Cherokee Fables: The Rabbit and the Possum after a Wife

Spring is here and with the month of May comes the season for weddings!  The ancient Cherokee told a funny story about the devious rabbit and the lazy possum who decide to team up to find wives.

 

In most of the stories involving the rabbit, the Cherokee portrayed them as clever, devious, and the penultimate trickster.  The Cherokee rabbit fables are so similar to the “Uncle Remus” and “Brer Rabbit” fables, that I think they must be connected.  [refer to my article: Tar Baby vs Tar Wolf]

 

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First Contact: The Soto Expedition, Part 5: Arrogant and Proud Barbarians

Garcilasco de la Vega, "The Inca"

In his account of the Soto expedition, “The Inca” [see Part 1] gives what I believe to be the most accurate and eloquent account of the attitudes of the Spaniards towards the Indians, and the Indians towards the Spaniards I have ever read.  So, this week, I want to simply quote his articulate description of those attitudes.  Note: the Inca’s reference to “Acuera” does not agree with other chroniclers.  However, it was most likely the chief of the “Timucua” Indians that Soto was trying to befriend.

 

This is a preview of First Contact: The Soto Expedition, Part 5: Arrogant and Proud Barbarians. Read the full post (962 words, 12 images, estimated 3:51 mins reading time)

Cherokee Fables: The Journey to the Sunrise

A long time ago several young men made up their minds to find the place where the Sun lives and see what the Sun is like. They got ready their bows and arrows, their parched corn and extra moccasins, and started out toward the east. At first they met tribes they knew, then they came to tribes they had only heard about, and at last to others of which they had never heard.

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Cherokee Fables: How They Brought Back Tobacco

 

In the beginning of the world, when people and animals were all the same, there was only one tobacco plant, to which they all came for their tobacco until the Dagûl`kû geese stole it and carried it far away to the south. The people were suffering without it, and there was one old woman who grew so thin and weak that everybody said she would soon die unless she could get tobacco to keep her alive.

 

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“Part 2, Kana’tï And Selu: The Origin Of Game And Corn”

 Cultures, Legends, Native American Antiquity  No Responses »

Jul032014

 

Part 2: Wild Game

 

A few days later the boys went back to the swamp, cut some reeds, and made seven arrows and then started up the mountain to where their father kept the game. When they got to the place, they raised the rock and a deer came running out. Just as they drew back to shoot it, another came out, and then another and another, until the boys got confused and forgot what they were about. In those days all the deer had their tails hanging down like other animals, but as a buck was running past the Wild Boy struck its tail with his arrow so that it pointed upward. The boys thought this good sport, and when the next one ran past the Wild Boy struck its tail so that it stood straight up, and his brother struck the next one so hard with his arrow that the deer’s tail was almost curled over his back. The deer carries his tail this way ever since. The deer came running past until the last one had come out of the hole and escaped into the forest. Then came droves of raccoons, rabbits, and all the other four-footed animals-all but the bear, because there was no bear then. Last came great flocks of turkeys, pigeons, and partridges that darkened the air like a cloud and made such a noise with their wings that Kana’tï, sitting at home, heard the sound like distant thunder on the mountains and said to himself, “My bad boys have got into trouble; I must go and see what they are doing.”

 

This is a preview of Part 2, Kana’tï And Selu: The Origin Of Game And Corn. Read the full post (784 words, 5 images, estimated 3:08 mins reading time)

“Kana’tï And Selu: The Origin Of Game And Corn”

Part 1:  The Wild Boy

 

[from Myths of the Cherokee, by James Mooney]

 

When I was a boy this is what the old men told me they had heard when they were boys.

 

When I was a boy this is what the old men told me they had heard when they were boys.

Long years ago, soon after the world was made, a hunter and his wife lived at Pilot knob with their only child, a little boy. The father’s name was Kana’tï (The Lucky Hunter), and his wife was called Selu (Corn). No matter when Kana’tï went into the wood, he never failed to bring back a load of game, which his wife. would cut up and prepare, washing off the blood from the meat in the river near the house. The little boy used to play down by the river every day, and one morning the old people thought they heard laughing and talking in the bushes as though there were two children there. When the boy came home at night his parents asked him who had been playing with him all day. “He comes out of the water,” said the boy, “and he calls himself my elder brother. He says his mother was cruel to him and threw him into the river.” Then they knew that the strange boy had sprung from the blood of the game which Selu had washed off at the river’s edge.

 

This is a preview of Kana’tï And Selu: The Origin Of Game And Corn. Read the full post (784 words, 5 images, estimated 3:08 mins reading time)