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HODADEION PART 10 – THE CANNIBAL WIZARDS – Now safely on the northern side of Niagara Falls following his battle with the whirlwind, the demigod Hodadeion continued walking toward the northeast.
The god of magic knew he was getting closer and closer to the home village of the cannibal wizards who had abducted his younger brother, the wampum god Otgoe. Hodadeion could tell that from the greater frequency with which he came upon empty villages which the cannibal wizards had depopulated by feasting on all the inhabitants.
Here and there Hodadeion would encounter isolated handfuls of human beings living a fugitive lifestyle. They were the pitifully few survivors of the villages decimated by the wizards. These survivors hid in caves, often too terrified to venture forth even to hunt, out of fear that the cannibal medicine men would find them.
Our hero took to using his magic to kill bears for the fugitives so that those hiding men and women could have meat, fur and bear oil. After feasting with each isolated band he would use his magic to create false wampum out of tree bark, then bemoan the way that fake wampum always turned back to tree bark in a few minutes. Only real wampum had any value.
At last, one night after mealtime a woman and her children told Hodadeion that in the home village of the cannibal wizards there was a captive, bound and helpless. Every day the wizards and their women would torture the captive, whose tears fell to the ground as pure wampum.
The demigod immediately knew that the captive was his brother Otgoe, whose tears, spit and mucous emerged as wampum. Hodadeion casually inquired if the family knew the location of that village and the mother gave directions to our protagonist. (In some versions she has one of her sons lead him to the village the next day.)
Arriving at the outskirts of the village of the cannibal wizards Hodadeion clung to the trees and bushes. He seized a passing mole and mystically projected his mind into the animal, then set it crawling into the evil village, seeing everything through the mole’s eyes.
And those eyes were filled with disgust. Bones of the countless victims of these vile beings were everywhere. Some were in large piles, others served to outline paths like stones normally would. Still others hung as decorations. With dread, the mole approached a large longhouse lodge from which came laughter punctuated by indescribable screams.
Looking within, Hodadeion saw through the mole’s eyes his younger brother Otgoe bound by magic to an upright stake. The cannibal wizards sat around the captive, smoking and enjoying Otgoe’s screams while their women poked and prodded the bound wampum god with firebrands.
Our hero understood: Otgoe had resisted his captors as much as he could and had obviously refused to provide them with the wampum they desired by simply spitting or expelling mucous from his nose. The cannibal wizards had thus resorted to binding his brother through their dark magic and had their women torture him into weeping, and the vile entities greedily scooped up all of his wampum tears as they fell.
With the mole’s ears Hodadeion eventually heard a conversation among the cannibals regarding the way their leader Dagwahgweoses now lived by himself near a lake. The long-eyebrowed chief of the cannibal wizards had greedily taken all of the wampum that Otgoe’s torture had produced up until then, leaving his people to continue tormenting the wampum god for wealth of their own.
The mole returned to Hodadeion’s hiding place in the woods and the demigod left the mole’s mind. Filled now with rage at the way the cannibal wizards had been mistreating his younger brother, he emerged from hiding and stalked angrily and recklessly toward the longhouse lodge in which Otgoe suffered. +++
THE NEXT PART WILL BE UP SOON. KEEP CHECKING BACK. FOR MY ORIGINAL LIST OF IROQUOIS DEITIES CLICK HERE: https://glitternight.com/2013/01/28/the-top-fifteen-deities-in-iroquois-mythology/
CHOCTAW INDIAN MYTHS – https://glitternight.com/2012/06/03/the-top-twelve-deities-in-choctaw-mythology/
