Episode Details

Myths of the Cherokee — Part 2 of 22 (Kana'ti and Selu: The Origin of Game and Corn)

One story fills this part entire: Kana'ti and Selu, the origin of game and of corn. Kana'ti keeps the deer shut in a cave in the mountain and lets them out one at a time; Selu draws corn and beans from her own body in the storehouse. Their boys — one a wild son of the river — discover both secrets, and the world is changed for good: the game goes free, to be hunted ever after, and corn springs where Selu's blood is dragged across the cleared ground. The boys grow into the Thunder Boys, the Little Men whose talk is the low rolling thunder in the west. 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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