Native American Legends
The Haunted Whirlpool
A Cherokee Legend
At the mouth of Suck creek, on the Tennessee, about 8 miles below
Chattanooga, is a series of dangerous whirlpools, known as "The
Suck," and noted among the Cherokee as the place where Ûñtsaiyï',
the gambler, lived long ago.
They call it Ûñ'tiguhï', "Pot-in-the-water,"
on account of the appearance of the surging, tumbling water, suggesting
a boiling pot. They assert that in the old times the whirlpools
were intermittent in character, and the canoe men attempting to
pass the spot used to hug the bank, keeping constantly on the alert
for signs of a coming eruption, and when they saw the water begin
to revolve more rapidly would stop and wait until it became quiet
again before attempting to proceed.
It happened once that two men, going down the river in a canoe,
as they came near this place saw the water circling rapidly ahead
of them. They pulled up to the bank to wait until it became smooth
again, but the whirlpool seemed to approach with wider and wider
circles, until they were drawn into the vortex.
They were thrown out of the canoe and carried down under the water,
where one man was seized by a great fish and was never seen again.
The other was taken round and round down to the very lowest center
of the whirlpool, when another circle caught him and bore him outward
and upward until he was finally thrown up again to the surface and
floated out into the shallow water, whence he made his escape to
shore.
He told afterwards that when he reached the narrowest circle of
the maelstrom the water seemed to open below him and he could look
down as through the roof beams of a house, and there on the bottom
of the river he had seen a great company of people, who looked up
and beckoned to him to join them, but as they put up their hands
to seize him the swift current caught him and took him out of their
reach.
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