Cherokee
(Wado Barbara for finding this resource for
me)
James Mooney (1861–1921), a researcher for the Bureau of American Ethnology,
collected materials for the following story in the late 1880s while doing
field work among the Cherokee in western North Carolina, among a remnant that
he believed had preserved much of Cherokee culture and tradition. The story
is an amalgam assembled by Mooney to
document the Cherokee cosmology. Most parts of the story came from two Cherokee
storytellers, one of them nearly 100 years old, and neither of them speaking
English.
The earth is a great island floating in a
sea of water, and suspended at each of the four cardinal points by a cord
hanging down from the sky vault, which is of solid rock. When the world grows
old and worn out, the people will die and the cords will break and let the
earth sink down into the ocean, and all will be water again. The Indians are
afraid of this.
When all was water, the animals were above in Galunlati, beyond the arch;
but it was very much crowded, and they were wanting more room. They wondered
what was below the water, and at last . . . “Beaver’s Grandchild,”
the little Water-beetle, offered to go and see if it could learn. It darted
in every direction over the surface of the water, but could find no firm place
to rest. Then it dived to the bottom and came up with some soft mud, which
began to grow and spread on every side until it became the island which we
call the earth. It was afterward fastened to the sky with four cords, but
no one remembers this.
At first the earth was flat and very soft and wet. The animals were anxious
to get down, and sent out different birds to see if it was yet dry, but they
found no place to alight and came back to Galunlati. At last it seemed to
be time, and they sent out the Buzzard and told him to go and make ready for
them. This was the Great Buzzard, the father of all the buzzards we see now.
He flew all over the earth, low down near the ground, and it was still soft.
When he reached the Cherokee country, he was very tired, and his wings began
to flap and strike the ground, and wherever they struck the earth there was
a valley, and where they turned up again there was a mountain. When the animals
above saw this, they were afraid that the whole world would be mountains,
so they called him back, but the Cherokee country remains full of mountains
to this day.
When the earth was dry and the animals came down, it was still dark, so they
got the sun and set in a track to go every day across the island from east
to west, just overhead. It was too hot this way, and . . . the Red Crawfish,
had his shell scorched a bright red, so that his meat was spoiled; and the
Cherokee do not eat it. The conjurers put the sun another hand-breadth higher
in the air, high and just under the sky arch. Then it was right, and they
left it so. . . . Every day the sun goes along under this arch, and returns
at night on the upper side to the starting place.
There is another world under this, and it is like ours in everything—animals,
plants, and people—save that the seasons are different. The streams
that come down from the mountains are the trails by which we read this underworld,
and the springs at their heads are the doorways by which we enter it, but
to do this one must fast and go to water and have one of the underground people
for a guide. We know that the seasons in the underworld are different from
ours, because the water in the springs is always warmer in the winter and
cooler in the summer than the outer air.
When the animals and plants were first made—we do not know by whom—they
were told to watch and keep awake for seven nights, just as young men now
fast and keep awake when they pray to their medicine. They tried to do this,
and nearly all were awake through the first night, but the next night several
dropped off to sleep, and the third night others were asleep, and then others,
until, on the seventh night, of all of the animals only the owl, the panther,
and one or two more were still awake. To these were given the power to see
and to go about in the dark, and to make prey of the birds and animals which
must sleep at night. Of the trees only the cedar, the pine, the spruce, the
holly, and the laurel were awake to the end, and to them it was given to be
always green and to be the greatest for medicine, but to the others it was
said: “Because you have not endured to the end you shall lose your hair
every winter.”
Men came after the animals and plants. At first there were only a brother
and sister until he struck her with a fish and told her to multiply, and so
it was. In seven days a child was born to her, and thereafter every seven
days another, and they increased very fact until there was danger that the
world could not keep them. Then it was made that a woman should have only
one child in a year, and it has been so ever since. .
Bibliography: James Mooney, “Myths of the Cherokee,” Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1897– 98, Part 1 (Washington: Govt. Printing Office, 1900), 236–7, 239–40, 430–1, 435–6; L. G. Moses, “The Eastern Cherokees,” in The Indian Man: A Biography of James Mooney (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1984), 18–51; David Leeming and Jake Page, The Mythology of Native North America (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 77 ff.
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