I originally posted this in BIAD's "Myths of Great Britain" thread, but upon further reflection decided to make it's own thread for it, since it is not in Great Britain, but North American instead. And turned into a mega-post.
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Some of the North American Indian tribes have tales of similar creatures to the Irish and Scottish "water monsters" said to be found in local lochs and loughs, depending on which country you are in.
The Cherokee have their stories of the Uktena, a giant horned mystical snake with a crystal set into it's forehead, and only vulnerable to an arrow shot into the 7th belly scale down from it's head, where it's heart is said to reside. The head-crystal is reported to have magical powers, and there is still one of these Uktena Crystals present among the Cherokee in the possession of an ancient Medicine Man who guards it jealously because of it's dangerous nature, so no one but he has ever seen the crystal alleged to be in his possession.
The Shawnee believe in Giant Horned Snakes that they may have gotten word of from the Cherokee as well as Giant Horse-Headed Snakes said to live in the Great Lakes, tales of which they may have adapted from the Great Lakes tribes. The Cherokee tell that the first Uktena Crystal was gained by a Shawnee man the Cherokee had captured, and who lived among them the rest of his days. He, it is said, was the first to kill an Uktena by the method described above, and although he gained the crystal and thereby gained great magic, he was a slave to the magical Uktena crystal for the rest of his life. For, you see, the Uktena Crystal requires a blood sacrifice once a year, every year, with fresh blood. It is told that blood is dripped onto the crystal, and is then immediately absorbed into the crystal, which then begins to glow with a throbbing glow, like a heart beat. This tale may be the origin of the Cherokee belief that the Shawnee were powerful magicians, or it may just be a tale to emphasize and underscore that belief.
The Shawnee, once upon a time, had 4 separate medicine bundles in the possession of 4 of the 5 septs of the tribe. One of those bundles is said to have had a strip of flesh and a bone from a Giant Horned Snake contained within it, in the company of a few other magical items.
Both of these types of serpents, the Giant Horned Snakes and the Horse-Headed Serpents, are said to live near water. Even a stump in the woods with a standing puddle in it is enough to draw them. The Cherokee Uktena is said to have lived in a bend of a river not all that far from @Mystic Wanderer. At the top of a cliff in that river bend is a cave with white streaks "dripping" from it that was claimed to be the habitation of the Thunder Bird. The Uktena and the Thunder Bird were at perpetual war with one another, the Uktena trying to eat the Thunder Bird eggs from it's nest, the Thunder Bird constantly trying to kill the Uketna in the river below.
Such are the Indian tales.
I would think that these tales may have been borrowed from the Irish and Scottish immigrants who settled this area, except that there are pre-European records of such things. Shell engravings of a Giant Horned Rattlesnake (some times with wings, some times with buffalo horns, some times with deer antlers, and in one case I know of, with a single horn on it's snout like a rhinoceros), Thunder Birds, and Bird Man Dancers have been unearthed from Mound Builder sites, confirming the ancient and North American origin of these particular tales.
The summer my Dear Old Dad turned 12 years old, he told me that he saw with his own eyes the trail of a giant snake in the dust of a road in rural West Virginia. He swore that it looked like it had been left there by a 12 inch stove pipe winding it's way up the road. He said he saw the trail several times over that summer, but never before and never since. He maintained the veracity of that tale until the day he died.
When I was in my early 20's, I used to frequent caves a lot. The area I lived in at the time, Russell County VA, was shot full of them. The terrain is what they call "karst", a sort of honeycomb of limestone caves worn out over the aeons by underground running water. Sinkholes abound there, where the roofs of caves have caved in and left dimples on the landscape. There are streams called "sinking creeks" that run along the ground and then suddenly disappear into a sinkhole in the ground. These streams feed the underground water supply in the caves. There is a cave called "Gray's Cave" which is part of just such an underground network of caverns that runs for at least 8 miles underground, and how much farther than that I can't say. It connects in the northeast with Daugherty's Cave on Cedar Creek, and in the southwest with another cave in Glade Hollow that can be seen from Route 71, which we called "Fincastle Road".
