The great teacher is the Bear. He is one of the most curious and omnivorous of all animals. A bear feeds on nearly every food available, from insects to grasses. Bear Clan members have special duties in the areas of food storage and preparation, also medicine gathering and teaching, just as Fire Clan people have a particular calling to be fire keepers, fuel gatherers and carvers. Numerous pipe bowls show the bear standing and teaching before a seated pupil. The Bear rises and prays at sunrise, like the Indian.

The Cherokee today pretend that there are only seven clans and do not enumerate the Bear Clan among them. This is because, anciently, the members of the Bear Clan were considered bears, not human. But there are many stories which Bear Clan members tell to one another, and they have an important history in the Cherokee Nation.

Red Bear tells a humorous story about an experience he had on the Black Path, which runs crosswise to the Red Path. He was returning from a tribal meeting in the Southwest and thought he would pay his respects to the resting-place of his ancestors. The town where his great-great-grandparents lived was now under water the result of some “dam project” but there was a state park located there. Never before had he been to this place, at one time the capital of his Nation.

Red Bear says that when he travels his attitude is that any land the government stole and hasn’t yet parceled out is still Indian land, once removed, as it were. He planned to camp and sleep that night on the Mother with his people. The park was closed for the season, so Red Bear left his car at the gates and walked in with his blanket, thinking he might find a spot to rest and leave early the next morning without anyone noticing him. The night was black as it could be. Clouds covered the stars and there was a new moon, which is to say no moon. Red Bear walked blindly and boldly along an asphalt road for almost a mile or more, leaving the lights of the park buildings far behind him. The darkness of the road was uniform, solid with that of the sky and surrounding trees. Suddenly, he says, there was a line of shining spirits like giant warriors blocking his way. He stopped. He held out his hands in peace and greeted them in Cherokee, stating his intentions. The line divided to let him pass. He felt welcomed. He continued on the black road,
sensing that it curved and went down toward the river. He still could not see a thing. He followed his feet in blind faith. He walked for another mile or so before he said to himself, “Any way into the woods is as good as any other.” He left the road and found that his feet were now placed on a sandy beaten path. This he followed until he said to himself, “Any spot is as good as any other.” So he spread his blanket on the pine needles and prepared to go to bed. As he removed his tobacco pouch and laid it at his head, he felt the ground about it to make sure it was a good place to put it. That is when he felt a stone fire ring immediately beside his bedding. He had found a campsite after all! He would not light a fire. This would be cold camping. But he would make a tobacco offering to the spirits of the woods and thank them for their hospitality. The spirits of that place made a big to-do over the tobacco, he says. They had not had it for so long! Tobacco was once one of them. All growing things can speak, but tobacco is their special speaker. That is the word they used, Red Bear says– “Speaker.” When you wish to know the purpose of a plant, they said, you must speak to it and it will tell you what its gift is, its teaching, its medicine. Would you like to see which plants in the woods are medicine plants?

The woods then began to glow with a faint, chartreuse light. Red Bear watched as the various plants brightened, one by one, large and small, high and low. In many cases, the light was not spread evenly through the plant but was stronger in certain parts. With some of the underbrush, each leaf glowed like a bright, trembling bead. There would be a patch of grass where every blade showed and another clump that was completely dark. Red Bear could see the roots of certain bushes and weeds, like skeletons. The bark of some trees contained more light than any other part. In other trees, it was the fruit or flowers. As Red Bear looked around he noticed that almost every plant within his vision had lit up. This included all trees, without exception. He told me the proportion of medicine plants to non-medicinal vegetation was four to one. “The woods are a medicine chest,” he said.

“Top of the morning to you, Chief!” said the ranger the next day. Red Bear learned that he had found the only primitive camping spot in the entire park. It overlooked the Tugaloo River, now a large reservoir. From the time of that experience, he saw even the most nondescript-looking woods with different eyes. “Oh, and by the way,” he added, “those tobacco-hungry spirits somehow managed to make me leave my tobacco pouch there. I would have offered it to them but they beat me to the punch. They fooled me out of it. The next place I got to, someone gifted me with a new pouch “If the very old will remember, the very young will listen.”

Chief Dan George, a Salish

Back when buffalo still roamed Georgia's woodlands, they came here to lick the sweetish gray clay that provided a soothing antacid for bison bellies. Back when Georgia was a British colony, this was the frontier the line that marked the western limit of Colonial encroachment on lands of the Creek and Cherokee.

Plymouth Rock it's not. Drivers whiz by on Ga. 22 south of Lexington without a second glance. They are unmindful that this patch of dreary timberland, littered with spent .22-caliber casings and flattened beer cans, is hallowed ground in Southern history only now resurrected from two centuries of cartographic limbo.

