Free Long-Ago Stories of the Eastern Cherokee by Lloyd Arneach Page B

let her see him. She came back every morning and every afternoon, begging and pleading with them to let her take her husband home. Finally, after several days, they let her take him with her. A short time later, the Man died.
    If he had remained closed up and had fasted for the entire seven days, he would have been rid of the Bear spirit and would have been able to live as a Man again.

T HE H UMMINGBIRD AND THE C RANE R ACE
    There once was a beautiful woman with whom both the Crane and the Hummingbird were in love. The Hummingbird was good-looking, and the woman liked the Hummingbird. The Crane was big and awkward, and he was always coming around to see her. She wasn’t interested in the Crane, but she couldn’t persuade him to stay away. Finally she said to the Crane, “You race the Hummingbird and I will marry whoever wins.”
    The Crane agreed and so did the Hummingbird.
    The woman thought the Hummingbird would win because he was so fast. She did not know that the Crane could fly all night long. They had agreed to start at her house and then fly around the world; whichever one returned to the house first would get to marry her.

    The race began. The Hummingbird darted off, and he was gone like a flash of light. The Crane was slowly flapping along behind him. The Hummingbird flew all day and when evening came the Hummingbird was far ahead. He flew down to a tree limb to sleep for the night. But the Crane flew all night long and passed the Hummingbird a little after midnight. The next morning he came to a stream and stopped to have breakfast.
    The Hummingbird woke up that morning and started flying, thinking how easily he was going to win the race. He passed the Crane while he was having breakfast. He didn’t understand how the Crane had managed to get ahead of him. But he flew hard, and soon the Crane was far behind him again. The Crane finished eating and started flying. He flew all day and into the night, and this time he passed the Hummingbird before midnight. Each night the Crane passed the Hummingbird earlier and earlier, and it took the Hummingbird longer and longer to catch up to Crane.
    On the sixth day it was the middle of the afternoon before the Hummingbird finally caught up to Crane. On the seventh day, the Crane was a short distance from the woman’s house when he stopped by a stream for breakfast. After eating, he fixed himself up and flew on to the woman’s house. He arrived midmorning. The Hummingbird finally arrived late in the afternoon. Crane had won the race!
    The woman declared that she would never have such an ugly fellow as the Crane for her husband—so she stayed single.

C REATION S TORY
    In the beginning, all of the Animals lived in the sky above the great sky vault. There were so many of them that it was getting crowded. They looked below at the water-covered earth.
    They sent down the little Water Beetle. She swam around on the surface for a while and then took a deep breath. She dove deep, down to the bottom, gathered mud in her front legs and started swimming up toward the surface. Soon she was close to the surface, but she was running out of breath. Just below the surface she released the mud and desperately swam upward with all of her legs. When she reached the surface and lay on her back, gasping for air, she realized that she had dropped the mud. She looked around and she saw that the mud was floating on the water’s surface and was growing larger. She went back into the sky.

    As the Animals watched from above, they saw the mud grow larger and larger. Finally, it stopped growing, and now the Animals waited for it to dry. They sent down different Birds. Each would fly over the mud trying to find a dry area on which to land. The mud was still wet, and they all came back to wait.
    Finally, the great-grandfather of all the Buzzards we know today was sent down. He flew over the land for so long that he was getting tired. He was flying lower and lower until,