No.^SOr" ^^^' EASTERN CHEROKEE FOLKTALES — ^KILPATRICK 441 



MISCELLANEOUS STOKIES 



1— THE METAMORPHOSES OF THE LAZY MAN 



There lived a man who did not like to work and who wanted to 

 live at ease. One day he took notice of some pismires ^* and thought 

 to himself, "Now look at those pismu-es! What an easy Ufe they 

 have! They do not have to work, and they never have to go to war." 

 So he wished so strongly to become a pismire that he became one. 



But he soon found out that pismires have to work very hard for 

 a living, and often they marched out against enemy ants and engaged 

 in fierce battles. So he decided to become a human being again. 



"Trees do not have to do anything at all," he thought. "They 

 draw their living from the earth." So he became a tree. 



But he was buffeted by the wind, and unprotected, he suffered 

 in the intense cold of winter, and he was always in danger of being 

 chopped down for firewood and burned. He decided to resume his 

 human form. 



"The Hfe of a deer is a happy one," he thought. "He peacefully 

 browses all day upon grass and leaves." He became a deer. 



But he lived in constant terror of hunters and panthers, and he 

 decided to become a human being once more. 



He became a rock, only to be rent by lightning and chopped by 

 men seeking flint for their arrowheads. As a fish, he was endangered 

 by fishermen; as a steer, he was overworked by his harsh master; as 

 a bear, he was pursued by hunters. He became a bird, but he had to 

 be constantly on the alert in order not to be eaten by chicken hawks. 

 No matter what he became, he could not escape toil or danger. 



So he decided that nothing in the world reaUy has an easy existence, 

 and he remained a human being.^^ 



2.— A LESSON FROM NATURE (1) 



There was a young man who was very lazy. He fished all of the 

 time. 



One day he came to the bank of the river and down in the water 

 saw some kind of fish carrying a stone.^® The fish put the stone down, 

 then went and got another stone and placed it beside the first one. 

 The fish kept on carrying stones until soon it had bmlt up quite a pile 

 of them. 



The young man suddenly became ashamed of himself. He looked 

 at his hands and his arms, and he said, "I am strong. I am going to 

 go to work." 



" Do:sv:ddfU ('ant'). 



i» The above bears resemblances to a Natchez-Cherokee story in Swanton (1929, p. 242). 



" Probably the stone roller (Campostoma). 



