Myths of the Cherokee by James Mooney

embodies the old tribal belief. By a different informant Hagar was told: "Stars are birds. We know this because one once shot from the sky to the ground, and some Cherokee who looked for it found a little bird, about the size of a chicken just hatched, where it fell" (MS Stellar Legends of the Cherokee, 1898). The story closely resembles something heard by Lawson among the Tuscarora in eastern North Carolina about the year 1700. An Indian having been killed by lightning, the people were assembled for the funeral, and the priest made them a long discourse upon the power of lightning over all men, animals, and plants, save only mice and the black-gum tree. "At last he began to tell the most ridiculous absurd parcel of lies about lightning that could be; as that an Indian of that nation had once got lightning in the likeness of a partridge; that no other lightning could harm him whilst he had that about him; and that after he had kept it for several years it got away from him, so that he then became as liable to be struck with lightning as any other person. There was present at the same time an Indian that had lived from his youth chiefly in an English house, so I called to him and told him what a parcel of lies the conjurer told, not doubting but he thought so as well as I; but I found to the contrary, for he replied that I was much mistaken, for the old man--who, I believe, was upwards of an hundred years old--did never tell lies; and as for what he said, it was very true, for he knew it himself to be so. Thereupon seeing the fellow's ignorance, I talked no more about it (History of Carolina, page 346). According to Hagar a certain constellation of seven stars, which he identifies as the Hyades, is called by the Cherokee "The Arm," on account of its resemblance to a human arm bent at the elbow, and they say that it is the broken arm of a man who went up to the sky because, having been thus crippled, he was of no further use upon earth. A meteor, and probably also a comet, is called Atsil'-Tlûñtû'tsi" "Fire-panther," the same concept being found among the Shawano, embodied in the name of their great chief, Tecumtha (see p. 215).