Reading Notes: Week 11, Part A (Origin of the Pleiades and the Pine)

"Origin of the Pleiades and the Pine": When the world first started, there were seven boys who used to spend all of their time down by the townhouse playing a traditional game where you would roll a stone wheel along the ground with a curved stick. All of their mothers would get mad at them and scold them for always playing the game, but it did no good, as they continued to play the game all day long. One day when the boys were very hungry, instead of making dinner, their mothers cooked their game stones. The mothers said that because they liked the game better than the cornfield they could now eat the stones for their dinner. The boys were very angry and headed down to the townhouse, saying that if their mothers were going to treat them this way that they should go to a place where they wouldn't trouble them anymore. They then began to dance and ask the spirits for help. Their mothers then began to be worried and went out looking for them. When the mothers found the boys dancing around the townhouse, they began to notice that they were floating up off of the ground. The mothers ran to get their children with only one reaching her son before he floated too high in the sky to grab. The one boy that was pulled to the ground hit the ground with such force that he sank right into the earth and the ground closed up over him. The six other boys circled higher and higher into the sky where they now live and are called the Pleiades, or "The Boys." The people grieved after them for a long time, and the mother whose boy sunk into the ground went there every day and cried until her tears soaked the ground. One day a little green shoot sprouted up and became a tall tree, now known as the pine tree. 

Photo of pine trees

(Taken by Reymark Cabil on Unsplash)

"Origin of the Pleiades and the Pine," Myths of the Cherokee by James Mooney