from John Ax and David Blythe (east) and from Wafford and Boudinot
(west). The version given below, doctored to suit the white man's
idea, appears without signature in the Cherokee Advocate of December
18, 1845:
"There was once a flock of wild turkeys feeding in a valley. As they
fed they heard a voice singing. They soon discovered that the musician
was a hare, and the burden of his song was that he had a secret in
his breast which he would on no account divulge. The curiosity of
the turkeys was excited, and they entreated the hare to tell them
the secret. This he finally consented to do if they would procure for
him the king's daughter for his wife and go with him and dance around
their enemy. They engaged to do all, and the hare led them to where
a wildcat lay apparently dead. The hare prevailed upon them to close
their eyes as they danced. The wildcat meanwhile silently arose and
killed several of them before the rest found out what a snare they
had been caught in. By this artifice on the part of the wildcat,
seconded by the hare, the former had a sumptuous repast."
This, with its variants, is one of the most widespread of the animal
myths. The same story told by the Cherokee, identical even to the song,
is given in the Creek collection of Tuggle, with the addition that
the Rabbit's tail is afterward bitten off by the enraged Turkeys. In
another Creek version, evidently a later invention, the Raccoon plays
a similar trick upon the Deer for the benefit of the Panther. The
Kiowa of the southern plains tell how the hungry trickster, Sinti,
entices a number of prairie dogs to come near him, under pretense
of teaching them a new dance, and then kills all but one, while
they are dancing around him, according to instruction, with their
eyes shut. With the Omaha the Rabbit himself captures the Turkeys
while they dance around, with closed eyes, to his singing (Dorsey,
"The Rabbit and the Turkeys," and "Ictinike, the Turkeys, Turtle,
and Elk," in Contributions to North American Ethnology, VI). The
same stratagem, with only a change of names, recurs in another
Omaha story, "The Raccoon and the Crabs," of the same collection,
and in a Cheyenne story of White-man (A. L. Kroeber, Cheyenne Tales,
in Journal of American Folk-Lore, July, 1900), and in the Jicarilla
story of "The Fox and the Wildcat" (Russell, Myths of the Jicarilla,
ibid., October, 1898). The Southern negro version, which lacks the
important song and dance feature, is given by Harris in his story of
"Brother Rabbit and Mr Wildcat." [541]