 |
| Rabbit hides in brush as he plans his next trick, source: wikipedia |
This week in the Cherokee myths unit, I noticed that every
story included in the set of 26 stories included an animal. Some animals were
reoccurring; such as the rabbit. And others had smaller roles in single
stories. For this weeks essay blog post I decided to focus on the importance of
animals in Cherokee culture. I specifically decided to focus on the role of the
rabbit who constantly is tricking and fooling the other animals to get his way.
The rabbit is in multiple Cherokee myths and is always the
trickster. He is jealous of the otter for having the best fur, so he tricks him
into jumping into the water and steals his coat. The possum supposedly had the
best tail, and the rabbit got jealous so he had the grasshopper cut off the
fur. He is jealous of the deer and wants to win the set of antlers, so he tries
to cheat in a competition. When he is bitter about losing the competition, he
then tricks the deer into letting him shave his teeth down so that he can no
longer eat anything but plants. The rabbit is always jealous of the other
animals for what they have. He can not stand not being or having the best looks,
so he constantly tricks the other animals. I found it somewhat strange it was a
rabbit, because to me, rabbits do not seem like the typical cunning and sly
animals. The myths and stories I always heard about rabbits were usually little
bunnies. As in the “Tale of Peter Rabbit” and “The Tale of Benjamin Bunny”
where you end up feeling sorry for Peter after he gets chased out of the garden
and his clothes taken away. I did not find myself feeling bad for the rabbit in
the Cherokee myths because he was very rude and hostile towards the other
animals.
There seems
to be only one story included in the set where the rabbit is on the other end
of the tricks. The Tarapin fools the rabbit in a race by stationing other
Tarapins that look identical to the real one throughout the course. The real
Tarapin is near the end of the course and he crosses the finish line before the
rabbit. In this myth, the rabbit was fooled and not doing the fooling.
According to the myth, rabbit stew is prepared and scattered on the path the
night before a game so that the other players become tired and lose the game
just as the rabbit did. I found it interesting that in this myth the rabbit
somewhat gets revenge for all of his other tricking he does in the other myths.
No comments:
Post a Comment