These stories are from James Mooney's History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees.
Mooney was an ethnologist that
worked for the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) in the late 19th and early
20th centuries. Between 1887 and 1890 he did fieldwork with the Cherokee, mainly
in North Carolina but also in Oklahoma. He published the results of his studies
with the Cherokee in the 7th and 19th Annual Reports of the BAE.
Most of the material Mooney gathered was provided by elders in the Cherokee tribe who had acquired this knowledge from their elders in the traditional way, passing the information on from generation to generation. Follow the first link in the list below to learn about these elders.