The Cherokee call the place Datsu'nalâsgûñ'yi, "Where there are tracks," or Degayelûñ'ha, "Printed (Branded)…
- Date of account
- Material collected chiefly 1887-1890; published 1900
- Source
- Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology
- Reference
- Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology · selected passage 110
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English with Cherokee names and material translated from oral testimony
- Translation
- Collected and edited by James Mooney
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
The Cherokee call the place Datsu'nalâsgûñ'yi, "Where there are tracks," or Degayelûñ'ha, "Printed (Branded) place." The carvings are of many and various patterns, some of them resembling human or animal footprints, while others are squares, crosses, circles, "bird tracks," etc., disposed without any apparent order
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyThe Cherokee call the place Datsu'nalâsgûñ'yi, "Where there are tracks," or Degayelûñ'ha, "Printed (Branded) place." The carvings are of many and various patterns, some of them resembling human or animal footprints, while others are squares, crosses, circles, "bird tracks," etc., disposed without any apparent order. On the authority of a Doctor Stevenson, writing in 1834, White (Historical Collections of Georgia, p. 658, 1855), and after him Jones (Antiquities of the Southern Indians, 1873), give a misleading and greatly exaggerated account of these carvings, without having taken the trouble to investigate for themselves, although the spot is easily accessible. No effort, either state or local, is made to preserve the pictographs from destruction, and many of the finest have been cut out from the rock and carried off by vandals, Stevenson himself being among the number, by his own confession.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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