INDIAN
LEGENDS RETOLD
BY
ELAINE GOODALE EASTMAN
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
GEORGE VARIAN
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1919
Copyright, 1919,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
——
All rights reserved
Published, September, 1919
Norwood Press
Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
Presswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
| BOOKS BY ELAINE GOODALE EASTMAN |
| —— |
| Yellow Star |
| Indian Legends Retold |
| —— |
| In Collaboration with CHARLES A. EASTMAN |
| Wigwam Evenings |
THE CAPTIVE
The murdered dove instantly became a whole flock of hawks.
Frontispiece. See page 18.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author wishes to thank the Bureauof American Ethnology, Washington, D.C.,for kind permission to make use of certainof the stories contained in their collections.
INTRODUCTION
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF INDIAN LEGENDS
THE first Indian legends, repeatedby the fireside to children, dealwith the animals humanized, theirgifts and their weaknesses, in such a wayas to be a lesson to the young. Ourview of the creation allows a soul toall living creatures, and rocks and treesare reverenced as sharers in the divine.Beyond their simplicity and realism thereis always the unexplained, the backgroundof mystery and spirituality.
These animal fables serve as an introductionto more complicated stories withhuman actors, which almost always havetheir hidden moral and are accepted byour people as guides to life. They are[Pg viii]full of humor and poetry, of pride,tenderness, boastfulness, and real heroism.Human lives are mingled with thesupernatural, with elements and mysteriouspowers, bringing swift punishmentfor wrong-doing. This is the basisof our Indian philosophy, the groundworkearly laid in the mind of the child, forhim to develop later in life by his ownobservation.
One who reads the