Myths of the Cherokee

The North went traveling, and after going far and meeting many different tribes he finally fell in love with the daughter of the South and wanted to marry her. The girl was willing, but her parents objected and said, "Ever since you came the weather has been cold, and if you stay here we may all freeze to death." The North pleaded hard, and said that if they would let him have their daughter he would take her back to his own country, so at last they consented. They were married and he took his bride to his own country, and when she arrived there she found the people all living in ice houses.

The next day, when the sun rose, the houses began to leak, and as it climbed higher they began to melt, and it grew warmer and warmer, until finally the people came to the young husband and told him he must send his wife home again, or the weather would get so warm that the whole settlement would be melted. He loved his wife and so held out as long as he could, but as the sun grew hotter the people were more urgent, and at last he had to send her home to her parents.

The people said that as she had been born in the South, and nourished all her life upon food that grew in the same climate, her whole nature was warm and unfit for the North.

This unique allegory was heard from both Swimmer and Ta′gwădihĭ′ in nearly the same form. Hagar also (MS Stellar Legends of the Cherokee) heard something of it from Ayâsta, who, however, confused it with the Hagar variant of number 11, “The Milky Way” (see notes to number 11).

In a myth from British Columbia, “The Hot and the Cold Winds,” the cold-wind people of the north wage war with the hot-wind people of the south, until the Indians, whose country lay between, and who constantly suffer from both sides, bring about a peace, to be ratified by a marriage between the two parties. Accordingly, the people of the south send their daughter to marry the son of the north. The two are married and have one child, whom the mother after a time decides to take with her to visit her own people in the north. Her visit ended, she starts on her return, accompanied by her elder brother. “They embarked in a bark canoe for the country of the cold. Her brother paddled. After going a long distance, and while crossing a great lake, the cold became so intense that her brother could not endure it any longer. He took the child from his sister and threw it into the water. Immediately the air turned warm and the child floated on the water as a lump of ice.” – Teit, Traditions of the Thompson River Indians, pp. 55, 56.