premised
respecting these legends and myths. It is this: they are versions of
oral relations from the lips of the Indians, and are transcripts of the
thought and invention of the aboriginal mind. As such, they furnish
illustrations of Indian character and opinions on subjects which the
ever-cautious and suspicious minds of this people have, heretofore,
concealed. They place the man altogether in a new phasis. They reflect
him as he is. They show us what he believes, hopes, fears, wishes,
expects, worships, lives for, dies for. They are always true to the
Indian manners and customs, opinions and theories. They never rise
above them; they never sink below them. Placing him in almost every
possible position, as a hunter, a warrior, a magician, a pow-wow, a
medicine man, a meda, a husband, a father, a friend, a foe, a stranger,
a wild singer of songs to monedos or fetishes, a trembler in terror of
demons and wood genii, and of ghosts, witches, and sorcerers--now in
the enjoyment of plenty in feasts--now pale and weak with abstinence in
fasts; now transforming beasts and birds, or plants and trees into men,
or men into beasts by necromancy; it is impossible not to perceive what
he perpetually thinks, believes, and feels. The very language of the
man is employed, and his vocabulary is not enlarged by words and
phrases foreign to it. Other sources of information depict his exterior
habits and outer garb and deportment; but in these legends and myths,
we perceive the interior man, and are made cognizant of the secret
workings of his mind, and heart, and soul.

To make these collections, of which the portions now submitted are but
a part, the leisure hours of many seasons, passed in an official
capacity in the solitude of the wilderness far away from society, have
been employed, with the study of the languages, and with the very best
interpreters. They have been carefully translated, written, and
rewritten, to obtain their true spirit and meaning, expunging passages,
where it was necessary to avoid tediousness of narration, triviality of
circumstance, tautologies, gross incongruities, and vulgarities; but
adding no incident and drawing no conclusion, which the verbal
narration did not imperatively require or sanction. It was impossible
to mistake the import of terms and phrases where the means of their
analysis were ample. If the style is sometimes found to be bald, and of
jejune simplicity, the original is characteristically s