66 SENECA FICTION, LEGENDS, AND MYTHS [eth. ann. 32 



periences in which a certain number of persons are intensely inter- 

 ested — tribal wars, feals and acts and sayings of great loaders and 

 reformers, and other noteworthy public events claim permanency of 

 record, and thus history is written. 



Popular tradition treats historical events in a naive poetical way, 

 and authentic historical expciiences may thus be preserved. Through 

 poetic treatment oral tradition becomes legend, so that one of the 

 clearest criterions of legend is the fact that it frequently relates 

 things that are not credible. Legend is the tradition of men who 

 have not the art of writing and is a particular form of poetic narra- 

 tive. So that in origin and nature history differs from legend 

 because of difference of spheres of interest. Private and personal 

 affairs and experiences and things that are of some interest to the 

 common people and heroes, great personages, and public events aiid 

 affairs are made attractive to tlie popular minds by means of poetic 

 treatment. Legend is oral tradition in use among folk who do not 

 make use of writing or other graphic art to secure permanencj^ of 

 record, while history is the written record of events and achievements 

 and thoughts of men, which always presupposes the existence and 

 the practice of graphic or .scriptorial art. 



Now, oral tradition, or legend, is not transmitted without im- 

 portant variation in details from generation to generation, and 

 so it is an untrustworthy medium for the conveyance of historical 

 events. 



The saga, or popular story, may become sacred legend — that is, a 

 characteristically "sacred" narrative about the "first people," or 

 the gods — or it may remain simply a story or tale. These two 

 classes of story or narrativ^'j had specific names among the Seneca 

 and their congeners of the Iroquoian stock. The sacred legend was 

 called Kd'kdd\ or Kd'kara' by the r-using dialects of the Iroquoian 

 tribes. The literal meaning of this noun is not known; in the Onon- 

 daga dialect the A;-sound would be replaced by the g^-sound. These 

 legends are " sacred " to the extent that they would not be related 

 except during certain seasons of the year for the fear of breaking a 

 religious taboo, forbidding strictly the telling of this class of nar- 

 rative. The transgression of this prohibition was punished by the 

 offended and vexed " first people," concerning whom the myths or 

 stories are related, although modern story-tellers, with scarce an 

 exception, who have forgotten the true and logical reason for the 

 inhibition mistakenly declare that the aforesaid penalty would be 

 inflicted by the toads or snakes or by some other subtle animal. 



The myths of the American Indian refer to an order of things 

 which preceded the pi-esent order, and to a race of man-beings who 

 dwelt first in the world above the sky and later in small number only 

 on this earth and who wei'e the so-called " first people," " the ancients." 



