his
chapter how large is the number of white men who "too much lie" in
attributing to Indians stories, thoughts, and feelings, which no
Indian ever dreamt of.[251]

The genuine traditional literature of the Indians consists, as Powers
remarks (408), almost entirely of petty fables about animals, and
there is an almost total lack of human legends. Some there are, and a
few of them are quite pretty. Powers relates one (299) which may well
be Indian, the only suspicious feature being the reference to a
"beautiful" cloud (for Indians know only the utility, not the charm,
of nature).

"One day, as the sun was setting, Kiunaddissi's daughter
went out and saw a beautiful red cloud, the most lovely
cloud ever seen, resting like a bar along the horizon,
stretching southward. She cried out to her father, 'O
father, come and see this beautiful [bright?] cloud!' He did
so.... Next day the daughter took a basket and went out into
the plain to gather clover to eat. While picking the clover
she found a very pretty arrow, trimmed with yellow-hammer's
feathers. After gazing at it awhile in wonder she turned to
look at her basket, and there beside it stood a man who was
called Yang-wi'-a-kan-ueh (Red Cloud) who was none other than
the cloud she had seen the day before. He was so bright and
resplendent to look upon that she was abashed; she modestly
hung down her head and uttered not a word. But he said to
her, 'I am not a stranger. You saw me last night; you see me
every night when the sun is setting. I love you; you love
me; look at me; be not afraid.' Then she said, 'If you love
me, take and eat this basket of grass-seed pinole.' He
touched the basket and in an instant all the pinole vanished
in the air, going no man knows whither. Thereupon the girl
fell away in a swoon, and lay a considerable time there upon
the ground. But when the man returned to her behold she had
given birth to a son. And the girl was abashed, and would
not look in his face, but she was full of joy because of her
new-born son."

The Indian's anthropomorphic way of looking at nature (instead of the
esthetic or scientific, both of which are as much beyond his mental
capacity as the faculty for sentimental love) is also illustrated by
the following Dakota tale, showing how two girls got married.[252]

"There were two women lying ou