DORSEY] MYTH, ETC., DISTINGUISHED FROM THE SUPERHUMAN. 369 



them, in the dark backward of mortal experience, may have preceded 

 the other." The author has found certain Indian myths which abound 

 in what to the civilized mind is the grossest obscenity, and that too 

 without the slightest reference to the origin of any natural phenomena. 

 Myths of this class appear to have been told from a love of the obscene. 

 Nothing of a mysterious or religious character can be found in them. 

 Perhaps such myths are of modern origin; but this must remain an 

 enigma. 



§ 11. The Omaha and Ponka are in a transition state, hence many of 

 their old customs and beliefs are disaiipearing. Some have been lost 

 within the past fifty years, others within the last decade, according to 

 unini])eachable testimony. The Ponka are more conservative than the 

 Omaha, and the Kansa and Osage are more so than the Ponka, in the 

 estimation of the author. 



§ 12, Though it has been said that the Indians feared to tell myths 

 except on winter nights (and some Indians have told this to the author), 

 the author has had no trouble in obtaining myths during the day at 

 various seasons of the year. 



§ 13. James Alexander, a full Winnebagoof the Wolf gens and a non- 

 Christian, told the author that the myths of the Winnebago, called 

 wai-ka"na by them, have undergone material change in the course of 

 transmission, and that it is very probable that nmny of them are en- 

 tirely different from what they were several generations ago. Even in 

 4;he same tribe at the present day, the author has found no less than 

 three versions of the same myth, and there may be others. 



The myth of the Big Turtle is a case in point.' The narrator acknowl- 

 edged that he had made some additions to it himself. 



§ 14. No fasting or prayer is required before one can tell a myth. Far 

 different is it with those things which are " Wakanda4afica"," or are 

 connected with visions or the secret societies. This agrees in the main 

 with what Mr. James Mooney. of the Bnreau of Ethnology, has learned 

 from the Cherokee of North Carolina. Mr. Frank H. Gushing has 

 found that the Zuiii Indians distinguish between their folk-lore and 

 their cult-lore, i. e., between their legends and mythic tales on the one 

 hand, and their dramatized stories of creation and their religious ob- 

 servances on the other, a special name being given to each class of 

 knowledge. To them the mythic tales and folk-lore in general are but 

 the fringe of the garment, not the garment itself. When they enact 

 the creation story, etc., they believe that they are repeating the cir- 

 cumstances represented, and that they are then surrounded by the 

 very beings referred to in the sacred stories. Similar beliefs were 

 found by Dr. Washington Matthews, as shown in his article entitled 

 "The Prayer of a Navajo Shaman," published in the American Anthro- 

 pologist of Washington, D. C, for April, 1888. 



' See Contr. N. A. Ethn. Vol. vi, 271-277. 

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