Native American Legends
The journey to the Sunrise
A Cherokee Legend
A long time ago several young men made up their minds to find the
place where the Sun lives and see what the Sun is like. They got
ready their bows and arrows, their parched corn and extra moccasins,
and started out toward the east.
At first they met tribes they knew, then they came to tribes they
had only heard about, and at last to others of which they had never
heard.
There was a tribe of root eaters and another of acorn eaters, with
great piles of acorn shells near their houses. In one tribe they
found a sick man dying, and were told it was the custom there when
a man died to bury his wife in the same grave with him. They waited
until he was dead, when they saw his friends lower the body into
a great pit, so deep and dark that from the top they could not see
the bottom.
Then a rope was tied around the woman's body, together with a bundle
of pine knots, a lighted pine knot was put into her hand, and she
was lowered into the pit to die there in the darkness after the
last pine knot was burned.
The young men traveled on until they came at last to the sunrise
place where the sky reaches down to the ground. They found that
the sky was an arch or vault of solid rock hung above the Earth
and was always swinging up and down, so that when it went up there
was an open place like a door between the sky and ground, and when
it swung back the door was shut.
The Sun came out of this door from the East and climbed along on
the inside of the arch. It had a human figure, but was too bright
for them to see clearly and too hot to come very near. They waited
until the Sun had come out and then tried to get through while the
door was still open, but just as the first one was in the doorway
the rock came down and crushed him.
The other six were afraid to try it, and as they were now at the
end of the world they turned around and started back again, but
they had traveled so far that they were old men when they reached
home.
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