Sometimes the pine splints were set up crosswise, thus, ××××, in a circle around the fire, with a break at the eastern side. They were then lighted from one end and burned gradually around the circle, fresh splints being set up behind as those in front were consumed. Lawson describes this identical custom as witnessed at a dance among the Waxhaw, on Catawba river, in 1701:
Now, to return to our state house, whither we were invited by the grandees. As soon as we came into it, they placed our Englishmen near the king, it being my fortune to sit next him, having his great general or war captain on my other hand. The house is as dark as a dungeon, and as hot as one of the Dutch stoves in Holland. They had made a circular fire of split canes in the middle of the house, it was one man’s employment to add more split reeds to the one end as it consumed at the other, there being a small vacancy left to supply it with fuel.[4]
To the second class belong the shorter animal myths, which have lost whatever sacred character they may once have had, and are told now merely as humorous explanations of certain animal peculiarities. While the sacred myths have a constant bearing upon formulistic prayers and observances, it is only in rare instances that any rite or custom is based upon an animal myth. Moreover, the sacred myths are known as a rule only to the professional priests or conjurers, while the shorter animal stories are more or less familiar to nearly everyone and are found in almost identical form among Cherokee, Creeks, and other southern tribes.
The animals of the Cherokee myths, like the traditional hero-gods, were larger and of more perfect type than their present representatives. They had chiefs, councils, and townhouses, mingled with human kind upon terms of perfect equality and spoke the same language. In some unexplained manner they finally left this lower world and ascended to Galûñ′lătĭ, the world above, where they still exist. The removal was not simultaneous, but each animal chose his own time. The animals that we know, small in size and poor in intellect, came upon the earth later, and are not the descendants of the mythic animals, but only weak imitations. In one or two special cases, however, the present creature is the descendant of a former monster. Trees and plants also were alive and could talk in the old days, and had their place in council, but do not figure prominently in the myths.
Each animal had his appointed station and duty. Thus, the Walâ′sĭ frog was the marshal and leader in the council, while the Rabbit was the messenger to carry all public announcements, and usually led the dance besides. He was also the great trickster and mischief maker, a character which he bears in eastern and southern Indian myth generally, as well as in the southern negro stories. The bear figures as having been originally a man, with human form and nature.
As with other tribes and countries, almost every prominent rock and mountain, every deep bend in the river, in the old Cherokee country has its accompanying legend. It may be a little story that can be told in a paragraph, to account for some natural feature, or it may be one chapter of a myth that has its sequel in a mountain a hundred miles away. As is usual when a people has lived for a long time in the same country, nearly every important myth is localized, thus assuming more definite character.
There is the usual number of anecdotes and stories of personal adventure, some of them irredeemably vulgar, but historical traditions are strangely wanting. The authentic records of unlettered peoples are short at best, seldom going back much farther than the memories of their oldest men; and although the Cherokee have been the most important of the southern tribes, making wars and treaties for three centuries with Spanish, English, French, and Americans, Iroquois, Shawano, Catawba, and Creeks, there is little evidence of the fact in their traditions. This condition may be due in part to the temper of the Cherokee mind, which, as has been already stated, is accustomed to look forward to new things rather than to dwell upon the past. The first Cherokee war, with its stories of Âganstâ′ta and Ătă-gûl′kălû′, is absolutely forgotten. Of the long Revolutionary struggle they have hardly a recollection, although they were constantly fighting throughout the whole period and for several years after, and at one time were brought to the verge of ruin by four concerted expeditions, which ravaged their country simultaneously from different directions and destroyed almost every one of their towns. Even the Creek war, in which many of their warriors took a prominent part, was already nearly forgotten some years ago. Beyond a few stories of encounters with the Shawano and Iroquois there is hardly anything that can be called history until well within the present century.
With some tribes the winter season and the night are the time for telling stories, but to the Cherokee all times are alike. As our grandmothers begin, “Once upon a time,” so the Cherokee story-teller introduces his narrative by saying: “This is what the old men told me when I was a boy.”
Not all tell the same stories, for in tribal lore, as in all other sorts of knowledge, we find specialists. Some common minds take note only of common things—little stories of the rabbit, the terrapin, and the others, told to point a joke or amuse a child. Others dwell upon the wonderful and supernatural—Tsulʻkălû′, Tsuwe′năhĭ, and the Thunderers—and those sacred things to be told only with prayer and purification. Then, again, there are still a few old warriors who live in the memory of heroic days when there were wars with the Seneca and the Shawano, and these men are the historians of the tribe and the conservators of its antiquities.