20 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.a.nn.19 



supplement and corrohoriite tlio.se of the northern tribes, thus bring-- 

 iny the story down to their final settlement upon the headwaters of 

 the Tennessee in the rich valleys of the southern AUeghenies. Owing 

 to the Cherokee predilection for new gods, contrasting strong!}' with 

 the conservatism of the Iroquois, their ritual forms and national epics 

 had fallen into decay even before the Revolution, as we learn from 

 Adair. Some vestiges of their migration legend still existed in Hay- 

 wood's time, but it is now completely forgotten both in the East and 

 in the West. 



According to Haywood, who wrote in 1823 on information obtained 

 directly from leading members of the tribe long before the Removal, 

 the Cherokee formerly had a long migration legend, which was already 

 lost, but which, within the memory of the mother of one informant — 

 say about 1750 — was still recited by chosen orators on the occasion of 

 the annual green-corn dance. This migration legend appears to have 

 resembled that of the Delawares and the Creeks in beginning with 

 genesis and the period of animal monsters, and thence following the 

 shifting fortune of the chosen band to the historic period. The tradi- 

 tion recited that they had originated in a land toward the rising sun, 

 where they had been placed by the conuuand of "the four councils 

 sent from above." In this pristine home were great snakes and water 

 monsters, for which reason it was supposed to have been near the sea- 

 coast, although the assumption is not a necessary corollary, as these 

 are a feature of the mythology of all the eastern tribes. After this 

 genesis period there began a slow migration, during which "towns of 

 people in many nights' encampment removed," l)ut no details are given. 

 From Heckewelder it appears that the expression, "a night's encamp- 

 ment," which occurs also in the Delaware migration legend, is an Indian 

 figure of speech for a halt of one year at a place.' 



In another place Haywood says, although appariMitly confusing the 

 chronologic order of events: "One tradition which they have amongst 

 them says they came from the west and exterminated the former 

 inhabitants: and then says they came from the upjier parts of the 

 Ohio, where they erected the mounds on Grave creek, and that thej^ 

 removed thither from the country where Monticello (near Charlottes- 

 ville, Virginia) is situated."' The first reference is to the celebrated 

 mounds on the Ohio near Moundsville, below Wheeling, West Virginia: 

 the other is doubtless to a noted burial mound descriljed by JeflVrson 

 in 1781 as then existing near his home, on the low grounds of Rivanna 

 river opposite the site of an ancient Indian town. He hini-iclf had 

 opened it and found it to contain perhaps a thousand disjointed 

 skeletons of both adults and children, the bones piled in successive 

 layers, those near the top being least decayed. They showed no signs 



'Heckewelder, Indian Nations, p. 47, ed. 1S76. 



- Haywood. Jolin. Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee, pp. 2'2b-22&. Xashyille, 1.S23. 



