In the beginning of the world, ga lv la di e hi created First Man and First Woman. Together they built a lodge at the edge of a dense forest. They were very happy together; but like all humans do at times, they began to argue.

Finally First Woman became so angry she said she was leaving and never coming back. At that moment First Man really didn't care. First Woman started walking eastward down the path through the forest. She never looked back.

As the day grew later, First Man began to worry. At last he started down the same path in search of his wife. The Sun looked down on First Man and took pity on him. The Sun asked First Man if he was still angry with First Woman. First Man said he was not angry any more. The Sun asked if he would like to have First Woman back. Fist Man readily agreed he did.

The Sun found First Woman still walking down the path toward the East. So to entice her to stop, the Sun caused to grow beneath her feet lovely blueberries. The blueberries were large and ripe. First Woman paid no attention but kept walking down the path toward the East.

Further down the path the Sun caused to grow some luscious blackberries. The berries were very black and plump. First Woman looked neither left nor right but kept walking down the path toward the East.

At last the Sun caused to grow a plant that had never grown on the earth before. The plant covered the ground in front of First Woman. Suddenly she became aware of a fragrance she had never known. Stopping she looked down at her feet. Growing in the path was a plant with shiny green leaves, lovely white flowers with the largest most luscious red berries she had ever seen. First Woman stopped to pick one. Hmmm…she had never tasted anything quite like it! It was so sweet.

As First Woman ate the berry, the anger she felt began to fade away. She thought again of her husband and how they had parted in anger. She missed him and wanted to return home.

First Woman began to gather some of the berries. When she had all she could carry, she turned toward the West and started back down the path. Soon she met First Man. Together they shared the berries, and then hand in hand, they walked back to their lodge.

The Cherokee word for strawberry is ani. The rich bottomlands of the old Cherokee country were noted for their abundance of strawberries and other wild fruits. Even today, strawberries are often kept in Cherokee homes. They remind us not to argue and are a symbol of good luck.

Legends abound in the Cherokee culture and the existence of the universe has its place in the inventory of stories handed down from generation to generation. Forefathers of the present day Cherokee believed the universe was made up of three separate worlds: the Upper World, the Lower World, and This World.

This World, a round island resting on the surface of the waters, was suspended from the sky by four cords attached to the island at four cardinal points of the compass. Each direction of This World was identified by its own color and hovered somewhere between the perfect order and predictability of the Upper World and the total disorder and instability of the Lower World.

East was associated with the color red because it was the direction of the sun, the greatest deity of all. Red was also the color of sacred fire, believed to be directly connected with the sun, with blood and therefore with life. Red was also the color of success.

North was the direction of cold so its color was blue. It represented trouble and defeat.

South was the direction of warmth and its color white, was associated with peace and happiness.

West was the moon segment. It provided no warmth and unlike the sun was not a giver of life. Black was the color assigned to the West and it stood for the region of the souls of the dead and for death itself.

Mankind's goal, the Cherokee believed, was to find some halfway path or balance between the Upper World and the Lower World while living in This World.

2/07

I don't quite know how many of you are Cherokee, or if you are if you have been following the great controversy over the issue of the Freedmen on the rolls of the Cherokee Nation. It saddens me to see this kind of controversy going on within the Nation as this argument would never have been an issue among our ancestors. To them, if you lived as a Cherokee you were accepted as a Cherokee. While some of the wealthy mixed blood Cherokees had plantations and held slaves , they were never treated like slaves of the neighboring whites. Most of the time they were adopted into the tribe and married Cherokees. So why are some within the tribe today trying to eliminate/bar the decedents of these Freedmen from the enrolling as full citizens of the great Cherokee Nation???? My heart is heavy, and I pray to the Creator that, The People will right this great wrong. dohi (peace)

There was a couple named Kana'ti ("lucky hunter") and his wife, Selu ("maize"). Kana'ti was an excellent hunter and never failed to catch some game. Their son played in the river in which Selu washed the blood off of her husband's catch every day. The boy soon began playing with a creature that sprang from the river and called himself his elder brother, whose mother had thrown him into the river. Kana'ti and Selu knew he had come from the blood. Kana'ti once told his son to start wrestling and pin the spirit boy down so Kana'ti could see him. Kana'ti and Selu took the spirit boy home with them. He was a disobedient and wild child, who quickly developed skills in magic. He was called I'nage-utasvhi ("he who grew up in the wild"). I'nage-utasvhi and the real boy followed Kana'ti on a hunting trip one day, because I'nage-utasvhi wanted to find out where he caught all his game. I'nage-utasvhi turned himself into a bit of down, and floated onto Kana'ti's shoulder without his knowledge. He watched Kana'ti make arrows from the reeds of a swamp, then I'nage-utasvhi left and told Kana'ti's son what he had seen. Neither were certain of the purpose of an arrow.

