ue'wS] introductiok 51 



who know that the obscene can not be the dominant theme of the 

 legeiulary lore of any people. Snch men will take the necessary time 

 and trouble to become sufficiently acquainted with the people whose 

 literature they desire to record to gain the confidence and good will 

 of the teachers and the wise men and women of the community, 

 because these are the only persons capable of giving anything like a 

 trustworthy recital of the legendary and the ]ioetic narratives and the 

 sacred lore of their people. 



Should one attempt to acquire standard specimens of the litera- 

 ture of the white people of America by consulting corner loafers and 

 their ilk, thereby obtaining a mass of coarse and obscene tales and 

 stories wholly misrepresenting the living thought of the great mass 

 of the white people of the country, the procedure would in no wise 

 dilTer. seemingly, from the usual course pursued by those who claim 

 to be collecting the literature of the American Indian people by con- 

 sulting immature youth, agency interpreters, and other uninformed 

 persons, rather than by gaining the confidence of and consulting the 

 native priests and shamans and statesmen. 



To claim that in American Indian communities their story-tellers, 

 owing to alleged Christian influence, are editing the mythic tales 

 and legends of their people into a higher moral tone is specious and is 

 a sop thrown to religious prejudice for the purpose of giving color 

 to the defense of an erroneous view of the moral tone of such mytlis 

 and legends. 



It is notorious that in this transition period of American Indian 

 life the frontiersman and the trader on the borderland have not been 

 in general of such moral character as to reflect the highest ideals in 

 thought or action. Few genuine native legends and myths show 

 any so-called " moral " revision from contact with " white people." It 

 is, of course, undeniable that the coarse, the rude, and the vulgar in 

 word, thought, and deed are verj' real and ever-present elements in 

 the life of every so-called Christian community; and they are present 

 in every other community. But this fact does not at all argue that it 

 is useful to collect and record in detail the narratives of these in- 

 decent aspects of life in any community, becaiise the wholesome, the 

 instructive, and the poetic and beautiful are, for.sooth. far more diffi- 

 cult to obtain. 



Except in the case of novices in the work it may be stated tliat 

 the moral tone or quality of the mythic and legendary material col- 

 lected in any community is measurably an unconscious reflex of the 

 mental and moral attitude of the collector toward the high ideals 

 of the race. 



It is a pleasure to make reference here to the work of Mr. Frank 

 Hamilton Cushing. Dr. Washington Matthews, and Mr. Jeremiah 

 Curtin, who. in order to study with discrimination and sympathy the 



