Cherokee Tales and Disney Films ExploredBy Steve Bankhead
**Originally published June 15, 1996 in the Watsonville Register-Pajaronian** We're often touched unknowingly by Native American culture. One example discussed later in this piece is a Disney film rooted in Cherokee animal tales. Animals were central to Cherokee beliefs, since they preceded and created our world. In the beginning there was only the great water, and above it the sky world Galunlati. The first animals lived there, archetypal and ideal forms of the animals we now know. Galunlati was not world enough for the first animals, so the water beetle dove beneath the great water and brought up a small lump of mud. When that bit of earth and water was exposed to air and the sun's fire, magic happened. The mud expanded tremendously, becoming our world. But it was flat and too soft to walk on, so the buzzard flew over it, drying the world with the wind from its wings. And where its wingtips touched the ground, they dug valleys and raised mountains. One story of Cherokee origin tells of Kanati (Lucky Hunter) and Selu (Corn), and their two sons. The Algonquian version even includes a snake bringing evil into the world, and both traditions include the story of a great flood. In the Cherokee tale, a dog warns a man to save his family by building a large raft. The first plants and animals could speak, and mingled with humans as equals. As time passed, however, they one by one ascended to Galunlati, leaving behind lesser forms of themselves to feed and heal us. The rabbit was prominent in Cherokee animal stories. Like the Greek god Hermes, the rabbit's speed made it a messenger, but also a trickster and thief. One story tells how the rabbit lost a race to the tortoise. Its close parallel to the Greek fable of Aesop mirrors the similarity of Cherokee origin stories to the Book of Genesis. Add the similar design of Mesoamerican stepped pyramids and the ziggurats of Mesopotamia, and a speculation is born of European and Native American cultures sharing common roots in the region of Asia Minor and the Middle East. They then migrated in opposite paths meeting much later in America. The Disney film mentioned earlier contains stories which come to us indirectly. One Cherokee animal story tells of the rabbit stealing water from the other animals' well during a drought. They snare him by forming a tar wolf and leaving it by the well. The rabbit challenged the tar wolf, and receiving no response, kicked it and was trapped. The other animals considered terrible punishments, but the rabbit tricked them into throwing it into a thicket, which was actually its home. That story was printed in an 1845 edition of the Cherokee Advocate. That was seven years after the Cherokee Removal and three years before Joel Chandler Harris was born in the old Cherokee homeland in northern Georgia. The African-American slaves in that region had known the Cherokees alternately as both masters and fellow slaves, and through intermarriage. Harris heard the Cherokee animal stories, which survived in oral tradition among the slaves, with their own cultural touches. In the 1880's he began publishing the Uncle Remus stories, with the tar wolf tale coming down to us as Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. Most of us know these stories from the 1947 Disney film "Song of the South," Disney's 1995 animated feature "Pocahontas" missed some opportunities to reveal the impact of her culture on our language. The film identifies her father as Powhatan, but his personal name was Wahunsonacook. Powhatan (Waterfalls in a Stream) was his title as ruler of the Powhatan league of tribes. To the west was another league called Illini (Warriors), which with French influence became Illinois. Some think Pocahontas was Algonquin, but the Algonquins (or Algonkins) were a Canadian tribe encountered by early French explorers. Algonquian refers to the multitude of tribes speaking within the same language group. That ranges from the Cheyenne and Arapaho in the west, then eastward through the Cree, Chippewa, Shawnee, Miami, Mohican and many others, including the tribe of Pocahontas. The actual name of her tribe was mentioned in the film only once when John Smith was citing one of the "odd names" in her language: Chickahominy (People of the Corn). So we speak the language of Pocahontas whenever we say hominy. We also speak Algonguian words when we say Oregon, Wyoming, Missouri, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Michigan, Connecticut or Massachusetts. We live under a constitution whose writing was influenced by the Iroquois Great Law of Peace, renew ourselves in a system of parks protecting our sacred grounds, and speak a language filled with indigenous terms. Many people might argue that European culture supplanted that of Native America; but I prefer to think of it as two long-separated branches of the same culture, reuniting and intertwining in America to create something entirely new. If so, we're all the richer for having made that long journey. | 
Lifetime
