LITERARY ASPECTS OF NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY. 
19 
he took the bow and laid it upon some coals of fire. Then the 
little bird went home and reported that Holy One was eating 
his bowstring and that he had said that he wanted to eat the 
bird. ‘Aha! It is about time,’ they said. Then, getting a 
large drove of buffaloes together, they tried to trample him to 
death. But he had gone out and was waiting for them, so 
when they came and trampled all over the place where he was 
supposed to be staying, he stood to one side and shot them, 
killing a great many. After a while the buffaloes said, ‘Come, 
let us get away, for we are being killed very fast.’ Then they 
stopped and went away. Then Holy One discovered that the 
snow was only on his lodge, and that in other places the ground 
was dry. Then he began dressing the buffaloes and drying them 
and packing them away. 
“One day it began to rain and it did not stop until the earth 
was flooded. Then Holy One got into a metal boat that he had 
prepared and went floating around. Suddenly he heard some- 
thing rap against his boat. He took his metal oar and struck 
the edge of his boat and cut the water-spirit in two. Soon 
another one rapped against his boat and still another one, and 
Holy One amused himself all this time cutting off water-spirits’ 
tails. After a while he heard something chewing at the bottom 
of the boat, and he took his metal oar and swung it around 
the bottom and up came a spirit muskrat cut in two. Again 
and again this happened, but he kept on cutting them with his 
oars, until finally the spirits said, ‘Come, let us quit, for we 
are being killed fast.’ ” 
In both these examples the repetition of the episode is stressed 
far more weakly and in both cases additions have been made 
in the repetition in order that it may be strong enough for the role 
it has been called upon to play in the plot. In the first example 
these additions are apparently intended to set off the characters 
of the sister and the brother-in-law, while in the second example 
they are intended to set off one particular episode — that of the 
snow storm and the attempt to starve Holy One — probably 
to prevent a monotonous repetition of the episodes narrated 
before. In using the word “additions,” we lay ourselves open 
to the legitimate criticism that the first narration of the episode 
