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

In the preparation of the following notes and parallels the purpose has been to incorporate every Cherokee variant or pseudomyth obtainable from any source, and to give some explanation of tribal customs and beliefs touched upon in the myths, particularly among the Southern tribes. A certain number of parallels have been incorporated, but it must be obvious that this field is too vast for treatment within the limits of a single volume. Moreover, in view of the small number of tribes that have yet been studied, in comparison with the great number still unstudied, it is very doubtful whether the time has arrived for any extended treatment of Indian mythology. The most complete index of parallels that has yet appeared is that accompanying the splendid collection by Dr Franz Boas, Indianische Sagen von der nordpacifischen Küste Amerikas.1 In drawing the line it has been found necessary to restrict comparisons, excepting in a few special cases, to the territory of the United States or the immediate border country, although this compels the omission of several of the best collections, particularly from the northwest coast and the interior of British America. Enough has been given to show that our native tribes had myths of their own without borrowing from other races, and that these were so widely and constantly disseminated by trade and travel and interchange of ceremonial over wide areas as to make the Indian myth system as much a unit in this country as was the Aryan myth structure in Europe and Asia. Every additional tribal study may be expected to corroborate this result.

A more special study of Cherokee myths in their connection with the medical and religious ritual of the tribe is reserved for a future paper, of which preliminary presentation has been given in the author’s Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees, in the Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology.

Stories and story tellers (p. 229): Migration legend—In Buttrick’s Antiquities2 we find some notice of this migration legend, which, as given by the missionary, is unfortunately so badly mixed up with the Bible story that it is almost impossible to isolate the genuine. He starts them under the leadership of their “greatest prophet,” Wâsĭ—who is simply Moses—in search of a far distant country where they may be safe from their enemies. Who these enemies are, or in what quarter they live, is not stated. Soon after setting out they come to a great water, which Wâsĭ strikes with his staff; the water divides so that they pass through safely, and then rolls back and prevents pursuit by their enemies. They then enter a wilderness and come to a mountain, and we are treated to the Bible story of Sinai and the tables of stone. Here also they receive sacred fire from heaven, which thereafter they carry with them until the house in which it is kept is at last destroyed by a hostile invasion. This portion of the myth seems to be genuine Indian (see notes to number 111, “The Mounds and the Constant Fire”).

In this journey “the tribes marched separately and also the clans. The clans were distinguished by having feathers of different colors fastened to their ears. They had two great standards, one white and one red. The white standard was under the control of the priests, and used for civil purposes; but the red standard was under the direction of the war priests, for purposes of war and alarm. These were carried when they journeyed, and the white standard erected in front of the building above mentioned [the ark or palladium], when they rested.”

They cross four rivers in all—which accords with the Indian idea of the sacred four—and sit down at last beyond the fourth, after having been for many years on the march. “Their whole journey through this wilderness was attended with great distress and danger. At one time they were beset by the most deadly kind of serpents, which destroyed a great many of the people, but at length their leader shot one with an arrow and drove them away. Again, they were walking along in single file, when the ground cracked open and a number of people sank down and were destroyed by the earth closing upon them. At another time they came nigh perishing for water. Their head men dug with their staves in all the low places, but could find no water. At length their leader found a most beautiful spring coming out of a rock.”3

At one point in this migration, according to a tradition given to Schoolcraft by Stand Watie, they encountered a large river or other great body of water, which they crossed upon a bridge made by tying grapevines together.4 This idea of a vine bridge or ladder occurs also in the traditions of the Iroquois, Mandan, and other tribes.

