The next morning, after the great hawk had gone, he dragged one of the young birds to the mouth of the cave and tied himself to one of its legs with a strap from his hunting pack. Then with the flat side of the tomahawk he struck it several times on the head until it was dazed and helpless, then pushed the bird and himself together off the shelf of rock into the air. They fell far, far down toward the earth, but the air from below held up the bird’s wings, so that it was almost as if they were flying. As the Tlanuwa revived it tried to fly upward toward the nest, but the hunter struck it again with his hatchet until it was dazed and dropped again.
At last they came down in the top of a poplar tree, when the hunter cut the strap from the leg of the bird and let it fly away, first pulling out a feather from its wing. He climbed down from the tree and went home to the settlement, but when he looked in his pack for the feather, he found that he only had a stone, for the Great Mythic Hawk had power to turn many objects into whatever it pleased.
MYTH TWENTY-EIGHT.
Utlunta, the Spear Finger.
Long, long ago, there lived in the mountains a terrible ogress, a woman monster, whose food was human livers. She could take on any shape that she pleased, or that suited her purpose, but in her right form she looked very much like an old woman, excepting that her whole body was covered with a skin as hard as a rock, that no weapon could wound or penetrate, and that on her right hand she had a long, stony finger of bone, like an awl or spear-head, with which she stabbed everyone to whom she could get near enough. On account of this fact she was called Utlunta, “Spear Finger,” and on account of her stony skin she was sometimes called Nunyunuwi, “Stone-dress.”
There was another stone-clothed monster that killed people, but that is a different story.
Spear-finger had such power over stone that she could easily lift and carry immense rocks, and could cement them together by merely striking one against another. To get over the rough country more easily she undertook to build a great bridge through the air from Nunyutlugunyi, the “Tree Rock,” on Hiwassee, over to Sanigilagi (Whiteside Mountain, in Jackson County, North Carolina,) on the Blue Ridge, and had it well started from the top of “Tree rock” when the lightning struck it and scattered the fragments along the whole ridge, where the pieces can still be seen by those who go there.
She used to range all over the mountains about the heads of the streams and in the dark passes of Nantahala, always hungry and looking for victims. Her favorite haunt on the Tennessee side of the Great Smoky Mountains was about the gap on the trail where Chilhowee Mountains come down to the river.
Sometimes the old woman would approach along the trail where the children were picking strawberries or playing near the village, and would say to them coaxingly, “Come, my grand children, come to your granny and let granny dress your hair.” When some little girl ran up and laid her head in the old woman’s lap to be petted and combed, the old witch would gently run her fingers thru the child’s hair until it went to sleep, when she would stab the little one thru the heart or back of the neck with the long awl finger, which she had kept hidden under her robe. Then she would take out the liver and eat it. She would enter the house by taking the appearance of one of the family who happened to have gone out for a short time, and would watch her chance to stab some one with her long finger and take out his liver. She could stab him without being noticed, and often the victim did not even know it himself at the time—for it left no wound and caused no pain—but went on about his own affairs, until all at once he felt weak and began to pine away, and was always sure to die, because Spear-finger had taken his liver.