NOTES AND PARALLELS TO MYTHS 



In the preparation of the following' notes and parallels the pur- 

 pose has been to incorporate every Cherokee variant or pseudouiyth 

 obtainable from anj- source, and to give some explanation of tribal 

 customs and beliefs touched upon in the myths, jiarticularh- among 

 the Southern tribes. A certain number of parallels have been incor- 

 porated, but it must be obvious that this field is too vast for treat- 

 ment within the limits of a single volume. Moreover, in view of 

 the small number of tribes that have yet been studied, in comparison 

 with the great number still unstudied, it is very doubtful whether the 

 time has arrived for any extended treatment of Indian mythology. 

 The most complete index of parallels that has yet appeared is that 

 accompanying the splendid collection by Dr Franz Boas, Indianische 

 Sagen von der nordpacilischen Kiiste Amerikas.' In drawing the line 

 it has been found necessary to restrict comparisons, excepting iu a 

 few special cases, to the territory of the United States or the imme- 

 diate tjorder country, although this compels the omission of several 

 of the best collections, particularly from the northwest coast and the 

 interior of British America. Enough has been given to show thatour 

 native tribes had mj'ths of their own without borrowing from other 

 races, and that these were so widely and constantly disseminated by 

 trade and travel and interchange of ceremonial over wide areas as to 

 make the Indian myth system as nmch a unit in this countr}' as was 

 the Aryan myth structure in Europe and Asia. Every additional 

 tribal study may be expected to corroborate this result. 



A more special study of Cherokee mj^ths in their connection with 

 the medical and religious ritual of the tribe is reserved for a future 

 paper, of which preliminary presentation has been given in the 

 author's Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees, in the Seventh Annual 

 Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. 



Stories .\nd story tellers (p. 229); Migration legend — In Buttrick's Antiqui- 

 ties'-^ we find some notice of this migration legend, whieli, as given by tlie mission- 

 ary, is unfortunately so badly mixed up with the Bible story that it is almost impos- 

 sible to isolate the genuine. He starts them under the leadership of their "greatest 

 prophet," Wasi — who is simply Moses — in search of a far distant country where 

 they may be safe from their enemies. Who these enemies are, or in what quarter 

 they live, is not stated. Soon after setting out they come to a great water, which 



> Asher & Co., Berlin, 1S95. 



-Antiquities of the Cheroliee Indians, compiled from the collection of Reverend Sabin Buttrick, 

 their missionary from 1817 to 1847, as presented in the Indian Chieftain; Vinita, Indian Territory, 1884. 



428 



