440 MYTHS OF THE CHEIWKKK rBTTt.»NN.19 



7. TiiK .inrRNEY to the si'xrise (p. 255): This story, nbtaint-d from John Ax, 

 with additional details by Swimmer and Watford, has parallels in many tribes. 

 Swimmer did not know the burial incident, but said — eviilently a more recent inter- 

 polation — that when they came near the sunri.se they found there a race of black men 

 at work. It is somewhat remarkable that the story has nothing to say of the travelers 

 reachinjr the ocean, as the Cherokee were well aware of its proximity. 



Whiil the Sun ix like — Accordinir to the Payne manuscript, already ipioti-d, the 

 Cherokee anciently believed that the world, the first man and woman, and the sun 

 and moon were all created by a number of Iteneficent beings wlio came down for the 

 purpose from an upper worl(i, to which tliey afterward returned, leaving the sun and 

 moon iis their deputies to finish and rule the world thus created. '-Hence whenever 

 the Ijelievers in this system offer a prayer to their creator, they mean by the creator 

 rather the Sun and Moon. As to which of these two was supreme, there seems to 

 have been a wide difference of opinion. In some of their ancient prayers, they speak 

 of the Sun as male, and consider, of course, the Moon as female. In others, however, 

 they invoke the Moon as male and the Sun as female; because, as they say, the 

 Moon is vigilant and travels by night. ]?ut both Sun and !Moon, as we have before 

 said, are adored as the creator. . . . The expression, 'Sun, my creator,' occurs 

 frequently in their ancient prayers. Indeed, the Sun was generally considered the 

 superior in their devotions" (quoteil in Squier, Serpent Symbol, p. 68). Haywood, 

 in 182o, says: "The sun they call the day moon or female, and the night moon the 

 male" (Nat. and Aborig. Hist. Tenn., p. 266). According to Swimmer, there is also 

 a tradition that the Sun was of cannilml habit, and in human form was once seen 

 killing and devouring human beings. Sun and ;Moon are sister and brother. See 

 number 8, "The Moon and the Thunders." 



The Indians of Thompson river, British Columbia, say of the sun that formerly 

 "He was a man and a cannibal, killing peoiile oLi his travels every day. ... He 

 hung up the people whom he had killed during his day's travel when he reached 

 home, taking down the bodies of those whom he had hung up the night before and 

 eating them." He was finally induced to abandon his cannibal habit (Teit, Thomji- 

 son River Traditions, p. 53). 



In the same grare — This reminds us of the adventure in the voyage of Sinbad the 

 Sailor, as narrated in the Arabian Nights. The sacrifice of the wife at her husband's 

 funeral was an ancient custom in the Orient and in portions of Africa, and still survives 

 in the Hindu suttee. It may once have had a counterpart in America, but so far as 

 known to the author the nearest api)roaeh to it was found in the region of the lower 

 Columbia and adjacent northwest coast, where a slave was freiiuently buried alive 

 with the corpse. 



r<(i(7( of solid rock — The sky vault which is constantly rising and falling at the 

 horizon and crushes those who try to go beyond occurs in the mythologies of the 

 Iroquois of New York, the Omaha and the Sioux of the plains, the Tillamook of 

 Oregon, and other widely separated tribes. The Iroquois concept is given by Hewitt, 

 "Rising and Falling of the Sky," in Iroquois Legends, in the American Anthropolo- 

 gist for October, 1892. In the Omaha story of "The Chief's Son and the Thunders" 

 (Dorsey, Contril)Utions to North American Ethnology, vi, 1890) , a party of travelersin 

 search of ail ventures "came to the end of the sky, anrl the end of the sky was going 

 down mto the ground." They tried to jump acros.s, and all succeeded excepting one, 

 who failed to clear the distance, and ''the end ofthe .sky carried him away under the 

 ground:" The others go on behind the other world and return the same way. In 

 the Tillamook myth six men go traveling and reach "the lightning door, which 

 openeil and closed with great rapidity and force." They get through safely, but one 

 is caught on the return and has his back cut in half by the descending sky (Boas, 

 Traditions of the Tillamook Indians, in .lournal of .Vmerican Folk-Lore, Jan., 1898). 

 See al.'^o numlicr 1, "How the World was Made" and number 3, "Kana'tl and Selu." 



