The mothers screamed, and one caught up a game stick and contrived to pull her son down, but the other six went straight up into the sky; and there they are now, as the six bright stars named Pleiades, which the Cherokees call “The Boys.”
As for the seventh little boy, he struck the ground with such force that he sank in and was seen no more. His wretched mother watered the spot every day with her tears, and after a long time there sprang up a slender shoot of green which grew into a pine tree. This was the very first pine. Perhaps you did not know that the Pine has a heart of flame and is a brother to the Stars.
THE STARS AND THE PINE
One contrived to pull her son down, but the other six went up into the sky.
Page 44.
THE MAN WHO MARRIED THE THUNDER’S SISTER
A certain young man went to a dance one evening and met there two strange young women, both of whom had the longest and handsomest hair he had ever seen. He looked at them a great deal from a distance and finally spoke to them, and before the dance broke up he had asked the younger and prettier of the two sisters to be his wife.
In reply she told him to fast for seven days and she would meet him again at the same place.
The young man was so deeply in love that he gladly accepted the hard condition, and after going without any food for the prescribed time, he went to another dance. There he met again the two sisters with the beautiful long hair. When it was time to leave, the younger one said that he might follow her, but she warned him that if he ever told where he went or what he saw, he would surely die.