"This is it," said University of Georgia geographer Louis DeVorsey, surveying an unremarkable forest clearing from atop a freshly cut tree stump. "This is the Great Buffalo Lick. Not just any buffalo lick, the great one. The real one, too."

The research supporting DeVorsey's claim is published in the current issue of the Southeastern Geographer, a journal of the American Association of Geographers.

Great Buffalo Lick may not look like much now, but back in the late 8th
century, this spot marked the great divide between cultures. It was a crucial landmark in a territory the size of Delaware that the Indians ceded to the British in 1773 a cession that paved the way for the tide of settlers that swept into Georgia's Piedmont.

But times change. Soon, there were no buffalo. Then there was no treaty. As the Indians were pushed farther west and the lick's importance diminished in the lives of both man and beast, it became nothing more than a point on a map. On lots of maps. All different. A century later it was lost for good testimony to the fact that bad maps are often worse than no map at all.

The Great Buffalo Lick might have stayed lost but for two accidents of
history.

In 1773, at the height of its importance as a landmark, the famous naturalist William Bartram, accompanied by "surveyors, astronomers, artisans, chain-carriers, markers, guides and hunters, besides a very respectable number of gentlemen," passed through this spot and noted the "vast pits licked in the clay, formerly by the Buffaloes, and now kept smoothe and open by cattle, deer and horses."

Bartram said the lick was a four-day ride, about 80 miles, from Augusta, located on a "great ridge" separating the watersheds of the Savannah and Altamaha rivers. Precision, alas, was not Bartram's strong suit. Bartram, whose writings provide some of the earliest accounts of native plants and animals in the South, spent only a little time at the lick listening to Indians and whites haggle over the boundary and then moved on.

That was the first accident. The second was Louis DeVorsey's weakness for whimsy and a good geographic detective story .

DeVorsey first heard of Great Buffalo Lick 40 years ago, when he was in London, studying Colonial maps and records for his doctoral thesis on the Indian boundaries of the Southern Colonies. Years later, as a professor at the University of Georgia, he was surprised to discover that no one was sure about the location of the historic spot.

Over the years, as treaty after Indian treaty was abrogated, Great Buffalo Lick gradually became a Southern analog of "Washington slept here" its historic significance undisputed but its true location increasingly obscure.

Georgia history buffs could be forgiven for any confusion. A mile east of Union Point in Greene County, for instance, a solid brass plaque proclaims that the location of one Great Buffalo Lick. U.S. Geological Survey maps say it's there too.

But 10 miles away, outside the little community of Philomath, a battered roadside sign, with half the text missing, points to another site of "Bartram's Buffalo L. . ." A third location for the lick lies in Greene County near the defunct mica mining camp of Sunshine, itself long gone from contemporary maps.

"I knew the locations couldn't all be right," says DeVorsey. "As it turned out, none of them were." On and off over the years, his research turned up flaws in each of the three locations. The breakthrough came with the discovery of a 1796 plat for a tract of land deeded to one David Witt, with one side of the property on the original Indian boundary and one corner at an "ash tree in Buffalo Lick."

Using the files of hand-drawn plats from the surrounding land, DeVorsey painstakingly built a mosaic showing the holdings of the original landowners as they matched the legal descriptions with creeks and other physical features that could still be identified.

Then, he and some archaeologists took a satellite navigation device and went looking for the lick. Beneath the forest litter, a half mile south of a sleepy stream called Buffalo Creek, they found a thin layer of light clay, kaolin, right where DeVorsey's maps said it should be.

"We've never seen anything like these little pockets of whitish clay before," says Tom Gresham, director of Southeastern Archaeological Service, a contract archaeology service in Athens. "On the surface there isn't a
trace of the lick to be seen."

In a state where the historic sites tend to be antebellum mansions and Civil War battlefields, Great Buffalo Lick --- real or presumed --- isn't exactly a burning controversy.

"The monument outside of our town doesn't say specifically where it is," said Union Point Mayor Ben Stuart. "If it turns out to be somewhere else, I don't think anybody would know the difference."

Still, Gresham thinks the true location of the lost lick at least deserves equal billing. "The members of our group, Historic Oglethorpe County, want to put up some kind of permanent marker so it doesn't get lost again," he said.