The boys followed him farther and saw him shoot a deer, and then understood the meaning of the arrows. The boys then made seven arrows of their own, in imitation of Kama'ti and went to the same cave. When they tried to scare out a deer to shoot, the whole cave emptied of deer and they were so surprised that they did nothing. I'nage-utasvhi did shoot a deer in the tail, pushing its tail upwards. The boys decided shooting the deers' tails was fun, and did it to all the deer (this is why deer tails go up, instead of down like most animals). After the deer came raccoons, rabbits and all the other four-footed creatures, then the birds. The birds flapping wings made so much noise that Kana'ti heard what was happening and rushed to the scene. When he saw what was happening, he was furious. So he went up the mountain, and when he came to the place where he kept the game he found the two boys standing by the rock, and all the birds and animals were gone, and without saying a word he went down into the cave and kicked the covers off four jars in one corner. They contained bedbugs, lice, gnats and fleas, which then swarmed all over the boys. When Kana'ti felt they had been sufficiently punished he knocked the insects off the boys who had nearly been bitten to death.

Ever since then, mankind had to hunt to find the animals, who are no longer located in a cave. Now, Selu, the boys' mother, was an excellent cook and kept her foodstuffs in a storeroom. The boys wondered what she did in the storeroom, and they spied on her from a small hole. She leaned over a basket in the middle of the room and rubbed her stomach counterclockwise; the basket filled halfway with corn. She did the same under her armpits and the basket was filled the rest of the way with corn. The boys decided Selu was a witch and that the food was poisonous. She had to be killed, they decided.

Selu read their minds and knew they would kill her. She asked the boys to drag her body around a circle drawn on a cleared spot in front of the house, and watch the circle all night so that they would have maize the next day. They killed her with a club and put her head on the roof of the house facing west. They didn't follow her directions exactly, clearing only seven small spots instead of the one large circle as she said; this is why corn does not grow everywhere, but only in the places where Selu's blood fell as they dragged. They dragged her body only twice, and thus people have to work the crop two times. The next morning (after they watched all night) the corn was full grown.

When Kana'ti came back, he saw Selu's head and was furious. He went to stay with the wolf-people. I'nage-utasvhi once again changed himself into down and accompanied Kana'ti. The wolf people were having a conference, and Kana'ti asked them to challenge his boys to a ballgame, and then kill them. They agreed. I'nage-utasvhi and his brother (under I'nage-utasvhi's direction) made a wide circle all around the house, making a trail all around except in the direction from which the wolf-people would be coming. They made themselves arrows and waited. As soon as the wolf-people passed through the break in the trail, it magically transformed in a high fence, locking them in. I'nage-utasvhi and Kana'ti's son then killed them all with their arrows, as the wolf-people were trapped. A few escaped to a large swamp. The boys ran around the swamp, and fire sprang up in their tracks and only a handful of wolf-people survived, becoming the modern wolves.

The boys were soon approached by a traveler who asked for the secret of the neverending maize (agriculture). They gave him seven grains and told them to plant them every night and watch them until morning. The maize multiplied during the night, they told him. On the last night, they fell asleep and did not keep watch. This is why it is now necessary to grow maize for six months instead of one night.

The boys searched for Kana'ti. They sent a gaming wheel in each direction and, when it didn't come back, that was where they went, towards the Land of the Sun. They headed east and found Kana'ti walked with a dog, which was actually the gaming wheel.

The trio reached a swamp and Kana'ti told the boys it was dangerous and they should wait outside. Of course, they followed him again, stumbling across a panther, which I'nage-utasvhi shot in the head several times, but the panther was unfazed. When Kana'ti returned he asked if the boys had found the panther (knowing they had followed him). They told him they had but that it hadn't hurt them because they were men.

Next, Kana'ti told the boys that they would soon be with a tribe called the Anada'dvtaski ("roasters"), a cannibalistic people.

I'nage-utasvhi took some splinters from a tree that had been struck by lightning. When they arrived at the cannibals' village, they saw a large pot that had been set to boiling for the purpose of eating the boys. I'nage-utasvhi put the splinters into the fire which brought down lightning bolts on the cannibal village, killing the cannibals.

Meeting back up with Kana'ti (who was once again surprised by their survival), the boys soon separated from him again and then made their way to the end of the world, where the sun rises. Kana'ti and Selu were sitting there. Then, the boys stayed with their parents for seven days, and then returned to their homeland and were known as Anisga'ya Tsunsdi ("the little men") and their conversations were thunder.

The people were hungry sometime later, and retrieved the boys. They sang songs and the wind slowly grew. On the seventh song, deer came out from the woods. The villagers then learned the seven songs, but eventually forgot five, which the Cherokee hunters always sang when hunting deer.

Corn Mother, First Woman, Selu.