michelson: fox Indians 527 



mythology and folk tales of North American Indians is treated 

 by Boas.^^ 



I have spoken above of my unpublished collection of Fox 

 folklore and mythology. This consists of several thousand 

 manuscript pages written out by Indians themselves. It should 

 be mentioned that even the stories previously published by 

 Jones have an entirely distinct literary style in this collection. 

 I presume this is due to the difference in the method of collect- 

 ing the material. However, it must not be assumed that all 

 my Fox myths and tales are of a single style. Indeed, on the 

 basis of style alone it would be possible to refer many to their 

 respective authors. For example, informant A is extremely pro- 

 lix, and fond of detail ; informant B is brief, but lugs in the rolling- 

 skull episode on every possible occasion ; informant A is a skillful 

 narrator and the tale runs along smoothly and with artistic 

 effect; informant C is unusually awkward; though his tale may 

 contain every incident in the corresponding story of informant 

 A, nevertheless there are distinct breaks in the narrative, and so 

 his tale could not be printed without patching up these portions, 

 however valuable it might be for linguistic purposes or for a 

 control of the myths and tales of others. A question I hope to 

 take up at a future date is the choice of words and phrases among 

 different informants. 



As to the contents of the above collection. A large percent- 

 age of the myths and tales in Jones' Fox Texts has been dupU- 

 cated; almost all of these occur with rather greater detail than 

 in his collection; numerous other myths and tales, among them 

 the Cosmic Myth, about 1,200 manuscript pages, of the type 

 represented in his collection naturally have also been collected: 

 the distinguishing features of my collection are the more numer- 

 ous animal tales ; many stories clearly of European origin ; origin- 

 legends of gentes; ritualistic origin-myths. I have previously 

 pointed out some of the European cycles. ^^ To these may be 

 added a fox cycle of considerable length and another called 

 "Tiger;" and it may be noted that Cosmic Myth (the story of 

 Me'sA'kAmigo'kwaw"") has an enormous number of incidents 



'^ Joum. Amer. Folklore 27: 374-410. 

 " Amer. Anthrop., n. ser. 15: 699. 



