White animals sacred—According to a formula in the Tuggle manuscript for curing the “deer sickness,” the “White Deer” is chief of his tribe in Creek mythology also. Peculiar sacredness always attaches, in the Indian mind, to white and albino animals, partly on account of the symbolic meaning attached to the color itself and partly by reason of the mystery surrounding the phenomenon of albinism. Among the Cherokee the chiefs both of the Deer and of the Bear tribe were white. On the plains the so-called white buffalo was always sacred. Among the Iroquois, according to Morgan (League of the Iroquois, p. 210), “the white deer, white squirrel and other chance animals of the albino kind, were regarded as consecrated to the Great Spirit.” One of their most solemn sacrifices was that of the White Dog.
The bear—A reverence for the bear and a belief that it is half human is very general among the tribes, and is probably based in part upon the ability of the animal to stand upright and the resemblance of its tracks to human footprints. According to Grinnell (Blackfoot Lodge Tales, p. 260), “The Blackfeet believe it to be part brute and part human, portions of its body, particularly the ribs and feet, being like those of a man.” In a note upon a Navaho myth Matthews says (Navaho Legends, p. 249): “The bear is a sacred animal with the Navahoes; for this reason the hero did not skin the bears or eat their flesh. The old man, being a wizard, might do both.”
The Ojibwa idea has been noted in connection with the ceremony of asking pardon of the slain animal. A curious illustration of the reverse side of the picture is given by Heckewelder (Indian Nations, p. 255):
“A Delaware hunter once shot a huge bear and broke its backbone. The animal fell and set up a most plaintive cry, something like that of the panther when he is hungry. The hunter instead of giving him another shot, stood up close to him, and addressed him in these words: ‘Hark ye! bear; you are a coward and no warrior as you pretend to be. Were you a warrior, you would shew it by your firmness, and not cry and whimper like an old woman. You know, bear, that our tribes are at war with each other, and that yours was the aggressor [probably alluding to a tradition which the Indians have of a very ferocious kind of bear, called the naked bear, which they say once existed, but was totally destroyed by their ancestors].... You have found the Indians too powerful for you, and you have gone sneaking about in the woods, stealing their hogs; perhaps at this time you have hog’s flesh in your belly. Had you conquered me, I would have borne it with courage and died like a brave warrior; but you, bear, sit here and cry, and disgrace your tribe by your cowardly conduct.’ I was present at the delivery of this curious invective. When the hunter had despatched the bear, I asked him how he thought that poor animal could understand what he said to it? ‘Oh,’ said he in answer, ‘the bear understood me very well; did you not observe how ashamed he looked while I was upbraiding him?’”
The wolf and wolf killer—Speaking of the Gulf tribes generally, Adair says: “The wolf, indeed, several of them do not care to meddle with, believing it unlucky to kill them, which is the sole reason that few of the Indians shoot at that creature, through a notion of spoiling their guns” (History of the American Indians, p. 16). The author has heard among the East Cherokee an incident of a man who, while standing one night upon a fish trap, was scented by a wolf, which came so near that the man was compelled to shoot it. He at once went home and had the gun exorcised by a conjurer. Wafford, when a boy in the old Nation, knew a professional wolf killer. It is always permissible to hire a white man to kill a depredating wolf, as in that case no guilt attaches to the Indian or his tribe.
[16.] The Rabbit goes duck hunting (p. [266]): This story was heard from Swimmer, John Ax, Suyeta (east), and Wafford (west). Discussions between animals as to the kind of food eaten are very common in Indian myth, the method chosen to decide the dispute being usually quite characteristic. The first incident is paralleled in a Creek story of the Rabbit and the Lion (Panther?) in the Tuggle manuscript collection and among the remote Wallawalla of Washington (see Kane, Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America, p. 268; London, 1859). In an Omaha myth, Ictinike and the Buzzard, the latter undertakes to carry the trickster across a stream, but drops him into a hollow tree, from which he is chopped out by some women whom he has persuaded that there are raccoons inside (Dorsey, Contributions to North American Ethnology, VI). In the Iroquois tale, “A Hunter’s Adventures,” a hunter, endeavoring to trap some geese in the water, is carried up in the air and falls into a hollow stump, from which he is released by women (Smith, Myths of the Iroquois, in Second Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology). In the Uncle Remus story, “Mr. Rabbit Meets His Match Again,” the Buzzard persuades the Rabbit to get upon his back in order to be carried across a river, but alights with him upon a tree overhanging the water and thus compels the Rabbit, by fear of falling, to confess a piece of trickery.[36]
[17.] How the Rabbit stole the Otter’s coat (p. [267]): This story is well known in the tribe and was heard from several informants, both east and west. Nothing is said as to how the Otter recovered his coat. It has exact parallels in the Creek myths of the Tuggle collection, in one of which the Rabbit tries to personate a boy hero by stealing his coat, while in another he plays a trick on the Lion (Panther) by throwing hot coals over him while asleep, at a creek which the Rabbit says is called “Throwing-hot-ashes-on-you.”
[18.] Why the Possum’s tail is bare (p. [269]): This story was heard from several informants, east and west. In one variant the hair clipping was done by the Moth, and in another by the spells of the Snail, who is represented as a magician. The version here given is the most common, and agrees best with the Cherokee folklore concerning the Cricket (see [number 59], “The Smaller Reptiles, Fishes, and Insects”).
In the Creek myth, as given in the Tuggle collection, the Opossum burned the hair from his tail in trying to put rings upon it like those of the Raccoon’s tail, and grins from chewing a bitter oak ball which he mistook for a ripened fruit.
The anatomical peculiarities of the opossum, of both sexes, have occasioned much speculation among the Indians, many of whom believe that the female produces her young without any help from the male. The Creeks, according to the Tuggle manuscript, believe that the young are born in the pouch, from the breathing of the female against it when curled up, and even Lawson and Timberlake assert that they are born at the teat, from which they afterward drop off into the pouch.