Daugherty's Cave is interesting from an archaeological standpoint, and a historical one. Excavations have found evidence of occupation in it going back 11,000 years, and more recently during the revolutionary War era, a tale is told of two Long Hunters who entered it to escape pursuing Indians, and who emerged from the ground 5 miles away in Gray's Cave.
In my early 20's, a friend of mine who is now deceased and I went caving in Gray's Cave. There was a passageway in it that was perhaps two feet wide and a foot and a half tall that ran for around 20 feet that I crawled through. Dave was too big to fit in it, but I managed even though it was tight. I never even considered the possibility of getting stuck in it and spending all eternity stuck there. Such is the exuberance of youth!
After crawling and squeezing for about 20 feet through that channel, I emerged into a huge cavernous room. Gravel floors and rock walls, the ceiling of it was so high that my flashlight barely reached it. To my right as I emerged into the cavernous room, the gravel gave way to sand, and on the other side of the sand, at the edge of it, was a body of water that I later discovered to be an underground river. It was probably 50 or 60 feet wide. I went to the water and threw a gum wrapper out of my pocket into it, to see if it had flow, and it did - it flowed from left to right, roughly northeast to southwest, a little faster than the surface calmness suggested. About half way across it, 25 or 30 feet away from me, there was a large, oval and rounded, smooth rock. The top of the rock glistened in my flashlight beam like it was wet, but that wasn't unusual. Those underground rivers can rise and fall in a heartbeat with surface rains. Flooding is an ever present danger down there. The rock was oval, about 5 feet long and 2 or 2 1/2 feet wide, and stuck up from the water maybe 10 or 12 inches. It was bluish-gray, like any other limestone dolorite outcropping in the area. As I was watching the gum wrapper, I noticed movement, and focusing on that rock, I watched it slowly submerge into the water, with minimal rippling.
Was it a rock that finally had the sand Supporting it washed away at that precise instant, or was it some"thing" else? I don't know to this day, and never will. it's just another of those things that happens in life that we never find the answer to...
... but there are the old Indian tales to contend with.
.
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Some of the North American Indian tribes have tales of similar creatures to the Irish and Scottish "water monsters" said to be found in local lochs and loughs, depending on which country you are in.
The Cherokee have their stories of the Uktena, a giant horned mystical snake with a crystal set into it's forehead, and only vulnerable to an arrow shot into the 7th belly scale down from it's head, where it's heart is said to reside. The head-crystal is reported to have magical powers, and there is still one of these Uktena Crystals present among the Cherokee in the possession of an ancient Medicine Man who guards it jealously because of it's dangerous nature, so no one but he has ever seen the crystal alleged to be in his possession.
The Shawnee believe in Giant Horned Snakes that they may have gotten word of from the Cherokee as well as Giant Horse-Headed Snakes said to live in the Great Lakes, tales of which they may have adapted from the Great Lakes tribes. The Cherokee tell that the first Uktena Crystal was gained by a Shawnee man the Cherokee had captured, and who lived among them the rest of his days. He, it is said, was the first to kill an Uktena by the method described above, and although he gained the crystal and thereby gained great magic, he was a slave to the magical Uktena crystal for the rest of his life. For, you see, the Uktena Crystal requires a blood sacrifice once a year, every year, with fresh blood. It is told that blood is dripped onto the crystal, and is then immediately absorbed into the crystal, which then begins to glow with a throbbing glow, like a heart beat. This tale may be the origin of the Cherokee belief that the Shawnee were powerful magicians, or it may just be a tale to emphasize and underscore that belief.
The Shawnee, once upon a time, had 4 separate medicine bundles in the possession of 4 of the 5 septs of the tribe. One of those bundles is said to have had a strip of flesh and a bone from a Giant Horned Snake contained within it, in the company of a few other magical items.
