Tricksters And Wonder-Folk ( Originally Published Early 1900's )
The telling of animal stories leads naturally to the formation
of groups of tales in which certain animals assume constant and
characteristic rôles, and attain to the rank of mythic beings.
The Brer Rabbit stories, made famous as negro tales by Joel
Chandler Harris, appear as a veritable saga cycle among the
Cherokee, from whom they are doubtless borrowed. There can be
little question that "Brer Rabbit" — vain, tricky, malicious —
is a southern and humorous debasement of the Great Hare, the
Algonquian demiurge and trickster; while the Turtle, also
important in northern cosmogony, is represented by the put-upon,
but shifty, "Brer Terrapin" of the southern tales. The "tar
baby" by which the thieving Rabbit was tricked and caught
appears in Cherokee lore as a "tar wolf," set as a trap; the
Rabbit, coming upon it by nights, kicks it and is stuck fast;
the wolf and the fox find him caught, and debate how he shall be
put to death; the Rabbit pleads wi