woosEY] NOTES AND PARALLELS 469 



and interesting story, although none of tliese fonld recall tlie details in connected 

 form. It is noted as one of the stories heard in the Territory l)y Ten Kate (legends 

 of the Cherokees, in Journal of American Folk-I.ore, January, 1S,S9), who spells the 

 name Xayunn'wi. 



Xi'iniinnu'irT, "Dressed in stone"; add'laiifinsn, a staff or cane; asi'in'tll, ti.tfin'tlMX, 

 a foot log or bridge; add' irelii, a great magician or supernatural wonder-worker; see 

 the glossary. 



A very close parallel is found among the Iroquois, who have traditions of an inva- 

 sion by a race of fierce cannibals known as the Stonish Giants, who, originally like 

 ordinary humans, had wandered off into the wilderness, where they becanu!addi<'ted 

 to eating raw flesh and wallowing in the sand until their bodies grew to gigantic size 

 and were covered with hard scales like stone, which no arrow could j)enetrate (see 

 Cusick, in Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, v, p. 637). One of these, which preyed par- 

 ticularly upon the Onondaga, was at last taken in a pitfall and thus killed. Another, 

 in tracking his victims used "something which looked like a finger, but was really a 

 pointer made of bone. With this he could find anything he wished." The pointer 

 was finally snatched from him by a hunter, on which the giant, unable to find his 

 way without it, begged piteously for its return, promising to eat no more men and 

 to send the hunter long life and good luck for himself and all his friends. The 

 hunter thereupon restored it and the giant kept his pn)mises (Beauchamp, W. M., 

 Iroquois Notes, in Journal of American Folk-Lore, Boston, July, 1892.) As told by 

 Mrs Smith ("The Stone Giant's Challenge," Myths of the Iroquois, in Second 

 Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1S83), the pointer was a human finger. 

 "He jjlaced it upright upon his liand, and it immediately pointed the way for him 

 to go." 



MeiiMrual louman — Among all our native tribes it is believed that there is something 

 dangerous or uncanny in the touch or presence of a menstrual woman. Hence the 

 universal institution of the "menstrual lodge," to which the woman retires at such 

 periods, eating, working, and sleeping alone, together with a host of tabus and pre- 

 cautions bearing upon the same subject. Nearly the same ideas are held in regard to 

 a pregnant woman. 



Sourwood Ktiike-'f — Cherokee hunters impale meat upon sourwood {O.i-i)dL'ii(lrHm) 

 stakes for roasting, and the wood is lielieved, also, to have power against the spells of 

 witches. 



Beqantotalk — The revealing of "medicine" secrets by a magician when in his 

 final agony is a common incident in Indian myths. 



Whdterer he prayed for — Swimmer gives a detailed statement of the particular peti- 

 tion made by several of those thus jiainted. Painting the face and body, especially 

 with nvl paint, is always among Indians a more or less sacred jierformance, usually 

 accompanied with prayers. 



68. Thk hunter in the DAkwA' — This story was told by Swimmer and Ta'gwadihl' 

 and is well known in the tribe. The version from the Wahnenauhi manuscript differs 

 considerably from that here given. In the Bible translation the word d:1kw;1' is 

 used as the equivalent of whale. Haywood thus alludes to the story (Nat. and 

 Aborig. Hist. Tenn., p. 244) : "One of the ancient traditions of the Cherokees is that 

 once a whale swallowed a little boy, and aftersome timespewed him upon the land." 



Itispretty certain that the Cherokee formerly had some acquaintance with whales, 

 which, about the year 1700, according to Lawson, were "very numerous" on the 

 coast of North Carolina, being frequently stranded along the shore, so that settlers 

 derived considerable profit from the oil and blubber. He enumerates four species 

 there known, and adds a general .statement that "some Indians in America" hunted 

 them at .sea (History of Carolina, pp. 2.")l-2.i2). 



In almost every age and country we liiid a mytli of a great lish swallow lug a ujan, 



