A Widow’s Revenge
Once some young men went hunting in the winter. They travelled high up the Mohican River-which we know of today as the Hudson River-where they always hunted. One day they all were hunting, and one woman-the wife of one of the men-and her child stayed alone in the camp. She hulled corn, then took the corn to a place where a spring came out of the side of a mountain to wash it. While she was there, she saw some men in the water. They had paint on their faces and she knew it was a bad sign.
She hurried back to where the rest of her group was camped. The men were still out hunting, but when they returned she told them of the men she had seen and told them that their camp would be attacked that night. The men prepared for battle and told the woman to go off and hide herself so she wouldn’t be hurt in the fighting. Since there were only a few warriors in their party, they had little hope of winning the battle. It was already dark and the woman knew she couldn’t go very far, but she remembered a large hollow log and hid herself inside it with her child.
Once she was safely inside the log, she heard the sounds of the attack. She heard a man’s voice call out her husband’s name and say "The dog has bitten my thumb." She realized that her husband and the other warriors had been attacked by people who knew them, and that they were murderers from their own tribe and not members of an enemy tribe. But she had not recognized them when she saw them in the water.
Soon afterwards, it became quiet. The woman heard noises outside of the log where she was hidden, and they were looking for her. One said "We saw a woman, and she can’t be far off." Then another said "Maybe she is inside this hollow log." One used a stick to feel around inside the log, but the stick did not reach her, and they did not discover her hiding place. Soon they went away. The woman and her child lay quite still and stayed quiet all night long inside the hollow log.
When dawn came, the woman crawled out and took a shortcut back to her village so she could arrive before the murderers did. She told the story of the attack and said that all who had been with her had been killed by the murderers. The chief sent for all of the warriors, directing them to assemble. The women cooked food so the warriors could eat and then hid herself in case they recognized her.
All of the warriors arrived, and the chief directed them to eat and they continued eating until they had had enough. He saw one warrior with a bandage on his thumb and asked what had happened. The warrior answered "What? Oh, a beaver bit me." He had been out with a group of his clan-relatives the day before. But the woman whose husband had been murdered jumped out of her hiding place and said, "You liar, my husband bit you!" All of the other warriors fell on the murderer and those who had been with him and killed them. The revenge of the chief was all the more bitter because the murderers could be buried, while the woman’s husband and his comrades had been left in the woods to be eaten by the wild animals.
