4 INTRODUCTION TO THE TEXTS. 



more useful dates and facts. Such results as these may be confidently 

 looked for when several dialects of one linguistic family can be compared; 

 and a careful comparison of one language with others spoken in the 

 vicinity, belonging to the same or a different family, will always be at- 

 tended with beneficial results for the inci'ease of our scientific knowledge. 



The aboriginal literary monuments printed below are authentic national 

 records of a brave and industrious mountain tribe of Indians. Ethnologic 

 notices have at a comparatively early period been gathered concerning the 

 Modocs and Klamath Lake Indians, but most of them were of doubtful 

 scientific value, because the information was gathered from them in the 

 English language, which they understood but very imperfectly. P^ven now, 

 the dates and facts recounted by them, as well as by Indians of many other 

 tribes, in English, are so extremely confused, that only texts written in 

 their own language can give us a clear insight into their traditions, myths, 

 and mode of thinking. 



No Indian tribe possesses a history of itself reaching back further than 

 two or three generations, unless it has been recorded by whites at an early 

 date, and what goes beyond this limit is tradition, on which we must be 

 careful not to place any implicit reliance. But mythology records in a 

 certain sense the intellectual history as well as the metaphysical ideas of a 

 people, and thus by the gathei"ing of the numerous mythic tales and legends 

 of the Mi'iklaks a start at least is made for the investigation of their intellec- 

 tual development. A very moderate estimate puts at several hundred the 

 more generally circulated myths of the Klamath Lake or E-ukshikni alone, 

 and the number of their popular song-lines, so interesting and unique in 

 many respects, may be called infinite, for their number is increased every 

 day by new ones. The bulk of their mythic folklore is of great poetic 

 beauty, freshness, and originality, and, like that of other tribes, full of 

 cliildlike "naivete." This latter characteristic forms one of their greatest 

 attractions, and the animal mj'ths of every uncultured people Avill prove 

 attractive, because they were invented for religious or poetic and not for 

 didactic purposes. To some of the myths given below we may confi- 

 dently ascribe an antiquity of over three centuries, for their archaic terms 



