Reading Notes: Cherokee Myths, Part A
This week I chose to read the Cherokee Myths unit. The stories I read are from Myths of the Cherokee by James Mooney. I thought that this was a pretty good unit to read so far. The stories from Reading A were not my favorite, but they definitely were not at the bottom of my list. The stories that fell in the middle were the interesting ones.
The First Fire was a cute little tale of how certain animals got their signature looks or mannerisms, as well as how we got fire. I enjoyed that the spider was the one who was able bring the fire back rather than the other animals. I am not sure why I enjoy that, but I did.
I enjoyed the story the Origin of the Pleiades and the Pine. The story was about seven boys who liked to play a game where they rolled stone wheel along the ground and slid a curved stick after it to strike it. Their mothers did not like that they played this game, so they treated their boys bad. The seven boys were angry, so they began to dance around the townhouse and pray. All of them began to levitate and one of the mothers was able to drag her boy down, but he ended up sinking into the earth. The other six boys went up to the sky and are now seen as Pleiades. The mother of the boy who sank into earth always cried over that spot until a tall tree sprouted that is known as the pine. I could not tell you why I enjoyed this story, but I just did.
Another story that I enjoyed was Why the Possum’s Tail is Bare. This was a humorous tale that involved a deceiving rabbit and cricket. The possum used to have a glorious bushy tail and the rabbit was jealous because he had lost his tail. The rabbit told the cricket to cut off all of the fur on possum’s tail before the dance. I did feel bad for poor possum because he loved his tail and was very proud of it, but the possum was also very cocky and rubbed his glorious tail in all the animals’ faces. In a way, the possum deserved what happened to him.
Comments
Post a Comment