Black Fly Myths

The Legend of the Black Fly

There are several legends of the black fly, depending on where you live and how badly they affect the enjoyment of your late spring. This one comes from a time over 100 years before the Europeans arrived in North America.
It starts with a young boy of the Iroquois nation, who aspired not to be a great warrior but a great medicine man. This inspiration started when he was nine years old. As he grew older, no matter how much he practised, he could barely cope with the warrior skills every young member of the tribe was expected to master. Instead, every free moment he could find would be spent in the company of the tribal medicine man. This older and childless person was flattered by the attention of this young “brave.”

The tribe came to respect him and his good intentions.
But, the boy—now, almost a man—wanted more, and he had many questions: Was it true that eating the heart of an enemy made you braver? Why was the broth of a boiled toad a stronger medicine than that of a boiled frog? Why was it that even his great hero, the aging medicine man, could cure some diseases and heal some wounds but not others? The “budding apprentice” (although no one in the tribe would ever have called him that) began to carry out what one might call, today, primitive scientific experiments. What would seem quite eccentric to us—and maybe had even to some of the tribe then—became his passion.
When the quest for a “fountain of youth”—or in his case, a warrior with superhuman powers of mind and strength—becomes a passion, it can rob one of a basic sense of the reality, which is the key to all human survival. Our hero didn’t see it that way. He wanted a

His search now turned not to the fox but to the mouse, which seemed to be able to get in almost everywhere, usually unseen. But, how could one combine the two? And, if one did, would something still be missing? The red-tailed hawk could watch the mouse from afar and, on a lucky day, target and kill the mouse. The missing ingredient had been found—or so it seemed.
So here was the recipe: Sprinkle the heart of a moose with the brains of three mice and, for a glaze, pour over it the eyes of one red-tailed hawk mixed with chives. Then, roast this concoction well. For a drink, the leaves of an eastern white cedar tree in hot water completed the potion. Now, there was a brew for spring.
Our new medicine man called all the tribe together to witness the effect of his great discovery, so some of them might try it too. The medicine man ate and drank his potion, but something went horribly wrong. Unknown to the young medicine man, some fleas from the mice had gotten into the brew. That night, the young medicine man convulsed in agony, and, by morning, he was