Myths of the Cherokee

The buzzard used to have a fine topknot, of which he was so proud that he refused to eat carrion, and while the other birds were pecking at the body of a deer or other animal which they had found he would strut around and say: "You may have it all, it is not good enough for me." They resolved to punish him, and with the help of the buffalo carried out a plot by which the buzzard lost not his topknot alone, but nearly all the other feathers on his head. He lost his pride at the same time, so that he is willing enough now to eat carrion for a living.

This story was told by Swimmer and other informants, and is well known. It has an exact parallel in the Omaha story of “Ictinike and the Buzzard” (Dorsey, in Contributions to North American Ethnology, vi).