siOBX; - Smithsonian Institution

210 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 103
The hunters were astonished, but they returned to their families, and kept
all that they had seen and heard, hidden in their hearts. Summer came,
and they once more visited the mound on the banks of the Alabama. They
found it covered with a new plant, whose leaves were like the knives of the
white man. It yielded a delicious food, which has since been known among
the Choctaws as sweet toncha or Indian maize."*
An entirely different storj' is preserved by Halbert, whose notes
contain two versions, in both Choctaw and English. The transla-
tions are as follows
I
A long time ago a child was playing in the yard. Just then a crow flying
over dropped some corn. The child found a single grain of the corn and said
"What is this?" His mother then said, "It is really tanchi (corn)." His
mother then planted it in the yard and the corn grew up and ripened. So
a child was the finder of corn. In this way the forefathers of the [Choctaw]
got their seed corn.
II
A long time ago thus it happened. In the very beginning a crow getting a
single grain of com from beyond the great waters, brought it to this country
and gave it to an orphan child who was playing in the yard. The child named
it tanchi (corn), and planted it in the yard. When the corn grew up high,
the child's elders merely had it swept around. But the child wishing to have
it a certain way, hoed it, hilled it up and laid it by. When this single grain
of corn rii)ened, it made two ears of corn. And it was really in this way,
that the Choctaw discovered corn.
Solar eclipses were attributed to black squirrels, or a black squirrel,
supposed to be eating the luminary, and they must be driven oft'
if mankind were still to enjoy heat and light. Cushman says
The Choctaw . . . attributed an eclipse of the sun to a black squirrel, whose
eccentricities often led it into mischief, and, among other things, that of
trying to eat up the sun at different intervals. When thus inclined, they
believed, which was confirmed by long experience, that the only effective
means to prevent so fearful a catastrophe befalling the world as the blotting
out of that indispensable luminary, was to favor the little, black epicure with
a first-class scare; therefore, whenever he manifested an inclination to indulge
in a meal on the sun, every ingenuity was called into requisition to give him
a genuine fright [so] that he would be induced, at least, to postpone his meal on
the sun at that particular time and seek a lunch elsewhere. As soon, therefore,
as the sun began to draw its lunar veil over its face, the cry was heard
from every mouth from the Dan to the Beersheba of their then wide extended
territory, echoing from hill to dale, " Funi lusa hushi umpa ! Funi
lusa hushi umpa," according to our phraseology, The black squirrel is eating
the sun ! Then and there was heard a sound of tumult by day in the Choctaw
Nation for the space of an hour or two, far exceeding that said to have
been heard by night in Belgium's Capital, and sufficient in the conglomeration
of discordant tones terrific, if heard by the distant, little, fastidious squirrel,
^1 Adventures in the Wilds of tlie United States and British American Provinces, by
Charles Lanman, vol. ii, pp. 463-464. Philadelphia, 1856.