"It would serve as a reminder that some places that look like are nothing today are places where important things happened in the past."

http://www.cherokeebob.com/buffalo_lick.htm

Once, everywhere you looked there was water, and in all the directions there was water. The people everywhere had to tread the water in order to keep their heads above the water, so they would not drown.
So, the people they called to the Great Mystery, the Great Mystery that dwells within us, and all around us, that they might have council. The Mystery said, “What is that you need?” And the people said, “We need something solid that we can put our feet upon, we need something to rest upon or else we will surely drown!
The Mystery said to the people, “I want you to go down into the water, as deep as you can go, and whatever you find down there, bring that back to me.” So, the people gathered together, as they gathered together, Grandmother turtle came crawling out…. And said, “Let me try”
The people said, “Grandma, Grandma, you’re too old, you’re liable to get hurt, let us young ones go.”
The Hawk was the first to go, down did Hawk go, deep into the water till Hawk was gone from sight. After a while, Hawk returned, and Hawk said,
“Folks, there is nothing there.”
The people turned, and they started to scatter, as they started to scatter, Grandmother Turtle came crawling out…. And she said once again, “Let me try.” The people said, “Grandma, Grandma, you’re too old, let us young ones go.”
Mink was the next one to go, down did Mink go, till Mink was gone from sight….. When Mink returned, he said, “Folks Hawk is right, there is nothing there.
The people turned, and they started to scatter, as they started to scatter,
Grandmother Turtle came crawling out, and she said, “Let me try!”
The people said, “Grandma, Grandma, you’re too old, let us young ones go.”
Beaver was the next to go…. Beaver slapped his tail, down into the water, and deep did Beaver go, till Beaver was gone from sight. After a while, Beaver returned and slapped the water again with his tail, and Beaver said,
“Folks, Hawk and Mink was right, there is nothing there.”
The people turned, and they started to scatter, as they started to scatter,
Grandmother Turtle came crawling out, and she said, “Let me try.”
The people said, Grandma, Grandma, you’re too old, let us young ones go!”
And so did this happen ALL DAY LONG! As the sun traveled across the sky, the young ones would go down into the water, deep would they go, until they would be gone from sight….
Each would return with the same story, “There is nothing there!” And each time, the people would turn and start to scatter, and as they would start to scatter, Grandmother Turtle would come crawling out and the people would turn her away again and again. Until the last young one went down into the water and came back and said, “Yep, there is nothing down there!”
And as the people turned with very sad and heavy hearts for the last time, Grandmother Turtle came crawling out…. And she said, “Let me try.”
“Grandmother, Grandmother, you’re far too old, you saw us young ones all day long, we went down into the waters, we went deep, and there was nothing there!” Grandmother turtle said, “Well let me try anyway!”
“You’re too old, you will never make it!” Grandmother Turtle said,
“But, just give me a chance, The Great Mystery and I have known one another a very long time indeed! I will know where to look you will see, just give me a chance!”
“Well, OK Grandmother, you can try, but remember, there is nothing down there, we told you so!”
So, Grandmother Turtle she took a breath, then another, then another, and a small one! And she went down into the water, and she began to swim, fast did Grandmother Turtle swim, until she was gone from sight….
All day long, the people who had remained up above, had been watching the bubbles of those who had gone down below, and by this sign they knew everyone was OK…. So they were watching the bubbles of Grandmother Turtle…. When all of a sudden! The bubbles stopped!!!!
“Oh No!!!! Grandmother Turtle is in trouble!!!! We told her she was too old! We did not want to lose her! Now we are going to have to save her!”
As they were deciding who it was, that was going to go and rescue her, the bubbles started again! “Look!” they said, “Grandmother Turtle is OK!”
They looked down into the water, deep did they looked, and they saw Grandmother Turtle, and Grandmother was swimming fast! As fast as Grandmother Turtle could swim to the top! And when she got to the top, she stretched forth her arm, and in her hand was a clump of mud….
The Great Mystery took the mud, and the mud began to roll, and as the mud began to roll, the mud began to grow, the waters were separated and dry land appeared!
The Great Mystery said to the people, “Those of you who want to stay and swim in the water, may do so…. Those of you who want to fly in the sky, may do so….Those of you who want to walk upon the ground, you may do so”…
And so it was, and so it is…. The Great Mystery said to Grandmother Turtle, “Grandma, Grandma, there is a certain balance to creation, this is what the balance is, every time there is a day, there is a night, it balances out. Every time there is a winter there is a summer, it balances out, every time there is a sorrow, there is joy! It balances out…. So now Grandmother,” said the Mystery, “It is time to balance out what you have done!”
“I am ready,” said Grandmother Turtle….
And so, the Great Mystery took this earth, and placed it on Grandmother’s Turtle back. So as it is even today, Grandmother Turtle’s responsibility to carry this earth wherever she goes……
So the next time you see Grandmother Turtle, and she is crawling down by the water, or she is crawling under the rocks, or under the porch, remember what she did for us, and that we are to respect her.
So, do not go over and pick her up and shake her, or turn her over on her back, just to watch her kick and smother for air, But, we are to let her go to wherever it is that she is going…… And in case we forget this thing, we are reminded when we look at her shell, and we see that it is cracked from the weight of the world she carries…..
So that the next time you feel the earth shake, the next time you feel the earth tremor, you need not be afraid! For this is Grandmother Turtle shifting positions!!!!!

