THE JOURNEY TO THE SUNRISE

THE JOURNEY TO THE SUNRISE
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.

 

Source:
Myths of the Cherokee James Mooney