187 
obtained their present form, the world of Olympus and heroes of 
semi-divine birth had receded into a distant past, and the ordinary 
mortal pursued his course through life without thought of visible 
interference from the unseen supernatural powers. But the world of 
the supernatural has always seemed very close to the Indians from 
the most ancient times down to to-day. It figures even in personal 
narratives of the nineteenth century, vitiating many accounts of their 
early contacts with Europeans tliat in all other respects appear his- 
torical. 
Abandoning, then, the usual classification into myths, traditions, 
and folk-tales proper, we may profitably adopt a division that the 
Indians themselves employed. Every tribe, except those in the 
extreme north of Canada, separated its tales into two cycles, those 
that referred to the world of to-day with its familiar mountains, lakes, 
and rivers, and those that related to a supposedly earlier epoch before 
the earth and its inhabitants had assumed their present form.^ In 
that mythical “ golden age,” the Indians believed, man could freely 
communicate with the animals, which had the same thoughts, the 
same emotions as human beings and could even lay aside their animal 
dress at wall. But mighty tricksters or heroes transformed the world, 
and a chasm began to separate man and the animals, which could no 
longer discard their animal forms except in their homes, far removed 
from human view,- or on special occasions when they visited the 
fasting Indian to confer on him their blessing.'^ 
The folk-lore of the first cycle, then, inevitably abounds in nature 
tales, especially tales in which animals are the principal actors. There 
are anecdotes about beaver and mice, about a contest between owl 
and squirrel (resembling our “Fox and Cro\v”), and endless other 
stories of a similar character. No one has yet explained satisfactorily 
why such tales should have appealed to nearly every people both in 
the new^ world and the old.^ Not that they are exactly alike in all 
1 Tliere aro, of course, many border-line tales which might fall into either category. 
- Many, perhaps most, Indians believed that each species liad its individual home, where the 
animals could assume liunian form and live like huniaji beings. 
3 Radin’s interprclation of the Tntlian’s guardian-spirit would make his visitor not the individual 
animal, but the prototype of tlie species. “ Anthropology in North America,” by Franz Roas, Roland 
H. Di.von, Pliny E. (loddard, A. CJoldeinvei.ser, A. Ilrfllicka, William H. Holmes, Robert H. Lowie, 
Paul Radio, .John R. Swantnn, and Clark Wissler, jjp. 283-291 tNew York, 1915). This seems to 
represent the view of some philo.sophical medicine-man rather than of the lay Indian. 
■t Boas suggests as one reason tliat the individual anbiial in the.se tales is confused with the species, 
whicli is permanent and known to every generatjon, whereas human actors must be distinguished by 
individual names which in lime lose their significance (ibid., p. 343). 
