190 
In the tales of the second cycle, those that refer to the world of 
to-day, human actors definitely j!;ain the forej^roiind and animals 
drop back to a secondary place. Tlie Indians believed — and in many 
regions still believe — that a stump could momentarily change to a 
man, that the caribou could push back the hoofl from its face and 
gaze out of a human countenance, that the snake or the owl could 
73462 
“Legend of the burning buffalo grass,” a ceremony held by the Blackfoot at the first 
full moon in June. (Photo hij Cauodiau Xatioital Railways.) 
address the sleeping Indian in his own tongue. These things, how- 
ever, happened rarely and not to all individuals, whereas there 
were many other tales of equal interest that they could narrate 
around their fires; adventures of the chase and of war, experiences 
of travellers among distant tribes, rivalries of chiefs and of medicine- 
men, medicine paraphernalia and their histories, and the ever-chang- 
ing incidents of village and camp life. Each tribe, of course, set its 
own stamp on these anecdotes, making them conform to certain pat- 
terns and reflect its own social life. The Eskimo had few tales of 
animals transforming themselves into men, but many stories of en- 
counters with strange half-human beings, of shamans and their con- 
