Cherokee

THE Nunnehi are The People Who Live Anywhere. They were spirit people who lived in the highlands of the Cherokee country, and they liked the bald mountain peaks where no timber ever grows.

No one could see the Nunnehi except when the spirit-people let themselves be seen, and then they looked and acted just like other Indians. But they like music and dancing, and hunters in the mountains often could hear the dance songs and the drum; yet when they went towards the sound, it would suddenly shift behind them or in some other direction. They were a friendly people, too. Some Indians have thought they were the same as the Little People; but those are no larger than little children.

Once a boy was with the Nunnehi. When he was about ten or twelve years old, he was playing one day near the river, shooting at a mark with his bow and arrow. Then he started to build a fish trap in the water. While he was piling up the stones in two long walls, a man came and stood on the bank.

The man said, “What are you doing?” The boy told him. The man said, “That’s pretty hard work. You ought to rest awhile. Come and take a walk up the river.”

The boy said, “No. I am going to the lodge to get something to eat.”

“Come to my lodge,” said the man. “I’ll give you good food and bring you home again in the morning.”

So the boy went to the man’s lodge with him. They went up the river. The man’s wife and all the other people were glad to see him. They gave him plenty to eat. While he was eating, a man that the boy knew very well indeed came in and spoke to him. So he did not feel strange.

Afterwards he played with the other children and slept there that night. In the morning, their father took him down the trail. They went down a trail that had a cornfield on one side and a peach orchard on the other, until they came to a cross trail. Then the man said,

“Go along this trail across that ridge and you will come to the river road that will take you straight to your home.”

So he went back to his house. The boy went down the trail, but soon he turned and looked back. There was no cornfield there; there were no peach trees or house—nothing but trees on the mountain side. Still he was not frightened. He went on until he came to the river trail in sight of his home. He saw many people standing about talking. When they saw him, they ran towards him shouting, “Here he is! He is not drowned or killed in the mountains!”

Then they said, “Where have you been? We have been looking for you ever since yesterday noon.”

“A man took me over to his house, just across the ridge,” said the boy. “I thought Udsi-skala would tell you where I was.”

Udsi-skala said, “I have not seen you. I was out all day in my canoe looking for you. It was one of the Nunnehi who made himself look like me.”

His mother said, “You say you had plenty to eat there?”

“Yes,” said the boy.

“There is no house there,” his mother answered. “There is nothing there but trees and rocks, but we hear a drum sometimes in the big bald peak above. The people you saw were the Nunnehi.”