With the exception of Tsulʻkalû′ there seem to be no giants in the mythology of the Cherokee, although all their woods and waters are peopled by invisible fairy tribes. This appears to be characteristic of Indian mythologies generally, the giants being comparatively few in number while the “little people” are legion. The Iroquois have a story of an invasion by a race of stony-skinned cannibal giants from the west (Schoolcraft, Notes on Iroquois, p. 266). Giant races occur also in the mythologies of the Navaho (Matthews, Navaho Legends), Choctaw (Gatschet, Creek Migration Legend), and other tribes. According to the old Spanish chroniclers, Ayllon in 1520 met on the coast of South Carolina a tribe of Indians whose chiefs were of gigantic size, owing, as he was told, to a special course of dieting and massage to which they were subjected in infancy.
[107.] The lost Cherokee (p. [391]): This tradition as here given is taken chiefly from the Wahnenauhi manuscript. There is a persistent belief among the Cherokee that a portion of their people once wandered far to the west or southwest, where they were sometimes heard of afterward, but were never again reunited with their tribe. It was the hope of verifying this tradition and restoring his lost kinsmen to their tribe that led Sequoya to undertake the journey on which he lost his life. These traditional lost Cherokee are entirely distinct from the historic emigrants who removed from the East shortly after the Revolution.
Similar stories are common to nearly all the tribes. Thus the Kiowa tell of a chief who, many years ago, quarreled over a division of game and led his people far away across the Rocky mountains, where they are still living somewhere about the British border and still keeping their old Kiowa language. The Tonkawa tell of a band of their people who in some way were cut off from the tribe by a sudden inroad of the sea on the Texas coast, and, being unable to return, gradually worked their way far down into Mexico. The Tuscarora tell how, in their early wanderings, they came to the Mississippi and were crossing over to the west side by means of a grapevine, when the vine broke, leaving those on the farther side to wander off until in time they became enemies to those on the eastern bank. See Mooney, Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians, Seventeenth Annual Report Bureau of American Ethnology, part 1, and The Last of Our Cannibals, in Harper’s Magazine, August, 1901; Cusick, quoted in Schoolcraft, Notes on the Iroquois, p. 478.
[108.] The massacre of the Ani′-Kuta′ni (p. [392]): Swimmer, Ta′gwădihĭ′, Ayâsta, and Wafford all knew this name, which Ayâsta pronounced Ani′-Kwăta′nĭ, but none of them could tell anything more definite than has been stated in the opening sentence. The hereditary transmission of priestly dignities in a certain clan or band is rather the rule than the exception Among the tribes, both east and west.
[109.] The war medicine (p. [393]): The first two paragraphs are from Wafford, the rest from Swimmer. The stories are characteristic of Indian belief and might be paralleled in any tribe. The great Kiowa chief, Set-ängya, already mentioned, was—and still is—believed by his tribe to have possessed a magic knife, which he carried in his stomach and could produce from his mouth at will. The Kiowa assert that it was this knife, which of course the soldiers failed to find when disarming him, with which he attacked the guard in the encounter that resulted in his death.
[110.] Incidents of personal heroism (p. [394]): The incident of the fight at Waya gap is on the authority of the late Maj. James Bryson, of Dillsboro, North Carolina, born in 1818, who had it from his great-uncle, Daniel Bryson, a member of Williamson’s expedition.
Speaking of the Cherokee “War Women,” who were admitted to the tribal councils, Timberlake says (Memoirs, p. 70): “The reader will not be a little surprised to find the story of Amazons not so great a fable as we imagined, many of the Indian women being as famous in war as powerful in the Council.”
[111.] The mounds and the constant fire: The old sacred things (p. [395]): What is here said concerning the mounds, based chiefly upon Swimmer’s recital, is given solely as a matter of popular belief, shaped by tribal custom and ritual. The question of fact is for the archeologist to decide. The Indian statement is of value, however, in showing the supposed requirements for the solemn consecration of an important work.
A note by John Howard Payne upon the sacred square of the Creeks, as observed by him in 1835, just before his visit to the Cherokee, may throw further light on the problem: “In the center of this outer square was a very high circular mound. This, it seems, was formed from the earth accumulated yearly by removing the surface of the sacred square thither. At every Green-corn festival the sacred square is strewn with soil yet untrodden; the soil of the year preceding being taken away, but preserved as above explained. No stranger’s foot is allowed to press the new earth of the sacred square until its consecration is complete” (Letter of 1835 in Continental Monthly, New York, 1862, p. 19). See note on the sacred fire.
Conjured with disease—The practice of conjuring certain favorite spots in order to render them fatal to an invading enemy was common to many if not to all tribes. One of the most terrible battles of the Creek war was fought upon the “Holy ground,” so called because it was believed by the Indians that in consequence of the mystic rites which had been performed there for that purpose by their prophets, no white troops could set foot upon it and live.