"SNAKE BOY"

There was a Cherokee boy who used to go bird hunting every day. He brought home his catch to give to his grandmother. She was very fond of him and appreciated his skill. This made the others in the family angry. They did not like the grandmother giving all her affection to this one boy, and they teased and tormented him for being the favorite. One day, he decided that he would find a way to leave them.

He told his grandmother not to be said. The next morning, he did not eat anything and went off hungry and alone to the woods, where he stayed all day. In the evening, he returned, bringing with him a pair of deer horns. He went to the summer house and told his grandmother that he must be alone all that night. She went into a different house where the others were sleeping.

Early the next day, she went to the summer house to be with her favorite grandson. All she saw was a tremendous uktena (snake) with horns on its head, two human legs, and an immense body. He spoke to her and told her to leave him alone. She moved to the door but stayed close.

When the sun moved high in the sky, the immense snake moved out of the summer house. It grew and grew, making a horrible hissing sound and frightening all the people. It crawled through the village, then disappeared into the river.

The grandmother cried out in pain. She loved her grandson and he was gone. Her family told her that if she thought so much of this boy, she should go stay with him. So she walked to the river and disappeared.

A man fishing nearby saw the grandmother sitting on a large rock in the river. She looked as she had always looked, but as soon as she saw him, she jumped into the water and was gone.

This fisherman decided to wait and see if the grandmother would rise out of the water again. When nighttime came, he fell asleep beside the river and had a dream of two hunters. They could not find any animal that was worth killing for meat, so one hunter decided that he would kill a squirrel. The other warned him of the taboo: if one ate squirrel meat, he would turn into a snake. But the first hunter just laughed.

He killed the squirrels, skinned them, roasted them, and ate until he was full. In the middle of the night, the other hunter heard a horrible groaning. He sat up and watched as his squirrel-eating friend cried out in pain. His companion now had the body and tail of a large water snake, and he was calling for help. But the other could not help him. He could only watch as the squirrel-eating hunter's body grew round and his head became a serpent's head. Soon the great snake crawled away to sink into the bed of the river.

The fisherman remembered this dream, and went back to the village and told the people. They believed him.

"Stories"

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page