Myths of the Cherokee by James Mooney

Swimmer, John Ax, Suyeta (east), and Wafford (west). Discussions between animals as to the kind of food eaten are very common in Indian myth, the method chosen to decide the dispute being usually quite characteristic. The first incident is paralleled in a Creek story of the Rabbit and the Lion (Panther?) in the Tuggle manuscript collection and among the remote Wallawalla of Washington (see Kane, Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America, p. 268; London, 1859). In an Omaha myth, Ictinike and the Buzzard, the latter undertakes to carry the trickster across a stream, but drops him into a hollow tree, from which he is chopped out by some women whom he has persuaded that there are raccoons inside (Dorsey, Contributions to North American Ethnology, VI). In the Iroquois tale, "A Hunter's Adventures," a hunter, endeavoring to trap some geese in the water, is carried up in the air and falls into a hollow stump, from which he is released by women (Smith, Myths of the Iroquois, in Second Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology). In the Uncle Remus story, "Mr. Rabbit Meets His Match Again," the Buzzard persuades the Rabbit to get upon his back in order to be carried across a river, but alights with him upon a tree overhanging the water and thus compels the Rabbit, by fear of falling, to confess a piece of trickery. [540]