Note: The Cherokee homeland was in the southern Appalachian Mountains for hundreds of years before Europeans and Americans forced most of the Cherokee to move west. AppLit includes tales from Cherokee oral traditions that continue to be retold within Appalachia and elsewhere. "The Legend of the Strawberries." In Chiltoskey, Mary Ulmer. Aunt Mary, Tell Me A Story: A Collection of Cherokee Legends and Tales. Ed. Mary Regina Ulmer Galloway. Cherokee, NC: Cherokee Communications, 1990. With one drawing by John Barton Galloway. After several failed attempts to trap an angry wife with other berries, the Great One appeals to her curiosity with the strawberries hidden under leaves close to the ground. The woman resolves to "never let her anger take her away again" and to keep strawberries in her home, preserved in honey. "And even now every good Cherokee wife keeps a jar of strawberries preserved in her home to remind her of the fragile nature of her home and the power of her anger."
For a lesson plan focusing on this picture book, see Kindergarten Lesson 2: How Strawberries Came into the World. In Crossroads: A K-16 American History Curriculum (administered by the Council for Citizenship Education). Duncan, Barbara R., ed. Living Stories of the Cherokee. Chapel Hill: U of NC Press, 1998. Versions of this tale in this volume include "First Man and First Woman," told by Kathi Smith Littlejohn; "The Origin of Strawberries," told by Davey Arch (based on Mary Chiltoskey's version); "The Origin of Strawberries," told by Freeman Owle. Littlejohn frames the legend as a reminder that all kinds of people should not argue. The stories are transcribed in this book in a free verse form that represents the storytellers' "rhythmic style," using the "oral poetics" method developed in the 1970s. Owle's tale is reprinted in Duncan, Barbara R., ed. Where It All Began: Cherokee Creation Stories in Art. Cherokee, NC: Museum of the Cherokee Indian, 2001. Companion book to a museum exhibit. See details on this book at Appalachian Folktale Collections. Dominic, Gloria. First Woman and the Strawberries. Illus. Charles Reasoner. Troll Communications, 1996. Includes a section of background on the Cherokee, with maps, documents, photographs, a glossary and a timeline. "Strawberries" by Gayle Ross. In Peck, Catherine, ed. QPB Treasury of North American Folktales. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1998, pp. 321-22. A Cherokee storyteller tells how a spirit takes pity on a heart-broken man (the first man in the world) and creates a new fruit that his angry woman will see close to the ground. When she eats it, love returns to her heart and she returns to her man. "And that's how the world's very first strawberries brought peace between men and women in the world, and why to this day they are called the berries of love." (Reprinted from Homespun: Tales from America's Favorite Storytellers. Ed. Jimmy Neil Smith, 1998.) "The Taste of Strawberries." North Carolina storyteller Gary Carden tells a version of this legend and explains other Native American myths involving strawberries on his web site, TanneryWhistle.Com: Folk Stories in Words and in Paint. http://tannerywhistle.com. See also: Other Cherokee pourquoi tales about plants include Selu, or the Corn Mother. Appalachian Picture Book Bibliography: Cherokee Tales Last update: 3/29/04 |
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Bruchac, Joseph.
The First Strawberries: A Cherokee Story. Illus.
Anna Vojtech. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers,
1993. The Sun is the being who helps the angry couple reunite
by placing sweet strawberries at the wife's feet as she walks away
faster than her husband can follow. Bruchac notes that he first
heard this story over a decade earlier, "while talking with Mary
and Goingback Chiltoskey, Cherokee elders from North Carolina."
But the tale "was first recorded in James Mooney's Myths
of the Cherokee (1990)," and Bruchac was influenced by Cherokee
storytellers Jean Starr, Gayle Ross, and Lloyd Arneach. This
version ends, "To this day, when the Cherokee people eat strawberries,
they are reminded to always be kind to each other; to remember that
friendship and respect are as sweet as the taste of ripe, red berries."