Note 435 — SENECA FICTION, LEGENDS, AND MYTHS (continued 4)

It so happened that one of the young men dwelling there resolved to make an expedition into the distant West, into the region through which lay the path of the sun. The name of this young man was Dehaenhyowens (He-Who-Cleaves-the-Sky-in-Twain).435 To promote his design, he persuaded his friends to prepare a great feast, to which all the people should be bidden and at which, as was the custom of the country, he should announce to the public his purpose of making an expedition into the West to the end of the earth, in order to slaughter unknown men and to obtain the scalps of the alien peoples whom he might encounter, since the scalps would serve as tokens of the victors’ prowess and craft in warfare.