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Myths of the Cherokee · 129 of 220

Myth 83b

The other waited for him, doing a little hunting near the camp, and two nights afterwards Tsuwe′năhĭ was back again. He seemed to be alone, but was talking as he came, and the other hunter heard girls’ voices, although he could see no one. When he came up to the fire he said, “I have two friends with me, and they say there is to be a dance in their town in two nights, and if you want to go they will come for you.” The hunter agreed at once, and Tsuwe′năhĭ called out, as if to some one close by, “He says he will go.” Then he said, “Our sisters have come for some venison.” The hunter had killed a deer and had the meat drying over the fire, so he said, “What kind do they want?” The voices answered, “Our mother told us to ask for some of the ribs,” but still he could see nothing. He took down some rib pieces and gave them to Tsuwe′năhĭ, who took them and said, “In two days we shall come again for you.” Then he started off, and the other heard the voices going through the woods until all was still again. In two days Tsuwe′năhĭ came, and this time he had two girls with him. As they stood near the fire the hunter noticed that their feet were short and round, almost like dogs’ paws, but as soon as they saw him looking they sat down so that he could not see their feet. After supper the whole party left the camp and went up along the creek to Tsuwaʻtel′da. They went in through the cave door until they got to the farther end and could see houses beyond, when all at once the hunter’s legs felt as if they were dead and he staggered and fell to the ground. The others lifted him up, but still he could not stand, until the medicine-man brought some “old tobacco” and rubbed it on his legs and made him smell it until he sneezed. Then he was able to stand again and went in with the others. He could not stand at first, because he had not prepared himself by fasting before he started. The dance had not yet begun and Tsuwe′năhĭ took the hunter into the townhouse and showed him a seat near the fire, but it had long thorns of honey locust sticking out from it and he was afraid to sit down. Tsuwe′năhĭ told him not to be afraid, so he sat down and found that the thorns were as soft as down feathers. Now the drummer came in and the dancers, and the dance began. One man followed at the end of the line, crying Kû! Kû! all the time, but not dancing. The hunter wondered, and they told him, “This man was lost in the mountains and had been calling all through the woods for his friends until his, voice failed and he was only able to pant Kû! Kû! and then we found him and took him in.” When it was over Tsuwe′năhĭ and the hunter went back to the settlement. At the next dance in Kănuga they told all they had seen at Tsuwaʻtel′da, what a large town was there and how kind everybody was, and this time—because there were two of them—the people believed it. Now others wanted to go, but Tsuwe′năhĭ told them they must first fast seven days, while he went ahead to prepare everything, and then he would come and bring them.
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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 depicts a world populated by spirits (Tsuwe′năhĭ, invisible girls, the medicine-man's power) who inhabit the landscape and interact directly with humans, embodying the core tenets of animism.

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◆Fasting And Prayerpraxis

Ascetic disciplines that prepare the body and mind for spiritual receptivity or purification.

The narrative explicitly states that the hunter's inability to stand was due to a lack of fasting preparation and that future visitors must fast for seven days before entering the spirit realm.

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◆Ritual Puritypraxis

The maintenance of a state of cleanliness—physical, moral, or spiritual—required for encounter with the divine.

The requirement to fast before entering the spirit town implies a state of ritual purity or preparation is necessary for safe interaction with the divine.

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◆Shamanic Journeypraxis

The living practitioner's deliberate trance-journey into spirit, underworld, or upper realms — Lemminkainen's descent into Tuoni and Wainamoinen's entry into Wipunen's body in the Kalevala, the Siberian shaman's drum-mediated travel, Inuit angakkuq's submarine journey to Sedna, classical katabasis as ritual technique. The practitioner returns with knowledge, songs, lost-words, or a recovered soul. Distinct from psychopomp_journey (which guides the *dead* soul through afterlife realms) and from spiritual_ascent (which is the soul's *upward* return to source); shamanic_journey is the *living* practitioner crossing into ordinarily-inaccessible domains as a worked technique.

The hunter is guided by a spirit into an underground town (Tsuwaʻtel′da), experiences physical paralysis overcome by ritual aid, and returns to report on the hidden realm, mirroring the structure of a shamanic journey.

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◆Shapeshifting Transformationtheology

Form-mutability as a constitutional property of divine and preternatural beings — gods, heroes, spirits, and their human practitioners possessing inherent capacity to alter form across human, animal, plant, or elemental states. Loki and Odin's transformations in Norse, Math's pigs and Blodeuwedd's owl-shape and Pwyll's exchange with Arawn in the Mabinogion, the Greek Proteus, the Indian dasavatara, Vainamoinen's bird-flight in the Kalevala, Ovid's metamorphoses, the shamanic and witch's capacity for ritual form-change. Distinct from anthropomorphism (divine taking specific human form, single embodiment) in that anthropomorphism establishes a stable form whereas this concept establishes form's plurality and instability.

The spirits manifest with animal-like features (dog paws) and the ability to appear and disappear at will, while the honey locust thorns transform from sharp to soft, illustrating a reality where forms are mutable.

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