Dang! That hoot owl is back! posted 4/23/2009 8:06:19 AM | 1 kudo what's this?     report abuse tagged: owls, history, indians, nature

Etowah

A little folklore trivia . . .

There was a really loud Great Horned Owl in the wooded ravine behind my house last night, It was so loud that all the hound dogs in the neighborhood were barking incessantly in response. Well, I guess it was a Hoot Owl. The hoot didn't sound quite natural and I have never seen an owl in the woods here in the day time. We have lots of hawks and Piliated Woodpeckers, but no owls - too many houses around. Also, the hooting stopped after a noisy, old redneck pickup cranked its engine and drove out the street. More likely it was one of our local neo boys trying to spook me. They will use stuff like that to give death threats to people.

The historial connection between Great Horned Owls and the neo-nazi's is interesting. Despite what the Cherokees up on the Qualla Reservation tell you, the original Cherokees in these Georgia mountains came quite late. In fact, the first "Cherokees" to arrive in this county, were white Tories married to Cherokee women, who fled here in 1776 from South Carolina to escape the wrath of Carolina frontiersmen being attacked by the Cherokees. Most of the real Cherokees arrived toward the end of Revolution, after their allies, the British Redcoats, had been soundly thrashed in the Battles of Cowpens and Kings Mountain.

Well, at any rate, Cherokees even to this day are terrified of owls. They believe that owls are omens of death or else demons. On several occasions I have seen North Carolina Cherokees turn pale and visibly terrified when they heard an owl hoot. Since virtually all of the old families in this region are of mixed European and Cherokee heritage, such folklore passed into the mainstream Appalachian culture. During the 1800s, the Appalachian version of the KKK was called the Hoot Owl Society. Back then, and still today, they would communicate with each other using owl calls, when lurking in the nighttime woods near intended victims' farmhouses.

In contrast, my ancestors the Creeks, who were the original inhabitants of the region and town dwellers, considered all raptors, including owls, as sacred guardians of the people. The hawks, owls and ospreys watched over them in the day, while the owls guarded the towns and villages from attack at night. Great Horn Owls were believed to contain the souls of especially rightious grandparents, who by their piety, became guardian angels. The Creeks were monitheisitic with a religion very similar to that of the ancient Hebrews, while the Cherokees were animists, and had many shamans. In contrast, witchcraft and sorcery among the Creeks was a capital offense.

So today, among "traditional" Creeks/Seminoles in Florida and Oklahoma, you will hear the comment when a particularly pious relative dies, "They have become watchers now" . . . meaning that they were such good people, that their souls went to heaven and then came back as guardian angels to watch over their children.

As for myself, I like eagles, ospreys, hawks and owls and are not afraid of their sound. Often an eagle, hawk or osprey will hover above me for a mile or so while the dogs and I are hiking on mountain trails. If the Hoot Owl last night was really a person, I am sure the hawks and eagles today are watching every step they make. I'd place my bet on the raptors.

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