Reading Notes: The Journey to the Sunrise #1
In this story, which takes place a long time ago, there were several young men. They had made up their minds to find the place where the Sun lives, because they wanted to see what the Sun was like. So they got their bows and arrows ready, as well as extra food and clothes, and started East. They saw tribes they knew, met tribes they had heard about, and even some they hadn't.
There was a tribe of root eaters and another tribe of acorn eaters near their houses. In one tribe there was a sick, dying man. They were told that it was custom there that when a man died, his wife would be buried in the same grave as him. So they waited until the man was dead. Then a rope was tied around the woman's body, and she was lowered into the pit to die there as well.
The young men continued to travel until they came to a sunrise. They found that the sky was an arch of solid rock and that the Earth was always swinging up and down, like a door. The Sun came out of the door from the east and climbed along the arch; while it had a human figure, it was too bright for any of the men to see clearly and too hot to go too close to it.
So they waited for him to come out and tried to get through while the door was still open, but the rock came down and crushed the first man who tried to get through the doorway. Because of this, the other six were too afraid to try it, so they turned around and went back the way they came. They were old men by the time they had reached the other side of the world again.
I thought that this story was really interesting just because it personified the Sun; I think that on my next story I could try something new like this! I have only really been telling stories about animals and I think that doing something related to the skies or the sun would be interesting too since those have always been around and will fit within my theme. Perhaps I could make it about the animals coming to see the Sun, or the Sun looking down on the zoo animals.
The sun (in Teletubbies). Link here
Bibliography: The Journey to the Sunrise in Myths of the Cherokee by James Mooney (1900)
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