Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual...

Whatever he prayed for—Swimmer gives a detailed statement of the particular petition made by several of those thus painted. Painting the face and body, especially with red paint, is always among Indians a more or less sacred performance, usually accompanied with prayers.

68.The hunter in the Dăkwă′—This story was told by Swimmer and Ta′gwadihĭ′ and is well known in the tribe. The version from the Wahnenauhi manuscript differs considerably from that here given. In the Bible translation the word dăkwă′ is used as the equivalent of whale. Haywood thus alludes to the story (Nat. and Aborig. Hist. Tenn., p. 244): “One of the ancient traditions of the Cherokees is that once a whale swallowed a little boy, and after some time spewed him upon the land.”

It is pretty certain that the Cherokee formerly had some acquaintance with whales, which, about the year 1700, according to Lawson, were “very numerous” on the coast of North Carolina, being frequently stranded along the shore, so that settlers derived considerable profit from the oil and blubber. He enumerates four species there known, and adds a general statement that “some Indians in America” hunted them at sea (History of Carolina, pp. 251–252).

In almost every age and country we find a myth of a great fish swallowing a man, who afterward finds his way out alive. Near to the Cherokee myth are the Bible story of Jonah, and the Greek story of Hercules, swallowed by a fish and coming out afterward alive, but bald. For parallels and theories of the origin and meaning of the myth among the ancient nations, see chapter IX of Bouton’s Bible Myths.

In an Ojibwa story, the great Manabozho is swallowed, canoe and all, by the king of the fishes. With his war club he strikes repeated blows upon the heart of the fish, which attempts to spew him out. Fearing that he might drown in deep water, Manabozho frustrates the endeavor by placing his canoe crosswise in the throat of the fish, and continues striking at the heart until the monster makes for the shore and there dies, when the hero makes his escape through a hole which the gulls have torn in the side of the carcass (Schoolcraft, Algic Researches, I, pp. 145–146).

69.Atagâ′hi, the enchanted lake (p. 321): This story was heard from Swimmer, Ta′gwadihĭ′, and others, and is a matter of familiar knowledge to every hunter among the East Cherokee. If Indian testimony be believed there is actually a large bare flat of this name in the difficult recesses of the Great Smoky mountains on the northern boundary of Swain county, North Carolina, somewhere between the heads of Bradleys fork and Eagle creek. It appears to be a great resort for bears and ducks, and is perhaps submerged at long intervals, which would account for the legend.

Prayer, fasting, and vigil—In Indian ritual, as among the Orientals and in all ancient religions, these are prime requisites for obtaining clearness of spiritual vision. In almost every tribe the young warrior just entering manhood voluntarily subjected himself to an ordeal of this kind, of several days’ continuance, in order to obtain a vision of the “medicine” which was to be his guide and protector for the rest of his life.

70.The bride from the south (p. 322): This unique allegory was heard from both Swimmer and Ta′gwădihĭ′ in nearly the same form. Hagar also (MS Stellar Legends of the Cherokee) heard something of it from Ayâsta, who, however, confused it with the Hagar variant of number 11, “The Milky Way” (see notes to number 11).

In a myth from British Columbia, “The Hot and the Cold Winds,” the cold-wind people of the north wage war with the hot-wind people of the south, until the Indians, whose country lay between, and who constantly suffer from both sides, bring about a peace, to be ratified by a marriage between the two parties. Accordingly, the people of the south send their daughter to marry the son of the north. The two are married and have one child, whom the mother after a time decides to take with her to visit her own people in the north. Her visit ended, she starts on her return, accompanied by her elder brother. “They embarked in a bark canoe for the country of the cold. Her brother paddled. After going a long distance, and while crossing a great lake, the cold became so intense that her brother could not endure it any longer. He took the child from his sister and threw it into the water. Immediately the air turned warm and the child floated on the water as a lump of ice.”—Teit, Traditions of the Thompson River Indians, pp. 55, 56.

71.The Ice Man (p. 322): This story, told by Swimmer, may be a veiled tradition of a burning coal mine in the mountains, accidentally ignited in firing the woods in the fall, according to the regular Cherokee practice, and finally extinguished by a providential rainstorm. One of Buttrick’s Cherokee informants told him that “a great while ago a part of the world was burned, though it is not known now how, or by whom, but it is said that other land was formed by washing in from the mountains” (Antiquities, p. 7).

When the French built Fort Caroline, near the present Charleston, South Carolina, in 1562, an Indian village was in the vicinity, but shortly afterward the chief, with all his people, removed to a considerable distance in consequence of a strange accident—“a large piece of peat bog [was] kindled by lightning and consumed, which he supposed to be the work of artillery.”42

Volcanic activities, some of very recent date, have left many traces in the Carolina mountains. A mountain in Haywood county, near the head of Fines creek, has been noted for its noises and quakings for nearly a century, one particular explosion having split solid masses of granite as though by a blast of gunpowder. These shocks and noises used to recur at intervals of two or three years, but have not now been noticed for some time. In 1829 a violent earthquake on Valley river split open a mountain, leaving a chasm extending for several hundred yards, which is still to be seen. Satoola mountain, near Highlands, in Macon county, has crevices from which smoke is said to issue at intervals. In Madison county there is a mountain which has been known to rumble and smoke, a phenomenon with which the Warm springs in the same county may have some connection. Another peak, known as Shaking or Rumbling bald, in Rutherford county, attracted widespread attention in 1874 by a succession of shocks extending over a period of six months (see Zeigler and Grosscup, Heart of the Alleghanies, pp. 228–229).

In Iroquois myth the spirits of Corn, Beans, and Squash are three sisters. Corn was originally much more fertile, but was blighted by the jealousy of an evil spirit. “To this day, when the rustling wind waves the corn leaves with a moaning sound, the pious Indian fancies that he hears the Spirit of Corn, in her compassion for the red man, still bemoaning with unavailing regrets her blighted fruitfulness” (Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 162). See number 126, “Plant Lore,” and accompanying notes.

Several days—The strange lapse of time, by which a period really extending over days or even years seems to the stranger under the spell to be only a matter of a few hours, is one of the most common incidents of European fairy recitals, and has been made equally familiar to American readers through Irving’s story of Rip Van Winkle.

A story which seems to be a variant of the same myth was told to the Spanish adventurer Ayllon by the Indians on the South Carolina coast in 1520, and is thus given in translation from Peter Martyr’s Decades, in the Discovery and Conquest of Florida, ninth volume of the Hakluyt Society’s publications, pages XV-XVI, London, 1851.