The Cherokee story about the origin of the Milky Way, in its various iterations, has been told for countless generations. Though anthropologist James Mooney (1861–1921) first recorded the myth at the close of the nineteenth century, Cherokees have continued to tell the story orally, and shape it to fit their particular circumstances, until the present day. The story has served many purposes, not only in passing on important values and lessons to children, but also in helping to revive the Cherokee language in younger generations. Though this “living story,” in the words of Barbara R. Duncan, is relatively short, it illuminates not only the malleability of oral traditions, but also their role in explaining the mysterious.
As Swimmer, one of Mooney’s informants, told it, the Milky Way did not always exist. In fact, the night sky did not always have as many stars as it does now. Before the Milky Way streaked the night sky, corn was an important part of the Cherokee diet. Because corn helped to feed Cherokees throughout long Appalachian winters, it was often pounded or milled into meal. On several consecutive mornings, some people in the south noticed that some of their meal was disappearing. Upon examining the area around the mill they found the tracks of a dog.
The next night they hid and watched as a dog came from the north and began to eat the meal. Just as they had planned, they jumped out from their hiding place and whipped the dog, which ran north toward its home. As the dog retreated into the night, meal dropped from its mouth, leaving behind a white trail of stars where we now see the Milky Way. To this day, many Cherokees still refer to the Milky Way as “Gi’li-utsun’stanun’yi,” or “Where the dog ran.”
In another version of the story recorded by Stansbury Hagar (1869–1942), two hunters play the starring roles and the dog is nearly an afterthought. One of the hunters lives in the north and hunts big game while the other lives in the south and hunts small game. The northern hunter ventures southward in search of big game and happens upon the other hunter’s wife grinding corn. He then seizes the woman and carries her far away across the sky to his home in the north. Her dog, which had been eating the meal the woman was grinding, follows the pair across the sky. The meal falls from his mouth as he goes, creating the Milky Way.
While more modern versions of the story also retain the central elements of Swimmer’s telling, they also adapt the story to fit their intentions. One modern Cherokee, Marie Junaluska, translated the story back to Cherokee from English so that it could be used to help Cherokee children learn their ancestral language. Another contemporary Cherokee, Gayle Ross, teamed up with famed Amerindian storyteller Joseph Bruchac and Virginia A. Stroud, a Cherokee illustrator, to produce a children’s book that tells the story with different emphases.
As Ross and Bruchac tell it, the meal was stolen from an old man and an old woman. Outrage ripples across the village, not necessarily because food disappeared but because it belonged to “elders.” The grandson of the elders—a new character—takes the theft especially hard. He decides he will catch the thief. That night, the boy spies a dog made of an “eerie light” take the meal. Confused by what he has seen, the boy seeks the wisdom of the Beloved Woman who was “old and wise and understood many things.” After examining the tracks, the Beloved Woman informs the village that a “spirit dog” is responsible for the theft. So, following the Beloved Woman’s instructions, the village gathers together all of the drums and rattles they can and await the spirit dog’s arrival. As expected, the spirit dog arrives for more meal. On the Beloved Woman’s order, the villagers leap out from their hiding spots and chase the dog off with their noisemakers. They pursue the spirit dog, cornmeal falling from its mouth, to the top of a hill where the dog leaps into the sky. Each grain of cornmeal that drips from the dog’s mouth becomes a star and forms the Milky Way.
Though there are certainly important differences between each version of the story, there are also important continuities: in each telling, a dog inadvertently creates the Milky Way. The Milky Way, of course, was not the only celestial object that Cherokees explained through storytelling. Mooney’s collection also contains a story about the nature of stars—they are furry creatures—and the creation of the Pleiades. For Cherokees, the night sky not only prompted questions, it also provided answers.
Trail of Tears
The “Trail of Tears” refers to the forced relocation in 1838–1839 of thousands of Cherokee from their ancestral lands to a new home west of the Mississippi in what is now the state of Oklahoma. Ill-equipped and subjected to horribly harsh conditions, almost a third of some 15,000 exiles died along the way, and thus the route of this exodus became known as the “Trail of Tears.” The Cherokee were known as one of the “Five Civilized Tribes” (along with the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminoles), which had embraced the European style of dress, housing, and farming. The Cherokee even had an alphabet in which they published newspapers, but they were still subjected to Andrew Jackson’s Indian removal policies. Although most Cherokee followed the Trail of Tears, a few hundred fled and hid in the mountains, and their descendants today form the Eastern Band of the Cherokee.
C. Fee
Nathaniel F. Holly
See also Animal Tales; Bear Man of the Cherokee; Corn Mother
Further Reading
Bruchac, Joseph, and Gayle Ross. 1995. The Story of the Milky Way: A Cherokee Tale. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers.
Duncan, Barbara R., ed. 1998. Living Stories of the Cherokee. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Duncan, Barbara R., ed. 2008. The Origin of the Milky Way and Other Living Stories of the Cherokee. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Hagar, Stansbury. 1906. “Cherokee Star Lore.” In Anthropological Papers Written in Honor of Franz Boas, edited by Berthold Laufer and H. A. Andrews, 354–366. New York: G. E. Stechert.
Mooney, James. 1900. “Myths of the Cherokee.” In Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1897–98, 1–576. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.