The Rabbit--The part played by the Rabbit or Hare and his symbolic character in Indian myth has been already…
- 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 132
- 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 Rabbit--The part played by the Rabbit or Hare and his symbolic character in Indian myth has been already noted (see "Stories and Story Tellers")
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 Rabbit--The part played by the Rabbit or Hare and his symbolic character in Indian myth has been already noted (see "Stories and Story Tellers"). In his purely animal character, as an actor among the fourfooted creatures, the same attributes of trickery and surpassing sagacity are assigned him in other parts of the world. In the folktales of Angola, West Africa, "The Hare seems to surpass the fox in shrewdness," and "The Hare has the swiftness and shrewdness of the Monkey, but he is never reckless, as the Monkey sometimes appears to be" (Chatelain, Folktales of Angola, pp. 295, 300). In farthest Asia also "The animals, too, have their stories, and in Korea, as in some other parts of the world, the Rabbit seems to come off best, as a rule" (H. N. Allen, Korean Tales, p.
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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