gets Fox's tail frozen off and torn away). The tail-loss transforms Fox into Bear, explaining why bears are stub-tailed. Fox-turned-Bear then challenges Turtle to a race, but Turtle cheats by posting identical-looking turtle allies along the river route to simulate his progress, wins the wager, and decapitates Bear. The tale works as an origin myth (accounting for the bear's short tail) while centering the theme of repeated credulity punished — Fox/Bear is fooled three times by the same character. Its distinctive quality is the layered trickery: Turtle is never genuinely clever, just exploits a single mark's gullibility twice, then cheats at a fair contest, making him less a heroic trickster than a ruthless one.

Seneca Indian Myths: A Race Between Bear and Turtle

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