Occoneechee, the Maid of the Mystic Lake

by Robert Frank Jarrett

MYTH ONE.

How the World Was Made.

The earth is a great island floating in a sea of water, and suspended at each of the four cardinal points by a cord hanging down from the sky vault, which is of solid rock. When the world grows old and worn out, the people will die and the cords will break, and let the earth sink down into the ocean, and all will be water again. The Indians are afraid of this.

When all was water, the animals were above the Galunlati, beyond the arch; but it was very much crowded, and they were wanting more room. They wondered what was below the water, and at last Dayunisi, “Beaver’s Grandchild,” the little Water-beetle, offered to go and see if it could learn. It darted in every direction over the surface of the water, but could find no firm place to rest.

Then it dived to the bottom and came up with some soft mud, which began to grow and spread in every direction until it became an island which we call the earth. It was afterwards fastened to the sky, but no one remembers who did it.

At first the earth was flat, and very soft and wet. The animals were anxious to get down, and sent out different birds to see if it was yet dry, but they found no place to alight and came back again to Galunlati. At last it seemed to be time, and they sent out the Buzzard and told him to go and make ready for them.

This was the Great Buzzard, the father of all the buzzards we see now. He flew all over the earth, low down, near the ground, and it was still soft. When he reached the Cherokee country, he was very tired, and his wings began to flap and strike the ground, and wherever they struck the earth there was a valley, and where they turned up again, there was a mountain. When the animals above saw this, they were afraid the whole earth would be mountains, so they called him back, but the Cherokee country remains full of mountains to this day.

When the earth was dry and the animals came down, it was still dark, so they got the sun and set it in a track to go every day across the island from east to west, just overhead. It was too hot this way, and Tsiskagili, the Red Crawfish, had his shell scorched red, so that his meat was spoiled; and the Cherokee do not eat it. The conjurers put the sun another hand-breadth higher in the air, but it was still too hot.

They raised it another time, and another, until it was seven hand-breadths high, and just under the sky arch. Then it was right, and they left it so. This is why the conjurers call the highest place “Gulkwagine Digalunlatiyun,” “the seven height,” because it is seven hand-breadths above the earth. Every day the sun goes along under this arch, and returns at night on the upper side to the starting place.

There is another world under this, and it is like ours in everything—animals, plants, and people—save that the seasons are different. The streams that come down from the mountains are the trails by which the people reach the underworld, and the springs at their heads are the doorways by which they enter it, but to do this one must fast and go to water and have one of the underground people for a guide. We know that the seasons in the underground are different from ours, because the water in the springs is warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer than the outer air.