Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Uktena - a horned creature with a diamond forehead

From a blog called "Ruminations from the distant hills".

Interesting picture of a fish weir and some modern rock piles in the river. But this line caught my attention:

..."Uktena, in case you’ve not seen one lately, is a monstrous snake, as big around as a tree trunk, with horns on its head, a bright, blazing crest like a diamond on its forehead"



Just yesterday I was wondering if any Native American mythin includes a horned monster with something white on its head. Because that "horned creature" [click here] looked to me to be part of a myth construction. So I looked up Uktena online. Here is a representative result. It seems that this particular version of the "horned serpent" is a Cherokee one and, of course, suburban Westford is not the Cherokee area.

2 comments :

theseventhgeneration said...

That's interesting. Wikipedia mentions "Pita-skog", under horned serpent, along with Uktena. I googled Pita-skog and found this thread (specifically, the 4/7/08 post about the "tribe in the east that had a monster story"). I realize this is getting into something like "Unsolved Mysteries", but I have to say that one of your photos of that horned serpent effigy really looks like an Ankylosaurus. I thought that when I first saw your still photos, but didn't comment because it seemed too odd. Another thing I keep thinking about with the quartz in the neck is that a neck shot is a perfect kill shot, dropping the animal in its tracks. Although I'm not sure how that would work out with an arrowhead, compared to todays broadheads and/or bullets.

theseventhgeneration said...

I messed up that second link. Click here for the discussion thread with the "monster story".