MciONEY] CONTACT WITH NEOROKS 283 



Algoiiquiiiii tribes tlu> iiiune, induM, .seems to have boon confounded 

 with thiit of the dawn, vahaiu so that the (xreat White Rabbit is 

 really the incarnation of the eastern dawn that l)rin<is iiy-ht and life and 

 drives awa}' the dark shadows which have held the world in chains. 

 The animal itself seems to be regarded by the Indians as the fitting 

 type of d(>fenseless weakness protected and made safe by constantly 

 alert vigilance, and with a disposition, moreover, for turning up at 

 unexpected moments. The same characteristics would appeal as 

 strongly to the primitive mind of the negro. The very expression 

 which Harris puts into the mouth of Uncle Remus, "In dem days 

 Brer Rabbit en his fambly wuz at the head er de gang w'en enny 

 racket wus en hand,"' was paraphrased in the Cherokee language by 

 Suyeta in introducing his tirst rabbit story: " T^ti'stti irHlign'ndtCdi'tn' 

 une'gutsdtu' ge«e'i — the Rabbit was the leader of them all in mischief." 

 The expression struck the author so forcibly that the words were 

 recorded as spoken. 



In regard to the contact between the two races, h\ which such stories 

 coidd be borrowed from one by the other, it is not commonly known 

 that in all the southern colonies Indian slaves were bought and sold and 

 kept in servitude and worked in the fields side by side with negroes up 

 to the time of the Revolution. Not to go back to the Spanish period, 

 when such things were the order of the day, we find the Cherokee as 

 early as 1693 complaining that their people were being kidnaped by 

 slave hunters. Hundreds of captured Tuscarora and nearly the whole 

 tribe of the Appalachee were distributed as slaves among the Carolina 

 colonists in the early part of the eighteenth century, while the Natciiez 

 and others shared a similar fate in Louisiana, and as late at least as 

 1776 Cherokee prisoners of war were still sold to the highest l)idder 

 for the same purpose. At one time it was charged against the gi)v- 

 eriior of South Carolina that he was provoking a general Indian war 

 by his encouragement of slave hunts. Furthermore, as the coast tril)es 

 dwindled they were compelled to associate and intermarry with the 

 negroes until they finally lost their identity and were classed with 

 that race, so that a considerable proportion of the 1)lo()d of the south- 

 ern negroes is unquestional)ly Indian. 



The negro, with his genius for imitation and his love for stories, 

 especially of the comic variety, must undoubtedly have al)sorb(>d much 

 from the Indian in this way, while on the other hand tin' Indian, with 

 his pride of conservatism and iiis contempt for a subject race, would 

 have taken but little froiu the negro, and that little could not easily 

 have found its way back to the free ti-ibes. Some of these animal 

 stories are common to widely separated tribes among whom there 

 can be no suspicion of negro influiMices. Thus the famous "'tar l)abv" 

 storv has variants, not onlv anioiii>- the Chei'okee, but also in New 



' Harris, J. C, Uncle Remus, His Songs and liis Sayings, p. 29; New York, 1886. 



