Legend Categories
North America / Southeast Area
Alabama - Another Fire Story


Once a Fire was almost burned out and was making the hissing sound then usually heard. When a man asked it what it wanted, the Fire said, "Something to eat." "What do you want to eat?" "I want to eat wood." So the man picked up some dead wood and piled a quantity of it on the Fire. The Fire grew bigger and bigger, and the man kept piling on more and more wood, until the Fire cried to the man to hold all of the animals back so that they would not be burned.

Myths and Tales of the Southeastern Indians, by John R. Swanton; Smithsonian Institution, USGPO, Washington, D.C.; Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 88 (1929) and is now in the public domain.