Reading Notes: Cherokee Myths (Part A)

Image: Fire
For the reading this week, I decided to check out some of the Cherokee Myths.  I chose Cherokee because two of my great grandparents were full blood Cherokee, but I still don't know a lot about their culture.  I really loved reading all of these stories.  All the creative ways they have explained the origins of different things, like the shape of the land or certain characteristics of animals.  My favorite of these stories was The First Fire from Myths of the Cherokee by James Mooney (1900).  The story is really beautiful as it tells how fire came to the Cherokee lands.  It tells how each of the animals tries to go and retrieve the fire, but fails and is changed.  I think it would be really fun to try and rewrite this story with some sort of twist.  I think it would be a good challenge to try to write this story in a more modern setting or maybe just with different animals and come up with ways in which they are changed to be like the ones we know today.

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