Myths of the Cherokee

Once some young men of the Cherokee set out to see what was in the world and traveled south until they came to a tribe of little people called Tsundige'wï, with very queer shaped bodies, hardly tall enough to reach up to a man's knee, who had no houses, but lived in nests scooped in the sand and covered over with dried grass. The little fellows were so weak and puny that they could not fight at all, and were in constant terror from the wild geese and other birds that used to come in great flocks from the south to make war upon them.

Just at the time that the travelers got there they found the little men in great fear, because there was a strong wind blowing from the south and it blew white feathers and down along the sand, so that the Tsundige'wï knew their enemies were coming not far behind. The Cherokee asked them why, they did not defend themselves, but they said they could not, because they did not know how. There was no time to make bows and arrows, but the travelers told them to take sticks for clubs, and showed them where to strike the birds on the necks to kill them.

The wind blew for several days, and at last the birds came, so many that they were like a great cloud in the air, and alighted on the sands. The little men ran to their nests, and the birds followed and stuck in their long bills to pull them out and eat them. This time. though, the Tsundige'wï had their clubs, and they struck the birds on the neck, as the Cherokee had shown them, and killed so many that at last the others were glad to spread their wings and fly away again to the south.

The little men thanked the Cherokee for their help and gave them the best they had until the travelers went on to see the other tribes. They heard afterwards that the birds came again several times, but that the Tsundige'wï always drove them off with their clubs, until a flock of sandhill cranes came. They were so tall that the little men could not reach up to strike them on the neck, and so at last the cranes killed them all.

curious story was told by Swimmer and Ta′gwădihĭ′ (east) and Wafford (west). Swimmer says the dwarfs lived in the west, but Ta′gwădihĭ′ and Wafford locate them south from the Cherokee country.

A story which seems to be a variant of the same myth was told to the Spanish adventurer Ayllon by the Indians on the South Carolina coast in 1520, and is thus given in translation from Peter Martyr’s Decades, in the Discovery and Conquest of Florida, ninth volume of the Hakluyt Society’s publications, pages XV-XVI, London, 1851.

“Another of Ayllon’s strange stories refers to a country called Inzignanin, ... The inhabitauntes, by report of their ancestors, say, that a people as tall as the length of a man’s arme, with tayles of a spanne long, sometime arrived there, brought thither by sea, which tayle was not movable or wavering, as in foure-footed beastes, but solide, broad above, and sharpe beneath, as wee see in fishes and crocodiles, and extended into a bony hardness. Wherefore, when they desired to sitt, they used seates with holes through them, or wanting them, digged upp the earth a spanne deepe or little more, they must convay their tayle into the hole when they rest them.”

It is given thus in Barcia, Ensayo, page 5: “Tambien llegaron a la Provincia de Yncignavin adonde les contaron aquellos Indios, que en cierto tiempo, avian aportado à ella, unas Gentes, que tenian Cola ... de una quarta de largo, flexible, que les estorvaba tanto, que para sentarse agujereaban los asientos: que el Pellejo era mui aspero, y como escamoso, y que comìan solo Peces crudos: y aviendo estos muerto, se acabò esta Nacion, y la Verdad del Caso, con ella.”

A close parallel to the Cherokee story is found among the Nisqualli of Washington, in a story of three [four?] brothers, who are captured by a miraculously strong dwarf who ties them and carries them off in his canoe. “Having rounded the distant point, where they had first descried him, they came to a village inhabited by a race of people as small as their captor, their houses, boats and utensils being all in proportion to themselves. The three brothers were then taken out and thrown, bound as they were, into a lodge, while a council was convened to decide upon their fate. During the sitting of the council an immense flock of birds, resembling geese, but much larger, pounced down upon the inhabitants and commenced a violent attack. These birds had the power of throwing their sharp quills like the porcupine, and although the little warriors fought with great valour, they soon became covered with the piercing darts and all sunk insensible on the ground. When all resistance has ceased, the birds took to flight and disappeared. The brothers had witnessed the conflict from their place of confinement, and with much labour had succeeded in releasing themselves from their bonds, when they went to the battle ground, and commenced pulling the quills from the apparently lifeless bodies; but no sooner had they done this, than all instantly returned to consciousness” (Kane, Wanderings of an Artist, pp. 252–253).