INTRODUCTION. 
The present memoir comprises one hundred and forty-eight tales, of 
which forty-five were obtained from nineteen Skidi informants, seven- 
teen from five Pitahauirat informants, seventy-three from ten Kitke- 
hahki informants, and thirteen from five Chaui informants. Concern- 
ing this representation it seems advisable to say a word. First, it should 
be noted that the Skidi tales here presented are to be regarded as sup- 
plementary to those already printed in my ‘‘Traditions of the Skidi Paw- 
nee.’’ In the introduction to that volume a statement was made that 
tales which contained songs would be reserved for publication in a later 
volume. The forty-five Skidi tales here presented contain all those which 
were omitted in the memoir just referred to, and include also several 
others which have been obtained during the last two years. Next, it 
should be remembered that the Skidi to-day exceed in population the 
other three bands combined. In the Chaui band there are but two men 
living who may be regarded as full-blooded Chaui. Others, however, 
have married Chaui women, have become possessors of Chaui traditions 
and their bundles brought to them by their wives, and are generally con- 
sidered as Chaui to-day. The Pitahauirat band is also small in numbers. 
The Kitkehahki is relatively more numerous than the two bands just men- 
tioned, but the great number of tales from this band is rather due to the 
fact that thirty-four of the tales were obtained from a single informant. 
It appears that from the four bands thirty-nine informants are rep- 
resented. These collectively represent practically the entire story-telling 
population of the Pawnee, for the tribe to-day numbers about five hun- 
dred, whereas at the time of the removal of the Pawnee from Nebraska 
to Oklahoma, in 1874, they numbered over two thousand. This great 
decimation of their ranks, together with the almost total abandonment 
of their religious observances, has undoubtedly greatly influenced the 
volume of mythology in the tribe; especially is this known to be the case 
among the Skidi, where certain villages are no longer represented and 
nothing is known of the ritual accompanying the sacred bundle which 
‘belonged to that village and consequently nothing of the tales of its origin. 
Again, it may be pointed out that in the representations of the Pitahau- 
irat and Chaui of to-day it is not at all likely that anything approaching a 
fair representation of their mythology may be obtained. It seems, how- 
ever, that the inequality in the number of tales representing the bands 
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