This is my version of the story that was taught to me by a Cherokee elder. There are many variations of this legend out there. It is often told during the Green Corn Festival, an annual ceremony practiced among various Native American peoples including the Cherokee. It is associated with the beginning of the yearly corn harvest. Historically, it involved a first fruits rite in which the community would sacrifice the first of the green corn to ensure the rest of the crop would be successful. The Green Corn Ceremony typically occurs in late July–August, determined locally by the ripening of the corn crops. Enjoy!

There once was an old woman who was raising her two grandsons. They loved to eat deer, rabbit, and quail but corn was their absolute favorite food. It didn’t matter how their grandmother fixed it. They absolutely loved it: Corn soup, corn stew, cornbread, roasted corn. They simply couldn’t get enough of it.

One day the two grandsons began to wonder, “Where does Grandmother get all that corn?” Grandmother overheard their conversation and told them, “You do not need to know where it comes from. Simply enjoy the gift.”

The next day, grandmother went into the smokehouse which was always locked. The curiosity of the two boys got the best of them. They tiptoed toward the smokehouse as quietly as they could and found a place where they could sneak a peak inside. What they saw astonished and amazed them.

There was a big reed basket on the floor of the smokehouse. When their grandmother stepped into it, she started to dance and corn began to fall from the folds of her garments until the basket was full of beautiful green ears of corn. The boys gasped when they saw the sight and hoped their grandmother did not hear them outside of the smokehouse. They left quietly and went about their day, talking about the miraculous sight they had seen.

That night, when they sat down for dinner, Grandmother asked them a question, “Do you have something to tell me?” The two boys knew they had been caught and so they confessed to their grandmother what they had witnessed earlier in the day.

“My dear grandsons, you saw something you should not have seen. And because of this, I will now grow frail and you will need to take care of me just like I have taken care of you. Then, one day, I will die and you will bury me in a special place that I will show you. I will also teach you how to prepare the place of my burial.”

The boys didn’t know what to say. Their hearts were sad. The next day, their grandmother took them out to a level field and showed them how to build a fence around the field to keep out predators. She taught them how to remove rocks, tree stumps and weeds, and hoe the soil until it was nice and smooth. She also told them that, one day, they would teach others everything she was teaching them.

When the project was finished, grandmother began to get weaker and weaker. The boys took loving care of her until she died. Then they buried her body in the special field they had prepared. They also began to wonder how they would survive without her and where they would get the corn from now that she was gone.

Several weeks later, a miracle happened. Green shoots began to appear in the field where their grandmother was buried. These shoots grew tall as they were warmed by the summer sun and began to spout ears of corn. When harvest time came, the boys stored some in the smokehouse and reserved enough kernels to plant them in the spring. They also took these kernels to all the Indian nations and taught them everything their grandmother had taught them: how to cultivate the land and how to plant the kernels so they would have corn to eat as well. And this is how we receive the gift of corn to this very day.

“Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of grain falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain. But if i dieds it bears much fruit.” Gospel of John

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