Indian Legends Retold

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.


The author wishes to thank the Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, D.C., for kind permission to make use of certain of the stories contained in their collections.

THE first Indian legends, repeated by the fireside to children, deal with the animals humanized, their gifts and their weaknesses, in such a way as to be a lesson to the young. Our view of the creation allows a soul to all living creatures, and rocks and trees are reverenced as sharers in the divine. Beyond their simplicity and realism there is always the unexplained, the background of mystery and spirituality.
These animal fables serve as an introduction to more complicated stories with human actors, which almost always have their hidden moral and are accepted by our people as guides to life. They are full of humor and poetry, of pride, tenderness, boastfulness, and real heroism. Human lives are mingled with the supernatural, with elements and mysterious powers, bringing swift punishment for wrong-doing. This is the basis of our Indian philosophy, the groundwork early laid in the mind of the child, for him to develop later in life by his own observation.
One who reads these stories carefully and thoughtfully will understand something of Indian psychology. Mystery to the Indian is not mystery after all, but a reflection of the Great Mystery which opens out as simply as a flower. To us nothing is strange or impossible. It seems natural that an animal or even a rock should speak; God is in it and speaks through it.