When the French built Fort Caroline, near the present Charleston, South Carolina, in 1562, an Indian village was in the vicinity, but shortly afterward the chief, with all his people, removed to a considerable distance in consequence of a strange accident—“a large piece of peat bog [was] kindled by lightning and consumed, which he supposed to be the work of artillery.”[42]
Volcanic activities, some of very recent date, have left many traces in the Carolina mountains. A mountain in Haywood county, near the head of Fines creek, has been noted for its noises and quakings for nearly a century, one particular explosion having split solid masses of granite as though by a blast of gunpowder. These shocks and noises used to recur at intervals of two or three years, but have not now been noticed for some time. In 1829 a violent earthquake on Valley river split open a mountain, leaving a chasm extending for several hundred yards, which is still to be seen. Satoola mountain, near Highlands, in Macon county, has crevices from which smoke is said to issue at intervals. In Madison county there is a mountain which has been known to rumble and smoke, a phenomenon with which the Warm springs in the same county may have some connection. Another peak, known as Shaking or Rumbling bald, in Rutherford county, attracted widespread attention in 1874 by a succession of shocks extending over a period of six months (see Zeigler and Grosscup, Heart of the Alleghanies, pp. 228–229).
[72.] The Hunter and Selu (p. [323]): The explanation of this story, told by Swimmer, lies in the myth which derives corn from the blood of the old woman Selu (see [number 3], “Kana′tĭ and Selu”).
In Iroquois myth the spirits of Corn, Beans, and Squash are three sisters. Corn was originally much more fertile, but was blighted by the jealousy of an evil spirit. “To this day, when the rustling wind waves the corn leaves with a moaning sound, the pious Indian fancies that he hears the Spirit of Corn, in her compassion for the red man, still bemoaning with unavailing regrets her blighted fruitfulness” (Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 162). See [number 126], “Plant Lore,” and accompanying notes.
[73.] The Underground Panthers (p. [324]): This story was told by John Ax. For an explanation of the Indian idea concerning animals see [number 15], “The Four-footed Tribes,” and [number 76], “The Bear Man.”
Several days—The strange lapse of time, by which a period really extending over days or even years seems to the stranger under the spell to be only a matter of a few hours, is one of the most common incidents of European fairy recitals, and has been made equally familiar to American readers through Irving’s story of Rip Van Winkle.
[74.] The Tsundige′wĭ (p. [325]): This curious story was told by Swimmer and Ta′gwădihĭ′ (east) and Wafford (west). Swimmer says the dwarfs lived in the west, but Ta′gwădihĭ′ and Wafford locate them south from the Cherokee country.
A story which seems to be a variant of the same myth was told to the Spanish adventurer Ayllon by the Indians on the South Carolina coast in 1520, and is thus given in translation from Peter Martyr’s Decades, in the Discovery and Conquest of Florida, ninth volume of the Hakluyt Society’s publications, pages XV-XVI, London, 1851.
“Another of Ayllon’s strange stories refers to a country called Inzignanin, ... The inhabitauntes, by report of their ancestors, say, that a people as tall as the length of a man’s arme, with tayles of a spanne long, sometime arrived there, brought thither by sea, which tayle was not movable or wavering, as in foure-footed beastes, but solide, broad above, and sharpe beneath, as wee see in fishes and crocodiles, and extended into a bony hardness. Wherefore, when they desired to sitt, they used seates with holes through them, or wanting them, digged upp the earth a spanne deepe or little more, they must convay their tayle into the hole when they rest them.”
It is given thus in Barcia, Ensayo, page 5: “Tambien llegaron a la Provincia de Yncignavin adonde les contaron aquellos Indios, que en cierto tiempo, avian aportado à ella, unas Gentes, que tenian Cola ... de una quarta de largo, flexible, que les estorvaba tanto, que para sentarse agujereaban los asientos: que el Pellejo era mui aspero, y como escamoso, y que comìan solo Peces crudos: y aviendo estos muerto, se acabò esta Nacion, y la Verdad del Caso, con ella.”