No^sol'"" ^^''' EASTERN CHEROKEE FOLKTALES — ^KILPATRICK 429 



6.— AN ANGLER CATCHES A TURKEY 



A fisherman went out to fish, but had had no luck. All of a sudden 

 he felt a tug at his line. He thought he had a big fish and pulled up 

 on his rod with such force that the hook flew over his head and landed 

 in the brush behind him. 



He tried to pull it back, but could not do it. When he went to 

 see what was holding it, he found that he had caught a wild turkey in 

 the eye.^ 



7.— THE HUNTER AND THE WATERDOGS 



A man went hunting in the woods. He came to a hill. He heard 

 strange sounds from the hollow on the other side of it. 



Then he heard a voice say, "Is it close? You told us that the 

 lake was near. My legs and arms are getting wrinkled." 



Then he saw two waterdogs going along upon the hill, toward 

 the lake. 



8.— THE HUNTER AND THE PANTHER 



A hunter was out in the woods alone, looking for deer. Panthers 

 like to lie crouched upon leaning trees, where they make themselves 

 look like dry leaves and old tree trunks. The hunter did not see 

 that a panther was sitting above him. The panther leaped upon 

 the hunter's back. 



The hunter fell to the ground and pretended to be dead, for they 

 say that a panther never eats warm meat. The hunter still had his 

 bow in his hand, but all of his arrows were in his quiver. 



With his tail the panther grasped the hunter, threw the man upon 

 his back, and carried him off. When the panther had gone quite 

 some distance, he put the hunter down and covered him with dry 

 leaves. The panther was stUl not certain that the man was dead, 

 so he kept watching him for awhile. Then he lay down upon a tree 

 trunk in the sun. 



Slowly and carefully, so as not to attract the panther's attention 

 by the rustle of the leaves, the hunter got an arrow from his quiver 

 and put it to his bow. Then sudden tly he jumped up from under 

 the leaves and shot and killed the panther. 



M Olbrechts' note: "This story smells vy [very] Europ. [ean]: W. [ill West Long] does not work out the 

 humorous side of it: the man's astonishment at 'fishing' turkeys." In 1961 the editors taped in Oklahoma 

 an erotic myth in Cherokee which begins quite similarly to the above, and there is a story in Elllpatrlck and 

 Kilpatrick (1964, pp. 134-135) that, except for a few details, is precisely the same story. 



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