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Iroquois Creation Story II. 2020. Painting by G. Peter Jemison.  

I have all of these old notebooks from my English degree college days. I’m going through them before I throw them out. The first is Early American Lit 221. Today, my thin and somewhat inscrutable notes are going to be fleshed out by the anthropologist Mr. Arthur C. Parker (1881-1955), who is himself a figure of American Literature, having written about indigenous American myths to some renown. 

This is a good place to start as the first narrative traditions in America were, of course, those of indigenous people. I wrote this on the first day of one class: “The content of Seneca stories themselves were not important, rather the use, etiquette, possession, and presentation of the stories is what this tradition is about.”

I’m not sure what that means, but I wrote it.

It came from somewhere.

        So, let’s start with that and see where Mr. Parker and my memory take us. 

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The Seneca people lived in today’s western New York and were one of the six nations that made up the Iroquois Confederacy. Seneca tribes—like other Iroquois nations—designated individuals to be official storytellers. These chosen few were the holders of the legends and traditions of the past. But access to these foundational myths was not just limited by persons, it was also limited by time. Apparently, it was taboo to tell myths, fables, or tales of adventure during the summer months. This would upset the forces of nature that can best be described in modern English as “wood fairies.” 

If the lawless storyteller persisted, nature would turn on him. Parker writes that “bees might sting his lips or his tongue would swell and fill his mouth, snakes might crawl in his bed and choke him while he slept.”

This rule protected the Seneca people in two ways. First, by refraining from telling stories in the summer months, no animals could overhear stories of human conquest and become jealous or learn too much about human ingenuity and intelligence. Second, the rule ensured no animal would “become so interested as to forget its place in nature, and pondering over the mysteries of man’s words, wander dazed and aimless through the forest.”

However, the most salient reason to not sit around and tell stories might have been because there was too much work to do in the summer, and too much work tied so totally to survival. I would guess that was the real reason behind such a prohibition, and that the reason is merely dressed up in the light costume of fable because, why not? Why not make it wood fairies and not the specter of death and starvation?     

Since cultural narratives came from such a select group of individuals, the process for sharing stories was quite formalized. There was a script to follow when calling people’s attention to listen. And there was a call and response preamble that they used to frame the important time. It was an event!

However, the storytellers were not mere performers. Listeners would be expected to respond with a specific syllable of recognition at certain parts of the story to show they were listening and engaged. If the storytelling did not get that response, they might stop and ask the audience what was wrong with the story. Falling asleep during the story was a blemish on the sleepers reputation. In fact, it was customary to bring gifts to the storyteller. 

The Seneca stories have many interesting tropes and motifs. There are certain archetypes that appear with regularity: heroic men that triumph over monsters; twins that have magical powers; abandoned or orphaned children that grow into lives of power and prestige; imposters that try to steal the identities of heroic men and fail spectacularly; children raised by animals; youth who discover magical powers when faced with danger. There are also repeated objects in these stories: enchanted feathers, weirdly-colored magical animals like blue lizards or white beavers; personified objects like talking moccasins or a talking flute; or, my favorite, an animated finger, which Parker describes a “a magic finger that stands in [a hero’s] palm, pointing out the location of anything he desires.”

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I make some reference to a character named Gaqka in my notes but don’t really explain his significance to the Seneca tradition. Apparently, Gaqka was the reason the Seneca people have traditional mythology to begin with. 

His story is one of a reversal of fortune. As a child, Goqka is an orphan who is ridiculed by his community for his uncleanliness. He leaves his hometown to raise himself in the wilderness and become a great hunter. He soon finds a canoe in the forest and he quickly discovers that it is, of course, a magical canoe that flies through the air and takes him southward. (Also in my notes is a mention that southward is the symbolic path towards the past and tradition; northward is the symbolic path towards modernity.) The canoe eventually touches down on a river that splits at this one spot around this giant cliff. The rocks of the cliff look like the face of an old man. Goqka decides to build a bark house on top of that cliff and live there while he learns how to be a great hunter. 

The first night after he builds his house, he rests at the edge of the cliff. A voice calls out saying, “Give me some tobacco.” After some expected doubt and confusion and talking back and forth, Goqka tosses some tobacco over the edge of the cliff and the voice says, “Now I will tell you a story.” 

