A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.
Overview
The opening account describes invisible hunters leaving deep rivers after daybreak to take sleeping people, particularly children. They carry the bodies away and leave moving, speaking likenesses that survive for seven days before withering. Mooney distinguishes this feared community from the friendly Nunnehi. No name in Cherokee is supplied for it in the selected passage.
A sick man at Tikwalitsi, identified in the note with the Bryson City area, has been abandoned by frightened friends. An unfamiliar older woman offers help and leads him along a path beneath the water. The settlement below resembles the one above, with houses, working women and playing children. Returning hunters carry human bodies, some of which he recognizes as his neighbours.
The woman initially prepares the hunters’ food for him, but understands his horror and instead produces bread and beans. She feeds and cares for him until he recovers, then escorts him home with an instruction to remain silent for seven days. He observes the restriction by gesturing that his throat is sore. Once the interval passes, he tells what happened and survives. This complete ending gives a protective role to one member of a community otherwise represented as predatory.
Origins & earliest records
Mooney’s inspected Myths of the Cherokee edition is dated 1902. The named contributor is preserved in the appended story notes; publication is not a date for the beginning of oral transmission.
Records & interpretation
Story 87, printed pp. 349–350; note 87 identifies Swimmer. The complete selected narrative and its contributor note support the episode; Mooney’s comparative theories are distinguished from the telling.
In the literature
“there is no life in it”
Complete story87, printed pp.349–350; complete corresponding note pp.483
The opening describes invisible hunters replacing captured people with short-lived images. The following complete encounter instead concerns a deserted dying man whom a water-world woman shelters and feeds ordinary bread and beans after he rejects human flesh. He recovers, returns and eventually tells the story; no subsequent death is narrated. The woman’s helpful conduct and her community’s cannibal hunting remain alongside one another, without importing the Thunder guest’s fate.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Myths of the Cherokee
Story 87, printed pp. 349–350; note 87 identifies Swimmer.
- 02
Myths of the Cherokee — THE WATER CANNIBALS
Selected1902 Washington Government Printing Office offprint of Myths of the Cherokee, Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology; title independently read. Historical English collector-mediated narratives.
Family & connections
A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.
Located primary passages
Specific passages supporting details in this entry, grouped by their published witness.
Myths of the Cherokee — THE WATER CANNIBALS
Selected1902 Washington Government Printing Office offprint of Myths of the Cherokee, Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology; title independently read. Historical English collector-mediated narratives.
- The opening describes invisible hunters replacing captured people with short-lived images. The following complete encounter instead concerns a deserted dying man whom a water-world woman shelters and feeds ordinary bread and beans after he rejects human flesh. He recovers, returns and eventually tells the story; no subsequent death is narrated. The woman’s helpful conduct and her community’s cannibal hunting remain alongside one another, without importing the Thunder guest’s fate.
Complete story87, printed pp.349–350; complete corresponding note pp.483
No whole collection, independent oral recording, scientific verification or separate comparative work reviewed. Collector’s broad ethnographic and historical interpretations remain attributed, not asserted as universals.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary textMooney 1902: story 87, printed pp. 349–350; note 87 identifies SwimmerResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.