one for its advancement.

I had been early led to place a greater value upon the traditions of the
Indians than has been attached to them by those who do not view them as
a series of authentic annals. For myself, I hold them in the light of
historical records, mixed up indeed with much that is fabulous, but not
in a greater degree than the early annals of other unenlightened
nations, who could not perpetuate them by means of letters. After all it
will remain for the reader to fix the degree of estimation in which
these traditions shall be held, and to determine the degree of credit
that is to be attached to them.

I cannot but think that I have rendered an acceptable service to the
world in preserving these traditions from the oblivion that surely
awaits them in their uncollected state. The North American Indians are a
people, who, in the nature of things, and according to that which has
happened to all, are doomed to be of the number of those

The sole memorial of whose lot
Remains--they _were_, and they _are not_.

In a very few years nothing will remain of them but a nameless barrow.
The day may come, when even conjecture will be at fault, as with the
builders of the western mounds, in determining who they were, from whom
they originated, what were their peculiar opinions, and the various
other matters and things concerning them.

It has been by some thought necessary that I should present to the
public proofs of the genuineness of these traditions. I shall proceed to
give such as I have been able to collect, and the nature of the case
will admit of my offering. Where they rest on my own word that they are
authentic, the corroborating testimony I rely upon is their asserted
conformity with Indian ideas, opinions, customs, and phraseology.

The first tradition, in the collection, "The Man of Ashes," is referred
to by Mr. Johnstone, residing at Piqua, in the state of Ohio, and acting
as agent for the American government among the Shawanos tribe at that
place, in a communication made by him to the American Society of
Antiquaries, and published in the first volume of their Transactions.
Not having that work at hand, I cannot name the page. I also heard it
from a Shawano when I was at Piqua, in 1823. It is probably an account
mixed up with much that is fabulous of their first meeting with, and
massacre of, a party of white people in alliance with a hostile tribe.

The second tradition, "Pomatare, the Flying Bea