No!^80r* ^^^' EASTERN CHEROKEE FOLKTALES — ^KILPATRICK 391 



Every piece became a frog. That is why we have so many frogs 

 now. 



7.— THE ORIGIN OF CORN 



The mother of Ghana :di's sons always provided corn and beans 

 and everything else that one eats. The boys wanted to find out 

 where she obtained these things, so they decided to watch her. 



When she went into the other room, they peeped through a crack 

 and saw their mother open her legs. Corn and beans fell out of her 

 vagina onto the ground. 



Then they said, "Our mother feeds us with something bitter. We 

 had better kill her." 



The mother noticed how the boys felt, and she knew that she was 

 going to be killed by her two sons. 



She said to them. "Before you kill me, clear some land. Drag 

 me around it. But you must not sleep all that night. If you sleep 

 before morning, it^^ will take a long time to grow." 



Then they killed her and placed her head in the window where 

 she usually sat watching for the return of Ghana :di. They dragged 

 her body around the piece of land that they had cleared. That 

 night the corn began to grow. They could see it grow, and by 

 morning it had grown so [60 cm.] high. 



But they got tired and went to sleep, and when they awoke in 

 the morning, the corn was barely standing above the ground. 



If they had not gone to sleep, corn would grow in one night, but 

 as they could not keep awake, it now takes 5 months in which to 

 grow.^* 



8.— THUNDER KILLS AN UGH{A)DHE:N{Ay^ 



Once Thunder was fighting an Ugh{a)dhe :n(a) . A man saw the 

 fight. The Ugh(a)dhe:n(a) asked the man for help. Thunder asked 

 the man to help him. 



At first the man wondered whom to help; then he decided to help 

 Thunder. When the man arrived upon the scene, the fight was over: 

 Thunder had killed the Ugh{a)dhe :n{a) . 



1' Corn («e;Ju). 



" The corn myth is possibly the most ubiquitous of all Cherokee myths. It Is in the Payne Papers and 

 the Wahnenauhi Manuscript (Kilpatrick, ed., 1966); Mooney recorded it twice (1888, pp. 97-106, and 1900, 

 pp. 242 ff.); Gilbert collected it but did not publish it (1943, p. 302); and there is an exceptionally fine 

 Western Cherokee version of it in Kilpatrick and Kilpatrick (1964, pp. 129-134). Four Creek variants 

 (pp. 9-17), one Koasati (p. 168), and two Natchez-Cherokee (pp. 230-234) are in Swanton (1929). 



» The Cherokee mythical sea dragon, variant spelUngs of which encountered In manuscripts written 

 In Sequoyah syllabary are Ugh{i)dhtn:n{a) and Vgh{a)dhe:n{t) (Wahnenauhi Manuscript (Kilpatrick, ed., 

 1966); Ten Kate, 1889, p. 55; Mooney, 1900, pp. 297-301, 458-461; Swanton, 1929, pp. 245-246; and Kilpatrick 

 and Kilpatrick, 1964, pp. 41-56). 



