Myth and Folklore

"Mom, can we have some cookies?" Zara looked at the eighteen children prancing around her, their eyes filled with a youthful longing for sugar. She had already baked sixty trays of cookies that day, and it hadn't been enough for even half of her children. She had so many children by now that she couldn't remember the exact number, although it totaled somewhere in the 4000s. Her apron was covered in ribbons of butter and dusty trails of flour, and she couldn't fathom rolling out one more ball of dough. "Tomorrow I will have cookies for you my children. Now run along to your other siblings." With disappointed sighs, the pack ran into the woods, where they knew they could find several hundred of their brothers and sisters. Zara's overzealous fertility had been the result of seemingly benign encounter with a fish. As the first woman of earth, Zara had lived peacefully among the valleys and hills that rolled across the land. All was quiet and still ...

The Owl Gets Married  -A widow tells her daughter to marry a good hunter for a husband -A good hunter comes along, and the mother recommends to the daughter that she marry him  -The woman and hunter move in together -The hunter goes out to hunt, but instead goes to fish and returns with only three measly catches  -Returns the next day with two scrawny lizards -And again the next day shows up only with scraps from another hunter's kill -The next day the woman followed out of suspicion -When she came to the river, she saw her husband transform into an owl -The woman felt foolish for having married an owl instead of a man -She hurried ahead and when her husband arrived home she asked where all the fish were that he had caught -He tells her an owl swooped them away -The woman then accuses him of being the owl and sends him away -Alone in the woods, owl wallowed in grief until the only flesh left on his body was on his head  The Crane and th...

How the World Was Made -The earth is floating in a sea of water, suspended by cords hanging down from the sky vault -When the earth grows worn out, everyone will die and the cords will break -The earth will sink into the sea -The animals once lived above the sea, but were crowded -They sent a beetle to explore what was below the ocean to see if they could find a new place to live -When beetle disturbed the mud on the ocean floor it grew into earth -The land was soft and wet, so the animals sent birds to investigate where they could go -When buzzard went down, the swooping of his wings along the muddy ground created mountains and valleys -That is why Cherokee country is so mountainous -When the animals came down it was dark, so they set the sun on a track to go around the earth every day under the sky arch  -At first the sun was too close and scorched the animals -They raised it until it was seven hand breadths above the earth  -The mountain streams l...