Episode Details

Myths of the Cherokee — Part 19 of 22 (Local Legends of South Carolina · Local Legends of Tennessee · Local Legends of Georgia)

The gazetteers of the three border states, compressed — and with them, Mooney's own cautions, which this shelf honors: the South Carolina names are faded, and the white traditions on them 'of more or less doubtful authenticity'; the Chickamauga gulch serpent is a newspaper invention ('not genuine'); Hiwassee's Pretty Fawn and Nacoochee's Evening Star are White's pseudo-myths, pure inventions both. What is genuine: the trading-path distances of the Mile creeks, Conneross and the duck, Buffalo Track rock, Tanasi' itself, Lanman's Nunne'hi tradition of Tallulah, Wafford's woman under Toccoa falls, the two Cherokee theories of Track Rock's carvings — and Mooney's complaint that the vandals who cut them out included the man who wrote them up. Source: James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee (1900), public domain; fresh in-house renderings faithful to Mooney's record, told in Mooney's order.

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