On, also, the gambler flees directly to the west, and as often as the brothers shoot at him with their arrows…
- 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 148
- 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
on, also, the gambler flees directly to the west, and as often as the brothers shoot at him with their arrows the thunder rolls and the lightning flashes, but he escapes by sinking into the earth, which opens for him, to reappear in another form somewhere else
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 onlyon, also, the gambler flees directly to the west, and as often as the brothers shoot at him with their arrows the thunder rolls and the lightning flashes, but he escapes by sinking into the earth, which opens for him, to reappear in another form somewhere else. Swimmer makes the Little People help in the chase. In Cherokee figure an invitation to a ball contest is a challenge to battle. Thunder is always personified in the plural, Ani'-Hyûñ'tikwalâ'ski, "The Thunderers." The father and the two older sons seem to be Kana'ti and the Thunder Boys (see number 3, "Kana'ti and Selu"), although neither informant would positively assert this, while the boy hero, who has no other name, is said to be the lightning.
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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