In Hindu cosmogony also we find seven heavens or stages, increasing in sanctity as they ascend; the Aztecs had nine, as had also the ancient Scandinavians.[10] Some Polynesian tribes have ten, each built of azure stone, with apertures for intercommunication. The lowest originally almost touched the earth and was elevated to its present position by successive pushes from the gods Ru and Matti, resting first prostrate upon the ground, then upon their knees, then lifting with their shoulders, their hands, and their finger tips, until a last supreme effort sent it to its present place.[11]
Seven: The sacred numbers—In every tribe and cult throughout the world we find sacred numbers. Christianity and the Christian world have three and seven. The Indian has always four as the principal sacred number, with usually another only slightly subordinated. The two sacred numbers of the Cherokee are four and seven, the latter being the actual number of the tribal clans, the formulistic number of upper worlds or heavens, and the ceremonial number of paragraphs or repetitions in the principal formulas. Thus in the prayers for long life the priest raises his client by successive stages to the first, second, third, fourth, and finally to the seventh heaven before the end is accomplished. The sacred four has direct relation to the four cardinal points, while seven, besides these, includes also “above,” “below,” and “here in the center.” In many tribal rituals color and sometimes sex are assigned to each point of direction. In the sacred Cherokee formulas the spirits of the East, South, West, and North are, respectively, Red, White, Black, and Blue, and each color has also its own symbolic meaning of Power (War), Peace, Death, and Defeat.
[2.] The first fire (p. [240]): This myth was obtained from Swimmer and John Ax. It is noted also in Foster’s “Sequoyah”[12] and in the Wahnenauhi manuscript.[13] The uksu′hĭ and the gûle′gĭ are, respectively, the Coluber obsoletus and Bascanion constrictor. The water-spider is the large hairy species Argyroneta.
In the version given in the Wahnenauhi manuscript the Possum and the Buzzard first make the trial, but come back unsuccessful, one losing the hair from his tail, while the other has the feathers scorched from his head and neck. In another version the Dragon-fly assists the Water-spider by pushing the tusti from behind. In the corresponding Creek myth, as given in the Tuggle manuscript, the Rabbit obtains fire by the stratagem of touching to the blaze a cap trimmed with sticks of rosin, while pretending to bend low in the dance. In the Jicarilla myth the Fox steals fire by wrapping cedar bark around his tail and thrusting it into the blaze while dancing around the circle.[14]
[3.] Kana′tĭ and Selu: Origin of corn and game (p. [242]): This story was obtained in nearly the same form from Swimmer and John Ax (east) and from Wafford (west), and a version is also given in the Wahnenauhi manuscript. Hagar notes it briefly in his manuscript Stellar Legends of the Cherokee. So much of belief and custom depend upon the myth of Kana′tĭ that references to the principal incidents are constant in the songs and formulas. It is one of those myths held so sacred that in the old days one who wished to hear it from the priest of the tradition must first purify himself by “going to water,” i. e., bathing in the running stream before daylight when still fasting, while the priest performed his mystic ceremonies upon the bank.
In his Letters from the Alleghany Mountains, written more than fifty years ago, Lanman gives (pp. 136, 137) a very fair synopsis of this myth, locating the game preserve of Kana′tĭ, whom he makes an old Cherokee chief, in a (traditional) cave on the north side of the Black mountain, now Mount Mitchell, in Yancey county, North Carolina, the highest peak east of the Rocky mountains. After his father had disappeared, and could not be found by long search, “The boy fired an arrow towards the north, but it returned and fell at his feet, and he knew that his father had not travelled in that direction. He also fired one towards the east and the south and the west, but they all came back in the same manner. He then thought that he would fire one directly above his head, and it so happened that this arrow never returned, and so the boy knew that his father had gone to the spirit land. The Great Spirit was angry with the Cherokee nation, and to punish it for the offense of the foolish boy he tore away the cave from the side of the Black mountain and left only a large cliff in its place, which is now a conspicuous feature, and he then declared that the time would come when another race of men should possess the mountains where the Cherokees had flourished for many generations.”
The story has numerous parallels in Indian myth, so many in fact that almost every important concept occurring in it is duplicated in the North, in the South, and on the plains, and will probably be found also west of the mountains when sufficient material of that region shall have been collected. The Ojibwa story of “The Weendigoes,”[15] in particular, has many striking points of resemblance; so, also, the Omaha myth, “Two-faces and the Twin Brothers,” as given by Dorsey.[16]
His wife was Selu, “Corn”—In Cherokee belief, as in the mythologies of nearly every eastern tribe, the corn spirit is a woman, and the plant itself has sprung originally from the blood drops or the dead body of the Corn Woman. In the Cherokee sacred formulas the corn is sometimes invoked as Agawe′la, “The Old Woman,” and one myth ([number 72], “The Hunter and Selu”) tells how a hunter once witnessed the transformation of the growing stalk into a beautiful woman.
In the Creek myth “Origin of Indian Corn,” as given in the Tuggle manuscript, the corn plant appears to be the transformed body of an old woman whose only son, endowed with magic powers, has developed from a single drop of her (menstrual?) blood.
In Iroquois legend, according to Morgan, the corn plant sprang from the bosom of the mother of the Great Spirit (sic) after her burial. The spirits of corn, bean, and squash are represented as three sisters. “They are supposed to have the forms of beautiful females, to be very fond of each other, and to delight to dwell together. This last belief is illustrated by a natural adaptation of the plants themselves to grow up together in the same field and perhaps from the same hill.”[17]