Cherokee Creation Legend

The Cherokee’s homeland was in the Appalachian Mountains. Their Elders tell this Legend to explain why there are so many Mountain Ridges and Valleys in the land of the Cherokee.

They were forced to divide into four bands. The four bands spoke the Iroquoian Language, but over the ages it changed so much that they can hardly understand each other.

So here it is, as the Elders know it and tell it to the young ones, over the warm fire on a cold winter night.

According to the Elders, the way they know this legend, a long, long time ago, water was covering Mother Earth all over. When after a long time the water finally drained away, the land was too wet and swampy so that no humans and animals could walk on it. The humans and animals kept asking the birds to fly way up high and look and tell them when the land was dry. One of the birds that helped the humans and the animals was Grandfather Turkey Vulture. He was a giant bird, with huge wings.

But by the time he got to the land that the Creator gave to the Cherokee, he became soooo tired that his wing tips were brushing the ground. When his wings swept down, they dug deep valleys and when they swept up, they made tall mountains.

The humans and the animals, who were watching him from their seats on a rainbow called him back, before he made hills and valleys all over the whole of Mother Earth. But it was too late for the Cherokee and their land, and that is why their homeland is so mountainous.

 

 

I work with Muskwa International Foundation Inc. which is an entity that was formed to assist the street children in the Philippines, mostly in Manila and Davao, the two largest cities in the Philippines.  You can find out about their projects here Street Children and Natural Disasters.

The stories I tell here I learned from the Elders and Story tellers and I am passing them on with their blessings. These stories can be anything from 4,000 to 5,000 years old.