Note 464 — SENECA FICTION, LEGENDS, AND MYTHS (continued 7)
Reading edition
When they arrived there he said: “Now, you wild geese shall be free henceforth. Sʻhagowenotʻha has made you his slaves and servants—an act which was indeed, as you know, a great wrong. Now you are again free and independent. It was not the intention of Sʻhoñgwadiĕñnuʼkdăʼon, our Creator, that anyone should be a slave or a servant.464 As is well known, it was his intention that every one and everything among the animals and the birds and the fowl should be in all things independent and free. He did not will that anyone should hold any being in bondage, even among the animal kingdom. Now you must depart hence and go your ways. It shall continue to be your custom in advancing across the earth to go to and fro in the form of a wedge. Thus you shall be seen by those who shall be born hereafter howsoever long the earth may continue its existence. This is all. So now depart, and when you go you must follow one another.” Thereupon the wild geese started away in freedom.