Myths of the Cherokee · 83 of 220

Myth 55

THE UWʼTSÛÑ′TA At Nûñ′dăye′ʻlĭ, the wildest spot on Nantahala river, in what is now Macon county, North Carolina, where the overhanging cliff is highest and the river far below, there lived in the old time a great snake called the Uwʼtsûñ′ta or “bouncer,” because it moved by jerks like a measuring worm, with only one part of its body on the ground at a time. It stayed generally on the east side, where the sun came first in the morning, and used to cross by reaching over from the highest point of the cliff until it could get a grip on the other side, when it would pull over the rest of its body. It was so immense that when it was thus stretched across its shadow darkened the whole valley below. For a long time the people did not know it was there, but when at last they found out about it they were afraid to live in the valley, so that it was deserted even while still Indian country.

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Themes

Animismcosmology

The doctrine and worldview that natural phenomena, places, and objects possess inherent spirit, soul, or personality — and that the cosmos is populated by countless local, plural, embodied divine agents: kami in mountain and tree, sidhe in cairn and well, landwights in field and stone, nymphs in spring and grove, haltija in forest and lake, lares and penates in household and threshold, Iamblichean daemons in element and place. Distinct from monotheism (single transcendent God), pantheism (one underlying substance), and emanation_hierarchy (cascading single source); animism's signature is the plurality, locality, and embodied-in-landscape character of the divine.

The passage describes a specific natural location (Nantahala river cliff) inhabited by a sentient, spiritual entity (the Uwʼtsûñ′ta), exemplifying the worldview that places and natural phenomena possess inherent spirit or personality.

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