Told By: ShaunaSay WhiteFeather
Cherokee Legend Keeper/StoryTeller

In the beginning there was only blackness, and nobody could see anything. People kept bumping into each other and groping blindly. They said: “What this world needs is light.” Fox said he knew some people on the other side of the world who had plenty of light, but they were too greedy to share it with others. Possum said he would be glad to steal a little of it. “I have a bushy tail,” he said. “I can hide the light inside all that fur.” Then he set out for the other side of the world.

There he found the sun hanging in a tree and lighting everything up. He sneaked over to the sun, picked out a tiny piece of light, and stuffed it into his tail. But the light was hot and burned all the fur off. The people discovered his theft and took back the light, and ever since, Possum’s tail has been bald.

“Let me try,” said Buzzard. “I know better than to hide a piece of stolen light in my tail. “I’ll put it on my head.” He flew to the other side of the world and, diving straight into the sun, seized it in his claws. He put it on his head, but it burned his head feathers off. The people grabbed the sun away from him, and ever since that time Buzzard’s head has remained bald.

Then Grandmother Spider said, “Let me try!” First she made a thick-walled pot out of clay. Next she spun a web reaching all the way to the other side of the world. She was so small that none of the people there noticed her coming. Quickly Grandmother Spider snatched up the sun, put it in the bowl of clay, and scrambled back home along one of the strands of her web. Now her side of the world had light, and everyone rejoiced. Spider Woman brought not only the sun to the Cherokee, but fire with it. And besides that, she taught the Cherokee people the art of pottery making.

From a tale reported by James Mooney in the 1890s

In the beginning there was no fire, and the world was cold, until the Thunders, who lived up in Galun lati (Gah-lun-lah-tee), sent their lightening and put fire into the bottom of a hollow sycamore tree which grew on an island. The animals knew it was there, because they could see the smoke coming out at the top, but they could not get to it on account of the water, so they held a council to decide what to do. This was in the long ago time, when the animals could talk one to the other.

Every animal that could fly or swim was anxious to go after the fire. The Raven offered, and because he was so large and strong they thought he could surely do the work, so he was sent first. He flew high and far across the water and alighted on the sycamore tree, but while he was wondering what to do next, the heat had scorched all his feathers black, and he was frightened and came back without the fire. The little Screech Owl (wa’huhu [wah-hoo-hoo]) volunteered to go, and reached the place safely, but while he was looking down into the hollow tree a blast of hot air came up and nearly burned out his eyes. He managed to fly home as best he could, but it was a long time before he could see well, and his eyes are red to this day. The the Hooting Owl (Uguku [OO-goo-koo]) and the Horned Owl (Tskili [Skee-lee]) went, but by the time they got to the hollow tree, the fire was burning so fiercely the the smoke nearly blinded them, and the ashes carried up by the wind made white rings about their eyes. They had come home again without the fire, but with all the rubbing they were never able to get rid of the white rings.

Now no more of the birds would venture, and so the little Uksuhi (Ook- soo-hee)snake, the black racer, said he would go through the water and bring back some fire. He swam across to the island and crawled through the grass to the tree, and went in by a small hole at the bottom. The smoke and heat were too much for him, too, and after dodging about blindly over the hot ashes until he was almost on fire himself he managed by good luck get out again at the same hole, but his body had been scorched black, and he has ever since had the habit of darting and doubling back on his track as if trying to escape from close quarters. He came back, and the great black snake, Gule’gi (Goo-lay-kee), “The Climber,” offered to go for fire. He swam over to the island and climbed up the tree on the outside, as the blacksnake always does, but when he put his head down into the hole the smoke choked him so that he fell into the burning stump, and before he could climb out again he was as black as the Uksu’hi.

Now they held another council, for still there was no fire, and the world was cold, but birds, snakes, and four footed animals, all had some excuse for not going, because they were all afraid to venture near the burning sycamore, until at last Kanane’ski Amai’yehi (Kah-nah-nay Ah-eye-yay-hee [the Water Spider]) said she would go. This is not the water spider that looks like a mosquito, but other one, with black downy hair and red stripes on her body. She can run on top of the water or dive to the bottom, so there would be no trouble to get over to the island, but the question was, How could she bring back the fire? “I’ll manage that,” said the Water Spider; so she spun a thread from her body and wove it into a tusti (toos-tee) bowl, which she fastened on her back. Then she crossed over to the island and through the grass to where the fire was still burning. She put one little coal of fire into her bowl, and came back with it, and ever since we have had fire, and the Water Spider still keeps her tusti bowl.

That is how fire came to the People.

Hope you all enjoyed the story.

Aho! We are All Related!

-=Standing Bear=-

http://www.indians.org/welker/fire.htm