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Transcript

The Story of Corn and Medicine - Cherokee Creation Myth

First Animals

At first the plants and animals that came down to Earth were told to stay up for seven days and seven nights. For the animals only the owl and panther stayed up, which is why they can see at night, and for the plants only a few trees did it and were rewarded by being able to stay green all year. Humans soon also appeared but they had too many babies so now they only can give birth once a year.

How It Was Shaped

Since it was made of mud the Earth was very soft and when the birds visited it they would get stuck in it and cut out canyons with their wings when they would try to get out. Once the Earth dried the animals came down and started living on it. Since there was no light they made the sun but it was too close and burned the animals so they moved it farther away until they all could live.

Creation

Background

In the beginning the Earth didn't have any land, it was just water and darkness, and nothing lived on it. Instead, all of the animals lived in Galúnlati, which was above the sky. One day the animals sent down Water-beetle to explore the Earth and he began bringing up mud from the bottom of the ocean. Eventually there was enough mud to make the land on Earth, an island. After it was dug up the land on Earth was suspended from the sky by ropes that would break one day and we'd all fall back into the ocean.

Kanáti and Selu

Some of the first people were Kanáti and Selu, whose names meant "The Lucky Hunter" and "Corn." Kanáti always returned with meat when he hunted and Selu always returned home with baskets of corn. They had a son and an "adopted" son that they had kidnapped when he was playing with their son and realized he was born from all the blood from the animals Kanáti hunted.

A synthesis of stories gathered by James Mooney of the Bureau of American Ethnology of stories of the Cherokee, the native people of northern Georgia and Alabama, western North Carolina, eastern and central Tennessee, and Kentucky,

Their Secrets

One day the boys followed Kanáti hunting and found that he just went to a cave that had animals trapped in it and would shoot one, so later they returned and let all the animals go free. Kanáti punished them by releasing fleas, lice, bedbugs, and gnats on them. When they returned home they followed Selu to the storehouse where she went to get grain for dinner. There they watched her magically create corn and beans. Selu knew the boys had watched her and at dinner she told them that since they had discovered their secrets she and Kanáti would die. Before they died though, she told them how to perform a ceremony with her dead body that would give them a field of corn.

Medicine

In the early days like this humans, animals, and plants were all friends but the humans started to kill all the animals wanted. This angered the animals and led them to form councils on what to do. The bears tried using bows but their claws made it hard, the deer released rheumatism on hunters that would kill deer without praying first and asking the deers permission, the fish and snakes created nightmares, and the birds and small animals released all the diseases we know. The plants liked the people though, so they created medicines, which is why so many remedies are made from plants.

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