Cherokee Morning Song

Thursday, October 10, 2013

The Sky Girl.. An Algonquin Legend

The Sky girl legend from the Algon wuin people says that a long time ago, There used to live a great hunter, his name was Algon, in one of his regular walks to the prairie, he found a strange circle in the grass. He decided to hide on some bushes to watch and find out what was the cause of it.
Sky gir

After some time he saw a big willow basket with twelve maidens came down from the sky. The maidens got out and started to sing and dance. But Algon was captivated by the beauty of the youngest. He then ran towards them, in hope to steal the girl away, but when they saw him, got into the basket, which flew back to the sky.

Algon tried to do this three more times, and three times he failed. Then he came up with a plan: He put a hollow tree trunk in which a family of mice lived near the circle, then using some charms from his medicine charm transformed himself into a mouse. When the basket arrived, Algon and the other mice ran among the girls.

The girls stomped in all the mice killing them, but not on Algon, who became human again and carried off the girl. He took her to the village, and after a while she felt in love with him, having a son together, but their happiness did not last forever.

The sky girl became home sick, spending all day just looking at the sky thinking about her family, and finally she could not stand it. So she built a willow basket and taking her son and some presents for her people, she left to the sky, staying there many years.

Algon was very sad for his family, and for the next years he used to sit on the magic circle, waiting for them. In the mean time in the sky country, Algon's son grew to be a handsome man, and every day asked his mother about his father. For all these questions, the sky girl started to miss Algon really bad. One day she and her son spoke to the chief of the sky people.

He agreed to let them go back to Earth, but only if they return with Alegon, and an identifying feature of each animal that lived on earth.

Algon was so happy when he saw his family coming back, and as soon the sky girl told him about what the sky chief wanted, he did not wasted time and started to gather the gifts, some of them were:
  • A claw from a bear.
  • A feather from a falcon, a hawk and an eagle.
  • The teeth from a raccoon.
  • From the deer, its horn.
He put all the items inside of his medicine bag and with his family, went up to the sky-country.

There, Algon gave all of the gifts to the chief, who divided them among his people, and Algon and the sky girl, they both took the falcon feather. Looking the love between them, the chief said they should always be free to travel between sky and land.

Then he turned them both into falcons. Even on these days, their descendants are falcons, who fly high and low on the forests.

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