NOONKY] THK BEAR MAN 329 



Soon tli(\v liciird the hunters coiiiint;- u[) tlic niountiiin. aiifl I hen tlic 

 dogs found the cave and began to hark. The hunters came and looked 

 insi<lt> and saw the liear and killed him with their arrows. Then they 

 dragged him outside the caxc and skinned the hody and cut it in (|uar- 

 ter.s to can-y home. The dogs kept on liai'king until the hunters 

 thought there must he another Vx-ar in the cave. They looked in 

 again and saw the man away at the farther end. At tirst they thought 

 it was another hear on account of his long hail'. h\il they soon saw it 

 was the hunter who had l)een lost the year hefore, so they went in and 

 brought him out. Then each hiuiter took a load of the bear meat and 

 they started home again, bringing the man and the skin witli them. 

 Before they left the man piled leaves over the spot where they had cut 

 up the bear, and when they had gone a little way he looked behind 

 and .saw the bear rise up out of the leaves, shake himself, and go hack 

 into the woods. 



When they came neai- the .settlement the ilian told tlu' hunters that 

 he must t)e slmt up where no one could see him. without anything to 

 eat or drink for seven days and nights, until the l)ear nature had left 

 him and he became like a man again. So they shut him up alone in a 

 house and tried to keep very .still about it. hut the news got out and 

 his wife heard of it. She came for her husband, hut the peojile would 

 not let her near him; but she came every day and begged so hard that 

 at last after four or live days they let her have him. She took him 

 home with her. liut in a short time he died. ))ecause he still had a 

 bear's nature and could not live like a man. If they had kej)t him 

 .shut up and fasting until the end of the seven days he would have 

 become a man again and w'ould have lived. 



77. THE GREAT LEECH OF TLANUSI'YI 



The spot where ^'alley river joins Hiwassee, at Murphy, in North 

 Carolina, is known among the Cherokee.s as Tlanusi'yi, '"I'lie Leech 

 place," and this is the story they tell of it: 



Just above the junction is a deep hole in Valley river, and ahovt? 

 it is a ledge of rock running across the stream, ovei' which j)eople used 

 to go as on a bridge. On the south side the trail ascended a high bank, 

 from which they could look down into the water. One day some men 

 going along the trail saw a great red ol)ject. full as large as a hovise, 

 lying on the rock ledge in thi> middle of the stream below them. As 

 they stood wondering what it could b(> they saw it unroll — and then 

 they knew it was alivi> — and sti'etcdi itself out along the rock until it 

 looked like a great leech with red and white striy^es along its body. 

 It rolled up into a hall and again stretched out at full length, and at 

 last crawled down the rock and was out of sight in the deej) water. 

 The water began to boil and foam, and a great colunm of white spray 

 was thrown high in the air and came down like a watersjiout upon the 



