Note 419 — SENECA FICTION, LEGENDS, AND MYTHS

Going to a corner of the lodge, he obtained there a great clay pot and, after putting water in it, he set it over the fire. Having quartered the body of his victim, he put it into the pot to cook. While he was engaged in this gruesome work he kept saying, “There is still no lack of power to do things in my manner of living, for I have no trouble to live. Game animals habitually come to my lodge.” So spake the old man, who was then cooking the entire body of a human being, and was happy. (It is said that he gave to his granddaughter the flesh of leeches to eat and putrid things also. She was not aware of what she was eating, for he had hypnotized her to think these things were proper and good. This granddaughter was a prisoner whom he had taken in one of his raids. But he himself ate human flesh in his lodge, and in order to satisfy his unnatural appetite he was engaged in killing people from all the neighboring settlements; this conduct agitated the entire country around.419)