Both of these types of serpents, the Giant Horned Snakes and the Horse-Headed Serpents, are said to live near water. Even a stump in the woods with a standing puddle in it is enough to draw them. The Cherokee Uktena is said to have lived in a bend of a river not all that far from @Mystic Wanderer. At the top of a cliff in that river bend is a cave with white streaks "dripping" from it that was claimed to be the habitation of the Thunder Bird. The Uktena and the Thunder Bird were at perpetual war with one another, the Uktena trying to eat the Thunder Bird eggs from it's nest, the Thunder Bird constantly trying to kill the Uketna in the river below.
Such are the Indian tales.
I would think that these tales may have been borrowed from the Irish and Scottish immigrants who settled this area, except that there are pre-European records of such things. Shell engravings of a Giant Horned Rattlesnake (some times with wings, some times with buffalo horns, some times with deer antlers, and in one case I know of, with a single horn on it's snout like a rhinoceros), Thunder Birds, and Bird Man Dancers have been unearthed from Mound Builder sites, confirming the ancient and North American origin of these particular tales.
The summer my Dear Old Dad turned 12 years old, he told me that he saw with his own eyes the trail of a giant snake in the dust of a road in rural West Virginia. He swore that it looked like it had been left there by a 12 inch stove pipe winding it's way up the road. He said he saw the trail several times over that summer, but never before and never since. He maintained the veracity of that tale until the day he died.
When I was in my early 20's, I used to frequent caves a lot. The area I lived in at the time, Russell County VA, was shot full of them. The terrain is what they call "karst", a sort of honeycomb of limestone caves worn out over the aeons by underground running water. Sinkholes abound there, where the roofs of caves have caved in and left dimples on the landscape. There are streams called "sinking creeks" that run along the ground and then suddenly disappear into a sinkhole in the ground. These streams feed the underground water supply in the caves. There is a cave called "Gray's Cave" which is part of just such an underground network of caverns that runs for at least 8 miles underground, and how much farther than that I can't say. It connects in the northeast with Daugherty's Cave on Cedar Creek, and in the southwest with another cave in Glade Hollow that can be seen from Route 71, which we called "Fincastle Road".
Daugherty's Cave is interesting from an archaeological standpoint, and a historical one. Excavations have found evidence of occupation in it going back 11,000 years, and more recently during the revolutionary War era, a tale is told of two Long Hunters who entered it to escape pursuing Indians, and who emerged from the ground 5 miles away in Gray's Cave.
In my early 20's, a friend of mine who is now deceased and I went caving in Gray's Cave. There was a passageway in it that was perhaps two feet wide and a foot and a half tall that ran for around 20 feet that I crawled through. Dave was too big to fit in it, but I managed even though it was tight. I never even considered the possibility of getting stuck in it and spending all eternity stuck there. Such is the exuberance of youth!
After crawling and squeezing for about 20 feet through that channel, I emerged into a huge cavernous room. Gravel floors and rock walls, the ceiling of it was so high that my flashlight barely reached it. To my right as I emerged into the cavernous room, the gravel gave way to sand, and on the other side of the sand, at the edge of it, was a body of water that I later discovered to be an underground river. It was probably 50 or 60 feet wide. I went to the water and threw a gum wrapper out of my pocket into it, to see if it had flow, and it did - it flowed from left to right, roughly northeast to southwest, a little faster than the surface calmness suggested. About half way across it, 25 or 30 feet away from me, there was a large, oval and rounded, smooth rock. The top of the rock glistened in my flashlight beam like it was wet, but that wasn't unusual. Those underground rivers can rise and fall in a heartbeat with surface rains. Flooding is an ever present danger down there. The rock was oval, about 5 feet long and 2 or 2 1/2 feet wide, and stuck up from the water maybe 10 or 12 inches. It was bluish-gray, like any other limestone dolorite outcropping in the area. As I was watching the gum wrapper, I noticed movement, and focusing on that rock, I watched it slowly submerge into the water, with minimal rippling.
Was it a rock that finally had the sand Supporting it washed away at that precise instant, or was it some"thing" else? I don't know to this day, and never will. it's just another of those things that happens in life that we never find the answer to...
... but there are the old Indian tales to contend with.
.
Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king.
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’