The voice tells him a story and Goqka loves it. Then the rock sets some boundaries to their exchange. He says to Goqka, and I’m paraphrasing here: “From now on you are going to bring me a small gift in exchange for my stories. When you come to me, I’m going to say this specific Seneca word. Then you are going to reply with this other specific Seneca word, so that I know you are listening because, after all, I’m a hunk of rock. You must always pay attention and not fall asleep because I'm going to signal that my story is over by saying this other specific Seneca phrase. When I say that phrase, you toss down your little gift and then you can go on your way. That, Goqka, is how we’re going to do stories.”

Goqka traveled all around this magical Southern land and found nearby towns full of people who taught him how to be a better hunter. He took these new friends back to his cliff home and let them listen in on the cliff’s captivating tales of their ancestors and how the world came to be.

Eventually, Goqka goes into a town and goes to some random woman and asks her to sew him a pouch. The woman says, “I’ve got the strangest feeling that my son-in-law has just entered my home,” when Goqka appears. With that, Goqka is given the woman’s daughter as a bride. She’s not too thrilled about this but Goqka takes her home anyway and shows her his magical story cliff. 

His young bride says, “This cliff is actually my grandfather. Listen to his stories all winter long and put a token in your pouch for each story.” Goqka did and, in that way, he collected all the tales of ancient times. Then Goqka’s bride said, “We shall go north to your home and you will share all the stories that you now carry in your pouch.”

Goqka said, “But they don’t like me there. They think I’m worthless and ugly.”

To which his bride said, “Don't worry, I got you." Then, she walked them to Goqka’s magical canoe. She said, “This is my canoe that I sent to you. It’ll take us to your old home and our new home.”

As they sailed through the sky, Goqka's wife sang traditional songs and taught them to Goqka. When they finally touched down, she told him to crawl through a hollow log and when he came out the other end, he was handsome and well dressed.

So, Goqka and his new bride return to his hometown and Goqka starts telling everyone his stories. He tells them using the same ritual that his rock of a grandfather-in-law taught him and he asks for little gifts which the townspeople readily give him. He grows old as a revered member of the community. In the process, he begins the Seneca tradition of storytelling that has been carried on for generations since.

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On the second day of class, I started off my notes with this quote: “Home is a place where you don’t have to think anymore.” I do not know who I am quoting—it might have just been the professor, Dr. Sherman—but this is a quote that might best be described as my kinda shit. While the words “don’t have to think” are perhaps not the best phrasing, this seems like this was written here as a description of the indigenous experience of home and I wrote it down because it resonated.

Perhaps it means this: for the Seneca people, home is tradition and cohabitation. There is a predetermined rhythm to home life and specific roles you can inhabit in it. Remember, the content of their stories "were not important, rather the use, etiquette, possession, and presentation of the stories" was what really mattered. That's home. A home understood by looking into the past, by telling stories, by investing in ceremony. It is perhaps not that you “don’t have to think anymore” but more that you surrender yourself to your home and it carries you, shapes you, informs you about who you are.

This is in contrast to all the American writers who will fill the rest of the course and the rest of American Literature. These are the true Americans, not those just roped into a sort of tangential American identity against their will. The true Americans—the settlers, the colonizers, the conquerors—did not have the same notion of home.

For these red-blooded Alphas, home is a thing to strive for, to create, and then to recreate. Home is always over the horizon, always further west. The keys to the true Americans' home were not held in the past. In fact, they didn’t even need keys because they claimed the land and built the goddamn door themselves. They didn’t ask for permission or wait for someone’s blessing.

The true Americans' home did not inform them about who they were; it was created to show the world who they wanted to be. True Americans created their home in their image. It was not a communal space that came from the land; it was an individual shrine marking conquest over the land. The American had to continually make home. They had to think. They were all of them bold storytellers, making shit up, inventing their own individual narratives, as they marched boldly into a world they had conspired to redefine as mere wilderness.

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Parker, M.S., Arthur C. Seneca Myths and Folk Tales. 1923. E-book, Project Gutenberg, 2020. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/61477/61477-h/61477-h.htm. Accessed

Jemison, G. Peter. Iroquois Creation Story II. Acrylic on Canvas. 2020, Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe. https://iaia.edu/event/g-peter-jemison-iroquois-creation-story/.