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Source: Myths and Tales of the
Southeastern Indians, By John R. Swanton, 1929
In the beginning all the animals held a meeting and agreed that each
should select a tree the fruit of which should belong to the descendants
of the chooser.
The first choice fell to the Rabbit, who went down to a river and ran
slowly up the bank looking first at one tree and then at another. At last
he stopped under a sycamore tree and, seeing the large balls hanging from
its limbs, he chose the sycamore.
All the other animals picked out such trees and fruits as they liked, the
Raccoon taking muscadines and the Opossum persimmons, till all the
different fruits were taken.
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Then the Rabbit, becoming hungry, ran
down to his big tree and
hunted on the ground for some of the fine balls, but none were on the
ground. He looked up into the tree and there were hundreds on the limbs.
Thinking some would fall in a little while, he sat under the tree and
waited. Night came and he hopped away home hungry.
Next day he came back and looked again on the ground. None of the balls
had yet fallen. He sat under the sycamore all that day and again had to go
to bed hungry.
The third day he came to his tree and his body was thin and his eyes were
big, and they got bigger looking while he longed for the balls to fall to
the ground. His body got thinner and his eyes bigger and all his
descendants have been like him.
He waited till he nearly perished, and at last he decided to go around at
night and steal from the other animals, as there were no more trees from
which he could select.
In this way the Rabbit learned to steal for a living and he has always
kept up the habit.
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