Cherokee Fables: What Stars are Like

Starry Night, van Gogh

This week the sky provided us with wondrous things to observe.  Sunday was this year’s “Supermoon” which is the first full moon when the moon is at its closest point to earth.  It was accompanied by the Perseid Meteor Shower which occurs every year around this time when the earth’s path crosses the debris left by the comet Swift-Tuttle.

 

Man has always been intrigued by the sky and its mysteries and has tried to explain the phenomena in the sky with careful observation and reasoned hypotheses.  This week I would like continue the series on Cherokee Fables with the Cherokee story “What the Stars are Like” as recorded by James Mooney in the late 1800’s . . .

 

This is a preview of Cherokee Fables: What the Stars are Like. Read the full post (431 words, 5 images, estimated 1:43 mins reading time)

“Cherokee Fables: Origin of Disease and Medicine”

Cherokee Hunter by Mails

In the old days the beasts, birds, fishes, insects, and plants could all talk, and they and the people lived together in peace and friendship. But as time went on the people increased so rapidly that their settlements spread over the whole earth, and the poor animals found themselves beginning to be cramped for room. This was bad enough, but to make it worse Man invented bows, knives, blowguns, spears, and hooks, and began to slaughter the larger animals, birds, and fishes for their flesh or their skins, while the smaller creatures, such as the frogs and worms, were crushed and trodden upon without thought, out of pure carelessness or contempt. So the animals resolved to consult upon measures for their common safety.

This is a preview of Cherokee Fables: Origin of Disease and Medicine. Read the full post (1327 words, 6 images, estimated 5:18 mins reading time)

Cherokee Fables: How the World was Made

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.

This is a preview of Cherokee Fables: How the World was Made. Read the full post (897 words, 8 images, estimated 3:35 mins reading time)

Native American Fables: The Origin of Strawberries

When James Mooney, who worked for the Bureau of American Ethnology in the late 1800’s, lived with the Cherokee, he recorded many of their myths and legends. I love the story of the origin of strawberries because it presents the Cherokee version of Adam and Eve and gives us insight into the Cherokee’s thoughts on the power of love.

This is a preview of Native American Fables: The Origin of Strawberries. Read the full post (712 words, 5 images, estimated 2:51 mins reading time)