The great ball game opens the part: the Bat and the Flying Squirrel, made winged by the birds from a drumhead and stretched skin, beat the Bear, the Terrapin, and the Deer between them. Then the Terrapin's stolen scalp becomes the Turkey's beard, his stolen whistle the Partridge's voice; the Grouse's voice lessons end in a gobble; the Kingfisher gets his bill in two different tellings; the little brown bird paints himself into the Redbird; the Pheasant's drumming becomes a dance of the Green-corn feast; the Crane wins the race and loses the bride; an owl and a huhu are unmasked as husbands; the Buzzard loses his topknot and his pride; and a hunter flies in buzzard form to find the deer. One tale Mooney prints in this stretch, The Eagle's Revenge, is not read here; the Cherokee shelf's exclusion register records it and the reason. Source: James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee (1900), public domain; fresh in-house renderings faithful to Mooney's record, told in Mooney's order.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
