Episode Details

Myths of the Cherokee — Part 4 of 22 (Origin of the Pleiades and the Pine · Origin of Strawberries · The Four-footed Tribes)

The animal stories begin. The seven boys and the gatayu'sti stones become the Pleiades — Ani'tsutsa, the Boys — and the pine is born of a mother's grief. The Milky Way is the trail of meal from a stolen corn mill. The first husband and wife are reconciled by the first strawberries. The people of Kanu'galayi track the child-snatching U'laku' to its cave and smoke out the first yellow-jackets; a dog warns his master of the coming flood. The part closes with Mooney's survey chapter on the animal tribes — the rabbit the trickster, the Little Deer who guards his people, the bears who are transformed Cherokee, the revered wolf, and the names the Cherokee gave the animals the whites brought with them. 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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