Fri, 04 Aug 2006
legend of the peace pipe by: past Cherokee
storyteller John Rattling-Gourd of Big Cove
Before selfishness crept into the world - that was
a long time ago - The Cherokee people were happy and
peaceable. They used the same hunting grounds and
fishing grounds as their neighbors. They fished in
the same streams and hunted in the same stands of
forest. There were no arguments about boundaries and
there were no arguments about fishing rights.
All this changed when Men learned to quarrel. The
first quarrel that arose was between the Cherokee and
a neighboring tribe. It was a long and bitter
quarrel, so bitter that the chiefs of the two tribes
decided to meet in council to try and settle their
trouble. And so they met, one day, and they smoked
the peace pipe in solemn council, but they did not
stop quarreling. A puff on the peace pipe and a
bitter word was the way it went. Days passed and
still the council sat and smoked and quarreled.
Now the Great Spirit was much displeased that the
Indians should quarrel while smoking the pipe of
peace. And the Great Spirit said, I shall have to do
something to you men that will show you that People
should live together in peace, and that when Indians
smoke the pipe, it must be done in peace.
The Great Spirit looked down at the old Men
sitting in all that smoke. And he saw how gray they
looked and how their heads hung down in weariness
because it had been many nights since they had slept.
And so he turned the old Men who smoked there in the
council into small silvery gray flowers, their heads
bent over and their petals hoary."
If you should find one in the woods and turn it so
that the head is down and the stem up, you will see
that it looks like an Indian pipe, and so it is
called to this day. But in the woods where they are
often seen clustered together, they appear to be
little gray people sitting in long council.
Now after the Great Spirit had changed the
quarreling Indians into flowers and set them out in
the forest, he noticed that the smoke from their
pipes still hung heavy in the air above the place
where the council had been. So he gathered up the
smoke and draped it over the mountains as a reminder.
And he left it there until such time as all Men shall
learn to live in peace together.
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