Farther on the missionary already quoted says: “Shield-eater once inquired if I ever heard of houses with flat roofs, saying that his father’s great grandfather used to say that once their people had a great town, with a high wall about it; that on a certain occasion their enemies broke down a part of this wall; that the houses in this town had flat roofs—though, he used to say, this was so long ago it is not worth talking about now.”5

Fire of cane splints—Bartram thus describes the method as witnessed by him at Attasse (Autossee) among the Creeks about 1775. The fire which blazed up so mysteriously may have been kept constantly smoldering below, as described in number 111:

“As their virgils [sic] and manner of conducting their vespers and mystical fire in this rotunda, are extremely singular, and altogether different from the customs and usages of any other people, I shall proceed to describe them. In the first place, the governor or officer who has the management of this business, with his servants attending, orders the black drink to be brewed, which is a decoction or infusion of the leaves and tender shoots of the cassine. This is done under an open shed or pavilion, at twenty or thirty yards distance, directly opposite the door of the council-house. Next he orders bundles of dry canes to be brought in: these are previously split and broken in pieces to about the length of two feet, and then placed obliquely crossways upon one another on the floor, forming a spiral circle round about the great centre pillar, rising to a foot or eighteen inches in height from the ground; and this circle spreading as it proceeds round and round, often repeated from right to left, every revolution increases its diameter, and at length extends to the distance of ten or twelve feet from the centre, more or less, according to the length of time the assembly or meeting is to continue. By the time these preparations are accomplished, it is night, and the assembly have taken their seats in order. The exterior or outer end of the spiral circle takes fire and immediately rises into a bright flame (but how this is effected I did not plainly apprehend;

I saw no person set fire to it; there might have been fire left on the earth; however I neither saw nor smelt fire or smoke until the blaze instantly ascended upwards), which gradually and slowly creeps round the centre pillar, with the course of the sun, feeding on the dry canes, and affords a cheerful, gentle and sufficient light until the circle is consumed, when the council breaks up.”6

1.How the world was made (p. 239): From decay of the old tradition and admixture of Bible ideas the Cherokee genesis myth is too far broken down to be recovered excepting in disjointed fragments. The completeness of the destruction may be judged by studying the similar myth of the Iroquois or the Ojibwa. What is here preserved was obtained chiefly from Swimmer and John Ax, the two most competent authorities of the eastern band. The evergreen story is from Ta′gwădihĭ′. The incident of the brother striking his sister with a fish to make her pregnant was given by Ayâsta, and may have a phallic meaning. John Ax says the pregnancy was brought about by the “Little People,” Yuñwĭ Tsunsdi′, who commanded the woman to rub spittle (of the brother?) upon her back, and to lie upon her breast, with her body completely covered, for seven days and nights, at the end of which period the child was born, and another thereafter every seven days until the period was made longer. According to Wafford the first man was created blind and remained so for some time. The incident of the buzzard shaping the mountains occurs also in the genesis myth of the Creeks7 and Yuchi,8 southern neighbors of the Cherokee, but by them the first earth is said to have been brought up from under the water by the crawfish. Among the northern tribes it is commonly the turtle which continues to support the earth upon its back. The water beetle referred to is the Gyrinus, locally known as mellow bug or apple beetle. One variant makes the dilsta′yaʻtĭ, water-spider (“scissors,” Dolomedes), help in the work.

The missionaries Buttrick and Washburn give versions of the Cherokee genesis, both of which are so badly warped by Bible interpretation as to be worthless. No native cosmogonic myth yet recorded goes back to the first act of creation, but all start out with a world and living creatures already in existence, though not in their final form and condition.

Hand-breadth—The Cherokee word is utawâ′hilû, from uwâyĭ, hand. This is not to be taken literally, but is a figurative expression much used in the sacred formulas to denote a serial interval of space. The idea of successive removals of the sun, in order to modify the excessive heat, is found with other tribes. Buttrick, already quoted, says in his statement of the Cherokee cosmogony: “When God created the world he made a heaven or firmament about as high as the tops of the mountains, but this was too warm. He then created a second, which was also too warm. He thus proceeded till he had created seven heavens and in the seventh fixed His abode. During some of their prayers they raise their hands to the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh heaven,” etc.9

