Uktena

The Uktena is a great horned serpent of Cherokee tradition, as thick as a tree trunk, with a blazing crystal crest called the Ulûñsû'ti on its forehead, and so dangerous that even seeing it could bring death.

The Story

The Cherokee stories of the Uktena were recorded by the ethnologist James Mooney, who worked among the Eastern Cherokee in North Carolina between 1887 and 1890 and published them in Myths of the Cherokee (1900). In the version he gives, the Sun once grew angry with people and sent a sickness to destroy them. The Little Men changed a man into a monstrous snake, the Uktena, "the Keen-eyed," and sent him to kill her. He failed, and the Rattlesnake was sent instead. The Uktena grew so jealous and angry that the people feared him and had him taken up to Galûñ'lati, the world above. He left others of his kind behind, hiding in deep river pools and lonely mountain passes.

A second story tells how Âgan-uni'tsi, a Shawnee medicine man captured by the Cherokee, won his life by promising to bring them the Uktena's crest. He searched gap after gap in the mountains, passing giant snakes, lizards, and frogs, until he found an Uktena asleep on Gahû'ti mountain. He built a ring of burning pine cones with a trench inside it, then shot the serpent through the seventh spot from its head. The dying Uktena spat poison that hissed harmlessly in the fire and poured out poisonous blood that ran into the trench. Seven days later he found the blazing crest where a raven had dropped it.

Appearance and Powers

Mooney's sources described the Uktena as a great snake as large around as a tree trunk, with horns on its head, scales glittering like sparks of fire, and rings or spots of color along its body. It could only be wounded through the seventh spot from the head, where its heart and life lay. On its forehead blazed a crest like a diamond, the Ulûñsû'ti, "Transparent." Anyone seen by the Uktena was dazzled and ran toward it instead of away, and even to see one asleep meant death for the viewer's family.

Whoever owned the Ulûñsû'ti could become the greatest wonder-worker of the tribe. Mooney reported that the Eastern Cherokee still kept the one Âgan-uni'tsi brought back: a clear crystal with a blood-red streak, kept hidden and fed with blood, and used above all to see the future.

Origins and Sources

Mooney classed the stories of the ancient monsters among the Cherokee sacred myths, which in earlier times only those who observed the proper form and ceremony were allowed to hear. His versions came from a handful of Cherokee storytellers and healers, so they are one record among many tellings, and Cherokee people today may tell them differently. The Uktena belongs to the wider family of horned serpents of the Eastern Woodlands, powers of the world below who are the enemies of the Thunder beings above.

Legacy

The Uktena is one of the best-known Native American serpent beings and appears in museum displays, children's books, and games. Readers who want to go further should look to Cherokee voices, including the cultural programs of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the Cherokee Nation, and the United Keetoowah Band, alongside Mooney's record.

Related

• Horned Serpent: The Horned Serpent is a great water serpent with horns found in the traditions of many Native American nations, a powerful being of rivers, lakes, and the world below, often opposed by the Thunderbirds.
• Gaasyendietha: Gaasyendietha is the fire-dragon of Seneca tradition, a powerful serpent-like being identified with the meteor, which lives in deep lakes and rivers and flies between them trailing flames.
• Piasa: The Piasa is a monster once painted on the Mississippi River bluffs near Alton, Illinois, described by Jacques Marquette in 1673 as a horned, scaly creature with a human-like face and a long tail.
• Sisiutl: The Sisiutl is the double-headed serpent of Kwakwaka'wakw tradition on the Northwest Coast, with a serpent head at each end and a human face in the middle, a being of great danger and power linked to warriors.
• Dragon Species
• Dragons Across Cultures

Sources and Further Reading

• James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee, Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, part 1 (Government Printing Office, 1900)
• George E. Lankford, Reachable Stars: Patterns in the Ethnoastronomy of Eastern North America (University of Alabama Press, 2007)
• John R. Swanton, Myths and Tales of the Southeastern Indians, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 88 (Government Printing Office, 1929)

Cite this entry: “Uktena,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/uktena.