The Creation of the earth. A myth of the Cherokee Indians retold by Sarah Steele.  Text Only Version

They were all  about what was beneath the water and one day Dayuni’si, the water beetle, volunteered to explore it.  He went everywhere  the surface but he couldn’t find any  ground. He then dived below the surface to the bottom and all he found was mud. This began to  in size and spread outwards until it became the earth as we know it.

After all this had happened, one of the animals attached this new land to the sky with  strings.  Just after the earth was formed, it was flat and  so the animals decided to send a bird down to see if it had dried. They eventually returned to the animals with a result. The land was still too  so they sent the great Buzzard from Galun’lati to prepare it for them.  The buzzard flew down and by the time that he reached the Cherokee land he was so  that his wings began to hit the ground.  Wherever they hit the ground a mountain or valley formed.

The Cherokee land still remains the same today with all the land forms that the Buzzard formed.  The animals then decided that it was too , so they made the sun and put it on the path in which it still runs today.  The animals could then admire the newly created earth around them.