In Hindu cosmogony also we find seven heavens or stages, increasing in sanctity as they ascend; the Aztecs had nine, as had also the ancient Scandinavians.10 Some Polynesian tribes have ten, each built of azure stone, with apertures for intercommunication. The lowest originally almost touched the earth and was elevated to its present position by successive pushes from the gods Ru and Matti, resting first prostrate upon the ground, then upon their knees, then lifting with their shoulders, their hands, and their finger tips, until a last supreme effort sent it to its present place.11

Seven: The sacred numbers—In every tribe and cult throughout the world we find sacred numbers. Christianity and the Christian world have three and seven. The Indian has always four as the principal sacred number, with usually another only slightly subordinated. The two sacred numbers of the Cherokee are four and seven, the latter being the actual number of the tribal clans, the formulistic number of upper worlds or heavens, and the ceremonial number of paragraphs or repetitions in the principal formulas. Thus in the prayers for long life the priest raises his client by successive stages to the first, second, third, fourth, and finally to the seventh heaven before the end is accomplished. The sacred four has direct relation to the four cardinal points, while seven, besides these, includes also “above,” “below,” and “here in the center.” In many tribal rituals color and sometimes sex are assigned to each point of direction. In the sacred Cherokee formulas the spirits of the East, South, West, and North are, respectively, Red, White, Black, and Blue, and each color has also its own symbolic meaning of Power (War), Peace, Death, and Defeat.

2.The first fire (p. 240): This myth was obtained from Swimmer and John Ax. It is noted also in Foster’s “Sequoyah”12 and in the Wahnenauhi manuscript.13 The uksu′hĭ and the gûle′gĭ are, respectively, the Coluber obsoletus and Bascanion constrictor. The water-spider is the large hairy species Argyroneta.

In the version given in the Wahnenauhi manuscript the Possum and the Buzzard first make the trial, but come back unsuccessful, one losing the hair from his tail, while the other has the feathers scorched from his head and neck. In another version the Dragon-fly assists the Water-spider by pushing the tusti from behind. In the corresponding Creek myth, as given in the Tuggle manuscript, the Rabbit obtains fire by the stratagem of touching to the blaze a cap trimmed with sticks of rosin, while pretending to bend low in the dance. In the Jicarilla myth the Fox steals fire by wrapping cedar bark around his tail and thrusting it into the blaze while dancing around the circle.14

3.Kana′tĭ and Selu: Origin of corn and game (p. 242): This story was obtained in nearly the same form from Swimmer and John Ax (east) and from Wafford (west), and a version is also given in the Wahnenauhi manuscript. Hagar notes it briefly in his manuscript Stellar Legends of the Cherokee. So much of belief and custom depend upon the myth of Kana′tĭ that references to the principal incidents are constant in the songs and formulas. It is one of those myths held so sacred that in the old days one who wished to hear it from the priest of the tradition must first purify himself by “going to water,” i. e., bathing in the running stream before daylight when still fasting, while the priest performed his mystic ceremonies upon the bank.

In his Letters from the Alleghany Mountains, written more than fifty years ago, Lanman gives (pp. 136, 137) a very fair synopsis of this myth, locating the game preserve of Kana′tĭ, whom he makes an old Cherokee chief, in a (traditional) cave on the north side of the Black mountain, now Mount Mitchell, in Yancey county, North Carolina, the highest peak east of the Rocky mountains. After his father had disappeared, and could not be found by long search, “The boy fired an arrow towards the north, but it returned and fell at his feet, and he knew that his father had not travelled in that direction. He also fired one towards the east and the south and the west, but they all came back in the same manner. He then thought that he would fire one directly above his head, and it so happened that this arrow never returned, and so the boy knew that his father had gone to the spirit land. The Great Spirit was angry with the Cherokee nation, and to punish it for the offense of the foolish boy he tore away the cave from the side of the Black mountain and left only a large cliff in its place, which is now a conspicuous feature, and he then declared that the time would come when another race of men should possess the mountains where the Cherokees had flourished for many generations.”

