SACRED STORIES OF THE SWEET GRASS CREE 
INTRODUCTION 
These texts are part of a series written from dictation during a five 
weeks’ stay on Sweet Grass Reserve (Battleford Agency, Saskatchewan), 
in the summer of 1925. 
The principal informants here represented are as follows: 
Coming-Day {kd-klsikdw-jnhtukdw) , a blind old man; the Sweet 
• Grass Cree say that he knows more traditional stories than any other 
member of the band. He was easily trained to dictate, but, to the end, 
could not be rid of certain faults. Especially when fatigued, he would 
simplify his stories or omit portions of them. Occasionally he would 
interrupt the dictation to tell me rapidly — by way of a footnote, as it were 
— the matter which he had omitted; or he would append it after finishing 
the dictation; he could not be persuaded to dictate these portions. An- 
other of his faults is not uncommon among Indian informants: he will 
suddenly avoid using some perfectly common and harmless word. He 
explained by saying that he feared I might not understand the word. 
This is obviously a rationalization; Coming-Day knew that I had only a 
small vocabulary, that it did not matter whether I understood everything 
at the time of dictation, and, above all, he was extremely kind and patient 
in explaining (in Cree; he speaks no English) the meaning of expressions 
that I did not understand. I cannot explain the sporadic avoidance of 
words, but suspect it to be in some way an outgrowth (extension in the 
presence of a foreigner?) of the word-taboo that exists in every language. 
Similarly, Coming-Day will now and then, as though perversely, use the 
less appropriate of two synonyms, perhaps afterwards adding the right 
one. Thus, at the end of a story, he will characterize it as dtsimowinf 
when it is dtaydhkdwin {See below), or vice versa, or he will use both terms. 
In spite of these faults, he is a splendid informant: a good dictator, a patient 
instructor, and a narrator generous of his immense lore. 
Adam Sakewew (sdkdwdiv), his close companion, is stylistically more 
gifted, uses a greater vocabulary, but, especially in his earlier texts, did 
not dictate as well. He knows far less tradition than his friend, but when 
he tells a story, it is better told. 
Mrs. Maggie Achenam (kd-mhkaskusahk) , a middle-aged woman, 
dictates poorly; in all her stories there were sentences which I did not get 
a chance to take down. Further, she insists that she is no story-teller, 
and, indeed, she omits parts of her stories, or gets them mixed up. Never- 
theless, I took as much dictation from her as I could get, for she is full of 
interesting things (being, in fact, something of a sorceress); more than 
one archaic trait will be found in her texts. 
Louis Moosomin {ndh-ndrniskwdkdpaw) , blind from childhood, a man 
of middle age, uses many archaic expressions, and dictates well, except 
that in the process of slow speech he often gets muddled in his construction, 
I hazard the conjecture that the speech-mechanism of the Sweet Grass 
Cree represents an archaic type : speech about any exciting topic is usually 
accompanied by a higher degree of excitement (gesture and non-social 
