A council and a dance—In the old days, as to-day among the remote Western tribes, every great council gathering was made the occasion of a series of dances, accompanied always by feasting and a general good time.
[19.] How the Wildcat caught the Gobbler (p. [269]): This story was heard from John Ax and David Blythe (east) and from Wafford and Boudinot (west). The version given below, doctored to suit the white man’s idea, appears without signature in the Cherokee Advocate of December 18, 1845:
“There was once a flock of wild turkeys feeding in a valley. As they fed they heard a voice singing. They soon discovered that the musician was a hare, and the burden of his song was that he had a secret in his breast which he would on no account divulge. The curiosity of the turkeys was excited, and they entreated the hare to tell them the secret. This he finally consented to do if they would procure for him the king’s daughter for his wife and go with him and dance around their enemy. They engaged to do all, and the hare led them to where a wildcat lay apparently dead. The hare prevailed upon them to close their eyes as they danced. The wildcat meanwhile silently arose and killed several of them before the rest found out what a snare they had been caught in. By this artifice on the part of the wildcat, seconded by the hare, the former had a sumptuous repast.”
This, with its variants, is one of the most widespread of the animal myths. The same story told by the Cherokee, identical even to the song, is given in the Creek collection of Tuggle, with the addition that the Rabbit’s tail is afterward bitten off by the enraged Turkeys. In another Creek version, evidently a later invention, the Raccoon plays a similar trick upon the Deer for the benefit of the Panther. The Kiowa of the southern plains tell how the hungry trickster, Sinti, entices a number of prairie dogs to come near him, under pretense of teaching them a new dance, and then kills all but one, while they are dancing around him, according to instruction, with their eyes shut. With the Omaha the Rabbit himself captures the Turkeys while they dance around, with closed eyes, to his singing (Dorsey, “The Rabbit and the Turkeys,” and “Ictinike, the Turkeys, Turtle, and Elk,” in Contributions to North American Ethnology, VI). The same stratagem, with only a change of names, recurs in another Omaha story, “The Raccoon and the Crabs,” of the same collection, and in a Cheyenne story of White-man (A. L. Kroeber, Cheyenne Tales, in Journal of American Folk-Lore, July, 1900), and in the Jicarilla story of “The Fox and the Wildcat” (Russell, Myths of the Jicarilla, ibid., October, 1898). The Southern negro version, which lacks the important song and dance feature, is given by Harris in his story of “Brother Rabbit and Mr Wildcat.”[37]
[20.] How the Terrapin beat the Rabbit (p. [270]): This story was obtained from John Ax and Suyeta and is well known in the tribe. It is sometimes told with the Deer instead of the Rabbit as the defeated runner, and in this form is given by Lanman, who thus localizes it: “The race was to extend from the Black mountain to the summit of the third pinnacle extending to the eastward” (Letters, p. 37).
In the Creek collection of Tuggle the same story is given in two versions, in one of which the Deer and in the other the Wolf is defeated by the stratagem of the Terrapin. The Southern negro parallel is given by Harris (Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings) in the story, “Mr Rabbit Finds His Match at Last.” It seems almost superfluous to call attention to the European folklore version, the well-known story of the race between the Hare and the Tortoise.
[21.] The Rabbit and the tar wolf (p. [271]): This story was obtained in the Indian Territory from James Wafford, who said he had repeatedly heard it in boyhood about Valley river, in the old Nation, from Cherokee who spoke no English.
The second version, from the Cherokee Advocate, December 18, 1845, is given, together with the story of “How the Wildcat caught the Gobbler,” with this introduction:
“Indian Fables. Mr William P. Ross: I have recently stumbled on the following Cherokee fables, and perhaps you may think them worth inserting in the Advocate for the sake of the curious. I am told that the Cherokees have a great many fables. If I understand the following, the intention seems to be to teach cunning and artifice in war. Æsop.” The newspaper paragraph bears the pencil initials of S[amuel] W[orcester] B[utler].
Other Indian versions are found with the Jicarilla (“Fox and Rabbit,” Myths of the Jicarilla, by Frank Russell, in Journal of American Folk-Lore, October, 1898) and Sioux (S. D. Hinman, cited in Transactions of the Anthropological Society of Washington, I, p. 103, Washington, 1882). The southern negro variant, “The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story,” is the introductory tale in Harris’s Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings. A close parallel occurs in the West African story of “Leopard, Monkey, and Hare” (Chatelain, Folktales of Angola).