What is Ay-a Cherokee legend?

Answer 1

I am Cherokee so I can tell you the story that I know very well. A-ya was a Beautiful maiden created to love a damned angel. His name was Kalona. Kalona was a warrior in the night realm. My people did not know this then, but we do now. The story is that Kalona was beautiful beyond compare. He had wings the black as night. And he could transform into a creature that resemble a huge raven. At first my people thought he was a god and they treated him as such. He brought luck. The crops were doing well and the women were fertile. But everything changed. I don't really know why. Kalona began to change when he first laid with a maiden of the tribe. He became obsessed. Ha hated the women for causing his lust. Every maiden turned their face from him and he became enraged. He overpowerd the men and raped our women. The ones he raped became pregnant. Do not ask of what because it is a most horrible thing. What destroyed him was his insaitable lust for women. Men tried for years and years to get rid of him. He was a magical creature and only magic could defeat him. My grandmother told me that the Ghigua called a meeting. They had to figure out what to do and so they created A-ya (me). She was made so beautiful that Kalona wouldn't be able to resist her. Each Ghigua women helped by doing what they could do best. A weaver, dressmaker, potter to make her from clay, fleetest, most talented. Each cut their palm and used their own blood to draw on her body symbols of power. They named her A-ya because she had a piece of each of them in her and she was to each women, me. One moring when the let her loose, Kalona saw and followed her to the cave in which he was to be trapped into for all time. When Kalona caught her in the deep of the Earth she turned and embraced him. She had been made to love him. And that's what she did. She loved him. But he was trapped. A-ya turned back into the clay she once was when the Ghigua women sang the spell that would keep him in A-ya's eternal embrace.

This next part is an added legend changed over the years of my people... No one is sure, but I'd like to believe this next part...

Seeing as she was made to love him, she could not understand when she had to turn back to what she was created from. It broke her heart. She was made to love, cherish, and be with him. And that's what she wanted to do. Legend says that the last thing she said to Kalona was, "My love, you are the warrior and I believe in you. My love, do not worry. I am here and I will love you for ever." A-ya cried terrible as her heart broke was forced to turn back into the earth, never to love the broken angel that fell from the heavens.

-usti tsasqua (little bird)

Answer 2

It is not a Cherokee legend, it is a modern love-story bastardizing figures from our stories. ᏤᏏ,