392 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bdll. 196 



Thunder said, "You will be my vghiwi:na ^*; you call me edw.tsi ^''J' 



Thunder commanded his two sisters to bring "horses," which were 

 two huge snakes. 



"Get on!" Thunder said. All got on. 



They whooped, and at every whoop, lightning flashed and thunder 

 sounded. 



When we think it thunders, it is but the Thunder People whooping 

 in the air.^^ 



9.— THUNDER'S BROTHER-IN-LAW 



Many years ago the Cherokees used to have many more dances 

 than they do now. They had a dance every week. 



Once to a dance there came two very attractive girls. Nobody 

 knew them. When the dance was over, they left. One boy who 

 was attracted to one of them more than all of the other boys followed 

 the girls, but he could not overtake them. 



The following Friday the girls again came to the dance. Again the 

 boy followed them, but once more he could not overtake them. 



So he went to a medicine man and asked him to prepare some 

 attraction medicine. 



The girls told their mother about the young man following them. 

 She told them to wait for him the next time he followed them and 

 to bring him home with them. So after the next dance the guis left, 

 and the boy followed them, but this time the girls waited for him, 

 and he went with them. 



One of the girls asked, "To which one of us two do you want to 

 talk?" 



The one who asked was the one to whom the boy was the more 

 attracted. She knew that before he told her; that is why she asked. 



So they all went together to the gMs' house. 



Three or four days afterward there was the sound of thunder. 

 The girl that was the wife of the boy shouted gladly, "Listen! My 

 brother is coming !" 



Soon afterward the brother of the girl came in; he was Thunder. 

 He rode a very large snake, and every time it put out its tongue there 

 was lightning. 



The mother said, "Won't you take your brother-in-law with you 

 for a ride?" 



!• Vghiwi:na: my sister's son; my father's brother's daughter's son; my mother's sister's daughter's son; 

 my mother's mother's sister's daughter's daughter's son (Gilbert, 1943, p. 225). 



" iJdu ; <«i; my mother's brother; my mother's mother's sister's son; my mother's mother's mother's 

 sister's daughter's son (ibid., p. 224). The terms agidu:tsi and edu.-td are not dialectal, nor are they inter- 

 changeable. Both are universally employed: the one In direct reference, the other in indirect. 



18 There is a Cherokee version of this myth in Mooney (1900, pp. 300-301) and three other versions of it 

 In Kilpatrick and Kllpatrick (1964, pp. 60-56). Two Creek tellings of it are to be found in Swanton (1929, 

 pp. 7-9). 



