A story of the first woman: Selu.
Selu is known as "Corn Woman." Selu is our Cherokee word for Corn.
Selu lived with her husband, Kanati, and two sons- their son together and the wild boy.
Selu loved her sons dearly, but she knew their mischief and she tried to protect them from themselves.
Everyday, she would go away from the house and return with a basket full of corn. The boys wondered where the corn came from, so they followed her one day. They saw her go into a storehouse, and they got where they could peek in and watch her.
There they saw her place her basket and shake herself. The corn started falling from her body into the basket. They then thought that their mother must surely be a Sgili!
They forgot how she had given them milk when they were babies- and they did not realize that the corn coming from her body was as sacred as any mother's milk and just as pure.
Selu could read the boys' thoughts.
She knew she could not convince them not to kill her.
But she also knew that without the corn they would not grow as strong as they should. Without the corn, her children would suffer hunger and die.
So, loving them still despite what she knew they were planning to do to her, she willingly sacrificed herself and she told them that after they put her to death, they would need to follow her instructions so that they would continue to have corn for nourishment.
"After you kill me, you must clear some ground in front of our house. Then drag my body in a circle seven times. Then, you must stay up all night and watch in prayer and singing."
The boys did this, but they were so nervous when they actually saw their mother dead that they got the instructions backwards. They cleared seven areas of ground, and drug her body twice in a circle. Where her blood dropped, corn began to grow.
Because the boys were careless in listening to the instructions, corn must now be planted and taken care of in order for it to grow. And to this day, it only grows in certain spots and not the entire earth, and we only get two good crops of it instead of corn growing year round.
