Sprang from blood—This concept of a child born of blood drops reappears in the Cherokee story of Tsulʻkalû′ (see [number 81]). Its occurrence among the Creeks has just been noted. It is found also among the Dakota (Dorsey, “The Blood-clots Boy,” in Contributions to North American Ethnology, IX, 1893), Omaha (Dorsey, “The Rabbit and the Grizzly Bear,” Cont. to N. A. Eth., VI, 1890), Blackfeet (“Kutoyis,” in Grinnell, “Blackfoot Lodge Tales”; New York, 1892), and other tribes. Usually the child thus born is of wilder and more mischievous nature than is common.
Deer shut up in hole—The Indian belief that the game animals were originally shut up in a cave, from which they were afterward released by accident or trickery, is very widespread. In the Tuggle version of the Creek account of the creation of the earth we find the deer thus shut up and afterward set free. The Iroquois “believed that the game animals were not always free, but were enclosed in a cavern where they had been concealed by Tawiskaraʼ; but that they might increase and fill the forest Yoskehăʼ gave them freedom.”[18] The same idea occurs in the Omaha story of “Ictinike, the Brothers and Sister” (Dorsey, in Contributions to North American Ethnology, VI, 1890). The Kiowa tell how the buffalo were kept thus imprisoned by the Crow until released by Sinti when the people were all starving for want of meat. When the buffalo so suddenly and completely disappeared from the plains about twenty-five years ago, the prairie tribes were unable to realize that it had been exterminated, but for a long time cherished the belief that it had been again shut up by the superior power of the whites in some underground prison, from which the spells of their own medicine men would yet bring it back (see references in the author’s Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians, in Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, part 1, 1901). The Kiowa tradition is almost exactly paralleled among the Jicarilla (Russell, Myths of the Jicarilla Apaches, in Journal of American Folk-Lore, Oct., 1898).
Storehouse—The unwadâ′lĭ, or storehouse for corn, beans, dried pumpkins, and other provisions, was a feature of every Cherokee homestead and was probably common to all the southern tribes. Lawson thus describes it among the Santee in South Carolina about the year 1700:
“They make themselves cribs after a very curious manner, wherein they secure their corn from vermin, which are more frequent in these warm climates than in countries more distant from the sun. These pretty fabrics are commonly supported with eight feet or posts about seven feet high from the ground, well daubed within and without upon laths, with loam or clay, which makes them tight and fit to keep out the smallest insect, there being a small door at the gable end, which is made of the same composition and to be removed at pleasure, being no bigger than that a slender man may creep in at, cementing the door up with the same earth when they take the corn out of the crib and are going from home, always finding their granaries in the same posture they left them—theft to each other being altogether unpracticed.”[19]
Rubbed her stomach—This miraculous procuring of provisions by rubbing the body occurs also in [number 76], “The Bear Man.”
Knew their thoughts—Mind reading is a frequent concept in Indian myth and occurs in more than one Cherokee story.
Seven times—The idea of sacred numbers has already been noted, and the constant recurrence of seven in the present myth exemplifies well the importance of that number in Cherokee ritual.
A tuft of down—In the Omaha story, “The Corn Woman and the Buffalo Woman” (Dorsey, Contributions to North American Ethnology, VI, 1890), the magician changes himself into a feather and allows himself to be blown about by the wind in order to accomplish his purpose. The wolf does the same in a Thompson River myth.[20] The self-transformation of the hero into a tuft of bird’s down, a feather, a leaf, or some other light object, which is then carried by the wind wherever he wishes to go, is very common in Indian myth.
Play ball against them—This is a Cherokee figurative expression for a contest of any kind, more particularly a battle.
Left an open space—When the Cherokee conjurer, by his magic spells, coils the great (invisible) serpent around the house of a sick man to keep off the witches, he is always careful to leave a small space between the head and tail of the snake, so that the members of the family can go down to the spring to get water.