The story has numerous parallels in Indian myth, so many in fact that almost every important concept occurring in it is duplicated in the North, in the South, and on the plains, and will probably be found also west of the mountains when sufficient material of that region shall have been collected. The Ojibwa story of “The Weendigoes,”15 in particular, has many striking points of resemblance; so, also, the Omaha myth, “Two-faces and the Twin Brothers,” as given by Dorsey.16

His wife was Selu, “Corn”—In Cherokee belief, as in the mythologies of nearly every eastern tribe, the corn spirit is a woman, and the plant itself has sprung originally from the blood drops or the dead body of the Corn Woman. In the Cherokee sacred formulas the corn is sometimes invoked as Agawe′la, “The Old Woman,” and one myth (number 72, “The Hunter and Selu”) tells how a hunter once witnessed the transformation of the growing stalk into a beautiful woman.

In the Creek myth “Origin of Indian Corn,” as given in the Tuggle manuscript, the corn plant appears to be the transformed body of an old woman whose only son, endowed with magic powers, has developed from a single drop of her (menstrual?) blood.

In Iroquois legend, according to Morgan, the corn plant sprang from the bosom of the mother of the Great Spirit (sic) after her burial. The spirits of corn, bean, and squash are represented as three sisters. “They are supposed to have the forms of beautiful females, to be very fond of each other, and to delight to dwell together. This last belief is illustrated by a natural adaptation of the plants themselves to grow up together in the same field and perhaps from the same hill.”17

Sprang from blood—This concept of a child born of blood drops reappears in the Cherokee story of Tsulʻkalû′ (see number 81). Its occurrence among the Creeks has just been noted. It is found also among the Dakota (Dorsey, “The Blood-clots Boy,” in Contributions to North American Ethnology, IX, 1893), Omaha (Dorsey, “The Rabbit and the Grizzly Bear,” Cont. to N. A. Eth., VI, 1890), Blackfeet (“Kutoyis,” in Grinnell, “Blackfoot Lodge Tales”; New York, 1892), and other tribes. Usually the child thus born is of wilder and more mischievous nature than is common.

Deer shut up in hole—The Indian belief that the game animals were originally shut up in a cave, from which they were afterward released by accident or trickery, is very widespread. In the Tuggle version of the Creek account of the creation of the earth we find the deer thus shut up and afterward set free. The Iroquois “believed that the game animals were not always free, but were enclosed in a cavern where they had been concealed by Tawiskaraʼ; but that they might increase and fill the forest Yoskehăʼ gave them freedom.”18 The same idea occurs in the Omaha story of “Ictinike, the Brothers and Sister” (Dorsey, in Contributions to North American Ethnology, VI, 1890). The Kiowa tell how the buffalo were kept thus imprisoned by the Crow until released by Sinti when the people were all starving for want of meat. When the buffalo so suddenly and completely disappeared from the plains about twenty-five years ago, the prairie tribes were unable to realize that it had been exterminated, but for a long time cherished the belief that it had been again shut up by the superior power of the whites in some underground prison, from which the spells of their own medicine men would yet bring it back (see references in the author’s Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians, in Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, part 1, 1901). The Kiowa tradition is almost exactly paralleled among the Jicarilla (Russell, Myths of the Jicarilla Apaches, in Journal of American Folk-Lore, Oct., 1898).

Storehouse—The unwadâ′lĭ, or storehouse for corn, beans, dried pumpkins, and other provisions, was a feature of every Cherokee homestead and was probably common to all the southern tribes. Lawson thus describes it among the Santee in South Carolina about the year 1700:

“They make themselves cribs after a very curious manner, wherein they secure their corn from vermin, which are more frequent in these warm climates than in countries more distant from the sun. These pretty fabrics are commonly supported with eight feet or posts about seven feet high from the ground, well daubed within and without upon laths, with loam or clay, which makes them tight and fit to keep out the smallest insect, there being a small door at the gable end, which is made of the same composition and to be removed at pleasure, being no bigger than that a slender man may creep in at, cementing the door up with the same earth when they take the corn out of the crib and are going from home, always finding their granaries in the same posture they left them—theft to each other being altogether unpracticed.”19

A tuft of down—In the Omaha story, “The Corn Woman and the Buffalo Woman” (Dorsey, Contributions to North American Ethnology, VI, 1890), the magician changes himself into a feather and allows himself to be blown about by the wind in order to accomplish his purpose. The wolf does the same in a Thompson River myth.20 The self-transformation of the hero into a tuft of bird’s down, a feather, a leaf, or some other light object, which is then carried by the wind wherever he wishes to go, is very common in Indian myth.

