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Source:
From
Myths of the Cherokee, James Mooney, 1900
A party of warriors once started out for a long hunting trip in the
mountains, They went on until they came to a good game region, when they
set up their bark hut in a convenient place near the river side.
Every morning after breakfast they scattered out, each man for himself,
to be gone all day, until they returned at night with whatever game they
had taken.
There was one lazy fellow who went out alone every morning like the
others, but only until he found a sunny slope, when he would stretch out
by the side of a rock to sleep until evening, returning then to camp
empty-handed, but with his moccasins torn and a long story of how he had
tramped all day and found nothing.
This went on until one of the others began to suspect that something was
wrong, and made it his business to find it out. The next morning he
followed him secretly through the woods until he saw him come out into a
sunny opening, where he sat down upon a large rock, took off his
moccasins, and began rubbing them against the rocks until he had worn
holes in them.
Then the lazy fellow loosened his belt, lay down beside the rock, and went
to sleep. The spy set fire to the dry leaves and watched until the flame
crept close up to the sleeping man, who never opened his eyes.
The spy went back to camp and told what he had
seen. About supper time the lazy fellow came in with the same old story of
a long day's hunt and no game started. When he had finished the others all
laughed and called him a sleepyhead.
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He insisted that he had
been climbing the ridges all day, and put out
his moccasins to show how worn they were, not knowing that they were
scorched from the fire, as he had slept on until sundown.
When they saw the blackened moccasins they laughed again, and he was too
much astonished to say a word in his defense; so the captain said that
such a liar was not fit to stay with them, and he was driven from the
camp.
There was another lazy fellow who courted a pretty girl, but she would
have nothing to do with him, telling him that her husband must be a good
hunter or she would remain single all her life.
One morning he went into the woods, and by a lucky accident managed to
kill a deer. Lifting it upon his back, he carried it into the settlement,
passing right by the door of the house where the girl and her mother
lived.
As soon as he was out of sight of the house he went by a roundabout course
into the woods again and waited until evening, when he appeared with the
deer on his shoulder and came down the trail past the girl's house as he
had in the morning.
He did this the next day, and the next, until the girl began to think he
must be killing all the deer in the woods. So her mother (the old women
are usually the matchmakers) got ready and went to the young man's mother
to talk it over.
When she arrived and the greetings were done she said, "Your son must be a
good hunter."
"No," replied the old woman, "he seldom kills anything."
"But he has been killing a great many deer lately."
"I haven't seen any," said his mother.
"Why, he has been carrying deer past our house twice a day for the last
three days."
"I don't know what he did with them," said the young man's mother; "he
never brought them here."
Then the girl's mother was sure there was something wrong, so she went
home and told her husband, who followed tip the young man's trail into the
woods until it brought him to where the body of the deer was hidden, now
so far decayed that it had to be thrown away.
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