The Kidnapped Child: A Catawba Tale

A bad woman stole another woman's child.

The mother searched until she found her child; he hid her in a hollow log. "Wait here," he said.

Then he killed a deer but sliced the tie-string; when the bad woman lifted the deer, the strap broke. 

Then she saw smoke: they had set her house on fire! 

The boy and his mother rose up, up, up.

The bad woman grabbed hold to rise up, but she fell down; she is Ugni the comet. 

Mother and son live in the sky now; she is the sun and her son is the cloud.

(Pixabay)

This is a Catawba tale told by Sally Gordon; you can see the whole Catawba version in Catawba Tales; it is one of the longest stories in the collection:

I left out the part where a woodpecker helps the mother to find her son, but see another version of the woodpecker story here: The Woodpecker. There are lots of other details I did not include here, but you can see the full story online. For additional commentary, see p. 22 of Being Catawba: The World of Sally New Rvier, 1746-1840 by Brooke Michele Bauer; dissertation online.