112. THE IGNORANT HOUSEKEEPER

An old man whose wife had died lived alone with his son. One day he

said to the young man, "We need a cook here, so you would better get

married." So the young man got a wife and brought her home. Then his

father said, "Now we must work together and do all we can to help

her. You go hunting and bring in the meat and I'll look after the

corn and beans, and then she can cook." The young man went into the

woods to look for a deer and his father went out into the field to

attend to the corn. When they came home at night they were hungry,

and the young woman set out a bowl of walnut hominy (kanâ'talu'hi)

before them. It looked queer, somehow, and when the old man examined

it he found that the walnuts had been put in whole. "Why didn't you

shell the walnuts and then beat up the kernels," said he to the young

woman. "I didn't know they had to be shelled," she replied. Then the

old man said, "You think about marrying and you don't know how to

cook," and he sent her away.

Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology · 第 169 / 197 题