Mythology
This subject would not present any useful information and only tire the reader with endless fable without arriving at any important conclusions. We could fill volumes with their stories of giants, demons, transformations of men into animals and other shapes, but do not think any fact thus elicited would avail any useful purpose. There are a great many traditions that would seem to prove that the doctrine of metempsychosis has formerly been the general belief, but they do not appear to put much confidence in their reality at the present day, and these stories are told more for amusement every evening than anything else. Neither does it please absolutely to contradict or deny that such things have been. In this way beaver are said to have been once white men from the sagacity they show in building their lodges, evading traps, etc. Thunder is said to be the flapping of the wings of the large medicine bird. Piles of rocks are supposed to have been heaped up by large white giants. The rainbow is called the sun’s wheel; though they are aware that the colors are formed by the sun shining through rain. All these and hundreds of others have legends of their formation which are very long and one or two generally occupy an evening to relate. Most of them, however, contain a kind of moral or double meaning and are occasionally interesting and imaginative, sometimes obscure.
To present an example we will record one recited by the “Thunder Stomach,” an Assiniboin warrior at the time we write and interpreted by myself, preserving as nearly as possible all the words and actually all the ideas of the Indian.