WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 177 



spoke English, or a half-breed, and in one case 

 a French -Canadian who had hved long with 

 them, translated the stories to me. They were 

 fairy-tales and folk-tales — I do not know the 

 proper terminology. Where they dealt with the 

 action of either men or gods they were as free 

 from moral implication as if they came out of 

 the Book of Judges; and throughout there was 

 a certain inconsequence, an apparent absence 

 of motive in what was done, and an equal 

 absence of any feeling for the need of explana- 

 tion. They were people still in the hunting 

 stage, to whom hunting lore meant much, and 

 many of the tales were of supernatural beasts. 

 On the actions of these unearthly creatures 

 might depend the success of the chase of their 

 earthly relatives; or it might be necessary to 

 placate them to avoid evil; or their deeds 

 might be either beneficent or menacing without 

 reference to what men did, whether in praise or 

 prayer. Such beings of the other world were 

 the spirit-bear of the Navajos; and the ghost- 

 wolf of the Pawnees, to whom one of my troop- 

 ers before Santiago, an educated, full-blood 

 Pawnee, once suddenly alluded; and the spirit- 

 buffaloes of whom the Sioux and the Mandans 

 told endless stories, who came up from some- 

 where underground in the far north, who at 



