442 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [ETH.iSN.19 



Other whenever a great storm arises. ' AiiKing the jilains tril)es Vintli tlinmler and 

 lightning are caused l)y a great bird. 



jRawiojc — The conception of the rainbow as tlu; T)eauti£nl dress of the Thumler god 

 occurs also among the South Sea islanders. In 'Mangaia it is the girdle ot the god 

 Taiigaroa, wliich he loosens and allows to hang down imtil the end reaches to the 

 earth whenever he wishes to descend (Gill, !Myths and Songs of the South Pacific, 

 p. 44). For some unexplained reason the dread of pointing at the rainliow, on jienalt y 

 of having the finger wither or become missliapen, is found among most of tlie tribes 

 even to the Pacific coast. The author first heard of it from a Puyallup boy of Puget 

 sound, AVashington. 



9. What tue .st.\ks are like (p. '2ri7): This story, told by Swimmer, emViodies 

 the old tribal belief. By a different informant Hagar was told: "Stars are birds. 

 We know this because one once shot from the sky to the ground, and som<' Cherokee 

 who looked for it found a little bird, about the size of a chicken just hatched, 

 where it fell " (MS Stellar Legends of the Cherokee, 1898). 



The story closely resembles something heard by Lawson among the Tiiscarora in 

 eastern North Carolina about the year 1700. An Indian having been killed by light- 

 ning, the people were assembled for the funeral, and the priest made them a long 

 discourse upon the p(jwer of lightning over all men, animals, and plants, save only 

 mice and the lilack-gum tree. "At last he began to tell the most ridiculous absurd 

 pai'cel of lies about liglitning that could be; as that an Indian of that nation had i )nce 

 got lightning in the likeness of a partridge; that no other lightning could harm hini 

 whilst he had that about him; and that after he had kept it for several years it got 

 away from him, so that he then became as liable to be struck with lightning as any 

 other person. There was present at the same time an Indian that had lived from 

 his youth chiefly in an English house, so I called to him and told him what a parcel 

 of lies the conjurer told, not douliting but he thought so as well as I; but I found 

 to the contrary, for he replied that I wa.s much mistaken, for the old man — who, 

 I believe, was upwards of an hundred years old — did never tell lies; and as for what 

 he said, it was very true, for he knew it himself to be so. Thereupon seeing the 

 fellow's ignorance, I talked no more about it'" (History of Carolina, i)age 346). 



According to Hagar a certain constellation of seven stars, which he i<lentifies aa 

 the Hyades, is called by the Cherokee "The Arm," on account of its resemblance to 

 a human arm bent at the elbi iw. and they say that it is the broken arm of a man who 

 went up to the sky because, having been thus crippled, he wa.s of no further use 

 upon earth. 



A meteor, and probably also a comet, is called Atail'-Tluntu'tst, "Fire-panther," 

 the same concept being found among the Shawano, embodied in the name nf their 

 great chief, Tecumtha (see p. 21.i). 



10. Origin of the Pleiades and the pine (p. 258) : This myth is well knoM'ii in the 

 tribe, and was told in nearly the same form by Swimmer, Ta'gwadihi' and Suyeta. 

 The Feather dance, also called the Eagle dance, is one of the old favorites, and is the 

 same as the ancient Calumet dance of the northern tribes. For a description of the 

 gatayu'sti game, see note to number 3, "Kana'ti and Selu." In a variant recorded 

 .by Stansbury Hagar (MS Stellar Legends of the Cherokee) the boys spend their 



time shooting at cornstalks. 



According to Squier (Serpent Symliol, p. 69), probably on the authority of the 

 Payne manuscript, "The Cherokees paid a kind of veneration to the morning star, 

 and also to the seven stars, with which they have connected a variety of legends, all 

 of which, no doubt, are allegorical, although their significance is now unknown." 



1 Heli Chatelain. Folktales of Angola: Fifty Talcs, with Ki-mbiindu text, literal English transla- 

 tion, introduction, and notes (Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore .Society, i); Boston and New York. 

 1894. 



