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(’HAPTER XIII 
FOLK-LORE AND TRADITIONS 
\'ery few men in civilized or uncivilized communities have the 
gift of genuine creation. They can modify and improve on what is 
known already, but they cannot evolve an entirely new style of 
architecture, or a type of literature uidike any that has gone before. 
Similarly, when a people borrows folk-tales from surrounding iDeoples 
— and tales, or at least incidents in tliem, are transmitted more easily 
])erhaps than anything else — it cannot assimilate them if they differ 
radically from its own folk-tales, but modifies them to conform to 
ideas and patterns that are already familiar and imposes on them 
the individuality inherent in its own legends and traxlitions. A few 
tales, of course, often remain imperfectly assimilated and preserve 
tlieir alien flavour. Nevertheless, taken in tlie aggregate, the folk- 
lore of each people has its own peculiar character, and mirrors, often 
with great clearness, the lives and thoughts of its exponents. 
The absence of writing among the Indians gave their’ folk-lore 
(using that word in its broadest significance) a higher and more 
important role than it jiossesses in civilized countries. It supplied the 
place of text-books in the education of the children, teaching them 
tlie traditional history, morality, and religion of their tribes both 
directly and through the ceremonies that in many cases dramatized 
tlie tales. In British Columbia men used the folk-tales as public 
records, citing them to ]>rove their claims to various rights and privi- 
leges, such as that of painting certain emblems on their houses. On 
the plains men validated their sacred medicine bundles by the legends 
attached to them, and in the east they established the claims of their 
bands to certain hunting and fishing territories by the recital of 
ancient traditions. There were many tales so closely interwoven 
witli the social and religious life of the British Columbia and plains’ 
Indians that they were considered personal i>ro]>erty, and although 
known to other individuals might be recited only by their owners or 
at certain definite times and places. It was as tliough the stories 
attached to the name of Aeneas might be told only by the kings of 
Rome and tlieir descendants, or the legend of Isis and Serapis only 
86!)59— 13J 
