The Cherokee were a tribe of American Indians who inhabited the Southeast area of the United States when the first Europeans arrived. The white men were mainly intent on killing or capturing the natives to serve as slaves. They made no effort to investigate or appreciate their lifestyle and culture.
The legends the Indians had composed to explain the origin of the earth and the natural environment were colorful and imaginative, and their lifestyle well suited to area in which they lived.
They even had a developed sense of spirituality. They realized that there was a Supreme Being, but they lacked any idea of who or what this Being might be.
The Cherokee Creation Legend
In the beginning, the earth was covered with water. Plants and animals existed, but they lived up on the ceiling of the sky, which was made of hard rock crystal. The creatures were very crowded and wished to come down and live on the earth.
A little water-beetle offered to go down to see if it could find a dry place to rest. It dove to the bottom of the waters and came up with some soft mud. The mud began to grow magically on all sides until it became the large island we call the earth. The earth was fastened to the sky by four rawhide cords, at the four cardinal points, but no one remembers who did this.
At first the earth was flat, soft and wet. The animals were anxious to go down, and they kept sending different birds ahead to see if a dry place could be found. At last the Great Buzzard flew down. He looked all over, trying to find a place dry and hard enough to live on.
When he arrived at Cherokee country, his great wings were tired. They began to flap more slowly and hit the ground. Wherever they struck, the land became a valley. When they rose up again, a mountain was formed. When the animals saw this, they called him back, fearing the whole world would become mountains. To this day, Cherokee land is covered with mountains.
When the land was dry and hard enough, the animals moved down, but they had no light. Someone said, " Let us get the sun from beyond the rainbow and bring him down with us". So they did, but at first the sun was too close to the earth and it was very hot.
The crayfish had his back sticking up out of the stream, and the sun burned it red. Besides that, his meat was spoiled forever. To this day, no Cherokee will eat a crayfish.
The animals asked the shamans to raise the sun higher so the earth would be cooler, and it was done. The sun was placed on a track seven handbreadths above the earth, just under the sky arch. Every day, the sun goes along the track under the arch from east to west. At night it travels above the arch back to its starting point.
The Cherokee believed there was another world under the earth. It was like earth in every respect, only the seasons were opposite. The streams flowing down from the mountains were trails to the underworld, and the springs at the streams' heads were the doorways. No one could reach the underworld unless he was guided by one of the underworld people.
The Cherokee could tell the seasons in the underworld were different because spring water is warmer than air in winter, and cooler than air in summer.
After creating plants and animals, Someone Powerful made a man and his sister. The man poked his sister with a fish and told her to give birth. In seven days she had a baby. After that, she had another baby every seven days. Someone Powerful saw that the earth would soon be overcrowded , so it was arranged that the woman could only have one baby a year. And that's the way it is.
The early Cherokee people feared one event which could cause their homeland and all the earth with it to disappear. If the ropes holding the earth to the sky were to break, the world and all living things on it would fall into the underlying water and die. It would be as if their people had never existed.
During the disastrous events which followed the arrival of the first Europeans, the Cherokee must have wondered if the white men would be the agents to bring about that final cataclysm.