Myths of the Cherokee by James Mooney

of which the version here given, from Swimmer and John Ax, is admittedly imperfect, is known also among the western Cherokee, having been mentioned by Wafford and others in the Nation, although for some reason none of them seemed able to fill in the details. A somewhat similar story was given as belonging to her own tribe by a Catawba woman married among the East Cherokee. It suggests number 21, "The Rabbit and the tar wolf," and has numerous parallels. In the Creek version, in the Tuggle manuscript, the Terrapin ridicules a woman, who retaliates by crushing his shell with a corn pestle. He repairs the injury by singing a medicine song, but the scars remain in the checkered spots on his back. In a variant in the same collection the ants mend his shell with tar, in return for his fat and blood. Other parallels are among the Omaha, "How the Big Turtle went on the Warpath" (Dorsey, Contributions to North American Ethnology; VI, p. 275), and the Cheyenne, "The Turtle, the Grasshopper, and the Skunk" (Kroeber, Cheyenne Tales, in Journal of American Folk-Lore, July, 1900). The myth is recorded also from west Africa by Chatelain ("The Man and the Turtle," in Folktales of Angola, 1894). Kanahe'na.--This is a sour corn gruel, the tamfuli or "Tom Fuller" of the Creeks, which is a favorite food preparation among all the southern tribes. A large earthern jar of kanahe'na, with a wooden spoon upright in it, is always upon a bench just inside the cabin door, for every visitor to help himself.