Canada
Oneida Sound Recording
Description: disagreeing factions told by William Skenandore to Andrew Beechtree and read by Maria Hinton
Written text: Internlinear Translation (PDF)
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English Translation
Canada
It was while I was visiting this man Shonaˀkalésne in Canada. These people living there were Oneidas just like us and they still believed in the old way of living with chiefs in control of whatever business they had. They were also divided into groups. Some wanted to change to the white man’s way of living and some wanted to stay in their old ways to be Oneidas as they had always been. One time I was there at their meeting. They were meeting and it just so happened that they were really arguing. This elderly chief stood up and gave them a lecture.
He said, “If we aren’t careful and after a while we notice we are quarrelling and aren’t of one mind, it will happen to us as he was seen in my story.”
One day as [this man] was walking along the road and they say he was going along with a cane. He noticed as he walked along in front of him two snakes met and right away they grabbed each other. They say he had a notion to strike them with his cane and kill them both. But suddenly he changed his mind and it won out that he thought he would watch for a while what would happen. To his surprise they coiled around each other into a ball. Each was biting the tail of the other and then they swallowed each other. Finally as he watched there was only a small coil left and at last they had swallowed each other and the two snakes disappeared.
More Texts
This traditional Oneida story is one of several. For more, see our listing of Oneida Sample Texts.
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