Earth Making

Before making humans, Someone Powerful had created plants and animals and had told them to stay awake and watch for seven days and seven nights. (This is just what the young men do today when they fast and prepare for a ceremony.) But most of the plants and animals couldn’t manage it; some fell asleep after one day, some after two days, some after three. Among the animals, only the owl and the mountain lion were still awake after seven days and nights. That’s why they were given the gift of seeing in the dark so that they could hunt at night. Among the trees and other plants, only the cedar, pine, holly, and laurel were still awake on the eighth morning. Someone Powerful said to them: “Because you watched and kept awake as you had been told, you will not lose your hair in the winter.” So these plants stay green all the time.

— from “Earth Making,” in American Indian Myths and Legends (Pantheon, 1984), by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz

Someone Powerful is the creator character in the creation mythology of the Cherokee people, indigenous to the southeastern U.S. This tale full of just-so stories, as told to Erdoes and Ortiz at a Cherokee treaty council meeting in 1975, explains the mystery behind certain aspects of nature — based on the gratitude of Someone Powerful toward those parts of creation that remained faithful to Someone’s words.