Left an open space—When the Cherokee conjurer, by his magic spells, coils the great (invisible) serpent around the house of a sick man to keep off the witches, he is always careful to leave a small space between the head and tail of the snake, so that the members of the family can go down to the spring to get water.

From these have come all—In nearly every Indian mythology we find the idea of certain animal tribes being descended from a single survivor of some great slaughter by an early hero god or trickster. Thus the Kiowa say that all the prairie dogs on the plains are descended from a single little fellow who was too wary to close his eyes, as his companions did, when the hungry vagrant Sinti was planning to capture them all for his dinner under pretense of teaching them a new dance.

A gaming wheel—This was the stone wheel or circular disk used in the wheel-and-stick game, called by the Cherokee gatayûstĭ, and which in one form or another was practically universal among the tribes. It was the game played by the great mythic gambler Ûñtsaiyĭ′ (see number 63). It has sometimes been known in the north as the “snow-snake,” while to the early southern traders it was known as chunki or chungkey, a corruption of the Creek name. Timberlake (page 77) mentions it under the name of nettecawaw—for which there seems to be no other authority—as he saw it among the Cherokee in 1762.21 It was also noted among the Carolina tribes by Lederer in 1670 and Lawson in 1701. John Ax, the oldest man now living among the East Cherokee, is the only one remaining in the tribe who has ever played the game, having been instructed in it when a small boy by an old man who desired to keep up the memory of the ancient things. The sticks used have long since disappeared, but the stones remain, being frequently picked up in the plowed fields, especially in the neighborhood of mounds. The best description of the southern game is given by Adair:

“They have near their state house a square piece of ground well cleaned, and fine sand is carefully strewed over it, when requisite, to promote a swifter motion to what they throw along the surface. Only one, or two on a side, play at this ancient game. They have a stone about two fingers broad at the edge and two spans round. Each party has a pole of about eight feet long, smooth, and tapering at each end, the points flat. They set off abreast of each other at 6 yards from the end of the playground; then one of them hurls the stone on its edge, in as direct a line as he can, a considerable distance toward the middle of the other end of the square. When they have ran [sic] a few yards each darts his pole, anointed with bear’s oil, with a proper force, as near as he can guess in proportion to the motion of the stone, that the end may lie close to the stone. When this is the case, the person counts two of the game, and in proportion to the nearness of the poles to the mark, one is counted, unless by measuring both are found to be at an equal distance from the stone. In this manner the players will keep running most part of the day at half speed, under the violent heat of the sun, staking their silver ornaments, their nose, finger and ear rings; their breast, arm and wrist plates, and even all their wearing apparel except that which barely covers their middle. All the American Indians are much addicted to this game, which to us appears to be a task of stupid drudgery. It seems, however, to be of early origin, when their forefathers used diversions as simple as their manners.

The hurling stones they use at present were time immemorial rubbed smooth on the rocks, and with prodigious labour. They are kept with the strictest religious care from one generation to another, and are exempted from being buried with the dead. They belong to the town where they are used, and are carefully preserved.”22

In one version of the Kana′tĭ myth the wheel is an arrow, which the wild boy shoots toward the four cardinal points and finally straight upward, when it comes back no more. When they get above the sky they find Kana′tĭ and Selu sitting together, with the arrow sticking in the ground in front of them. In the Creek story, “The Lion [Panther?] and the Little Girl,” of the Tuggle collection, the lion has a wheel “which could find anything that was lost.”