THE WAR MEDICINE

THE WAR MEDICINE

Some warriors had medicine to change their shape as they pleased, so that they
could escape from their enemies. Once one of these medicine warriors who had
been away from home came back and found a strong party of the enemy
attacking the settlement while nearly all the men were off on a hunt. The town
was on the other side of the river, but his grandmother was there, so he made up
his mind to save her. Going down the stream a little way, he hunted until he
found a mussel shell. With his medicine he changed this to a canoe, in which he
crossed over to his grandmother’s house, and found her sitting there, waiting for
the enemy to come and kill her. Again he made medicine and put her into a
small gourd which he fastened to his belt. Then climbing a tree he changed
himself to a swamp woodcock, and with one cry he spread his wings and flew
across to the other side of the river, where both took their natural shape again
and made their way through the woods to another settlement.
There was another great Cherokee warrior, named Dasiʻgiya′gĭ, or Shoe-boots,
as the whites called him, who lived on Hightower creek, in Georgia. He was so
strong that it was said he could throw a corn mortar over a house, and with his
magic power could clear a river at one jump. His war medicine was an uktena
scale and a very large turtle shell which he got from the Shawano. In the Creek
war he put this scale into water and bathed his body with the water, and also
burned a piece of the turtle shell and drew a black line around his men with the
coal, and he was never wounded and never had a man killed.
Some great warriors had a medicine the aid of which they could dive under
the ground as under water, come up among the enemy to kill and scalp one, thenthe ground as under water, come up among the enemy to kill and scalp one, then
dive under the ground again and come up among their friends.
Some war captains knew how to put their lives up in the tree tops during a fight,
so that even if they were struck the enemy they could not be killed. Once, in a
battle with the Shawano, the Cherokee leader stood directly in front of the
enemy and let the whole party shoot at him, but was not hurt until the Shawano
captain, who knew this war medicine himself, ordered his men to shoot into the
branches above the head of the other. They did this and the Cherokee leader fell
dead.

 

Source:
Myths of the Cherokee, James Mooney