No.^SOr* ^^^' EASTERN CHEROKEE FOLKTALES — KILPATRICK 421 



father told him not to do it. The boy did not go very close to the 

 house of the maneating woman. From a distance he saw her meat 

 hanging up, drying, inside her house. As she had gone out of the 

 house for but a short while, the boy at a distance got some Hver from 

 the house. He was a magician. 



The boy's father asked, "Why did you do that?" 



"I want liver," the boy answered. 



The father said, "She will come after you!" 



Soon the woman came home and found that the boy had taken the 

 liver. She went to him and said, "I want that liver back!" She 

 seized him, and holding him by the legs, she shook him. 



"She will challenge you to a race," the father told the boy. 



"I will accept," the boy said. 



The boy accepted her challenge. 



He observed how she prepared for the race, and he, too, prepared. 

 He took a hand's-length of mulberry bark and made it into a string. 

 Then he went out to hunt a weasel, ^^ killed one, and removed its skin. 

 Then he went out to hunt a panther, killed one, and took one of its 

 whiskers. 



Two days later the maneating woman came out and said that she 

 was ready to begin the race. She took the boy by the hand and led 

 him along to the place from which the contestants were to start. 



There was a tall hickory tree standing there. The woman made 

 the boy step upon this tree, and as he did so, it bent down. She made 

 him walk its fuU length. Then suddenly she let loose of the boy, and 

 the tree, in taking its upright position, hurled the boy back a long way. 



The woman began to run. She ran out a long way ahead of the 

 boy. 



But the boy changed the weasel skin into a deer, which he mounted 

 and rode. The mulberry bark he transformed into a snake.^^ The 

 panther's whisker he made into a panther which ate the maneating 

 woman. 



When the boy arrived at the goal, there were a number of old men 

 sitting there, smoking out of a pipe. They were Maneating People. 

 They felt certain that the woman was going to win the race, and when 

 they saw the boy arrive first, they were much surprised. The woman 

 had wagered the boy that if she won, she was to kill the boy, but if she 

 lost, all of the Maneating People were to be killed .^^ 



69 Olbreclits' notes state that the boy also killed a rat. Inasmuch as there is no subsequent mention of a 

 rat, we hypothesize that Olbrechts' informant, since he was thinking in Cherokee and not English, first said 

 "rat," and then in correction said "weasel" (the term for weasel in Cherokee literally means 'yellow rat'), 

 and that Olbrechts in error wrote down both "rat" and "weasel." 



«' The role of the snake is obscure. Either Olbrechts or his Informant failed to elaborate at this juncture. 



"9 The motif of the cannibal woman, widely distributed over North America, is found in a Natchez-Chero- 

 kee story In Swan ton (1929, pp. 219-222), that doubtlessly has some slight alflnity to the above story. The 

 tale of the maneating woman in Mooney (1900, pp. 316-319) seemingly is unrelated to either of them. 



