Mighty Hunter
Oneida Sound Recording
Description: An amazing hunt told by Albert King to Andrew Beechtree and read by Maria Hinton.
Written text: Internlinear Translation (PDF)
Tip: Save the interlinear translation pdf to your computer and open them in Adobe Acrobat where you can click the lines and phrases to play embedded sound recordings.
English Translation
A Mighty Hunter
So I guess I should tell a story. It's the story of a might hunter, a man, now dead, who used to be called Fiddler. He went hunting once and he went all day and finally when it got dark he gave up and took a rest. Then while he was sitting to his surprise a partridge was standing in front of a tree. Then at the sound of the gun, some deer took off. He went to investigate where the deer had been and he saw a trail of blood and he followed where he'd been for a short ways and didn't find anything. Then he saw the bullet had gone through his neck and it broke his neck. As he was walking along the bank, he noticed the sound of water. He saw that a sturgeon had struggled and jumped out so he took the fish out. The bullet had just gone through his head. He must have just jumped up when the bullet was flying by. He set the fish on the ground and he was thinking. Then he thought I must have been standing here when I shot. He saw on the other side of the river a yellow birch was standing. He saw where the bullet had gone through. He crossed over to investigate and he touched it and to his surprise some bee honey was coming out. So he went home to get an ax and when he returned, he cut down the tree. He took ten pails of honey out. With just one shot he earned himself a partridge, a deer, a sturgeon, and a great amount of honey.

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Meet Forrest Brooks, our resident advocate to uplift the Oneida language. As a lifelong learner of Haudenosaunee original ways of thinking, being and doing, he's passionate about sharing Indigenous culture.