he
shorter and simpler stories and parts of stories, and have not always
insisted upon a literal rendering, but taken such occasional liberties
with the originals as seemed necessary to fit them to the exigencies of
an unlike tongue and to the sympathies of an alien race.

Nevertheless, we hope and think that we have been able to preserve in
the main the true spirit and feeling of these old tales--tales that have
been handed down by oral tradition alone through many generations of
simple and story-loving people. The "Creation myths" and others rich in
meaning have been treated very simply, as their symbolism is too
complicated for very young readers; and much of the characteristic
detail of the rambling native story-teller has been omitted. A story
that to our thinking is most effectively told in a brief ten minutes is
by him made to fill a long evening by dint of minute and realistic
description of every stage of a journey, each camp made, every feature
of a ceremony performed, and so on indefinitely. True, the attention of
his unlettered listeners never flags; but our sophisticated youngsters
would soon weary, we fear, of any such repetition.

There are stories here of different types, each of which has its
prototype or parallel in the nursery tales of other nations. The animal
fables of the philosophic red man are almost as terse and satisfying as
those of Aesop, of whom they put us strongly in mind. A little further
on we meet with brave and fortunate heroes, and beautiful princesses,
and wicked old witches, and magical transformations, and all the other
dear, familiar material of fairy lore, combined with a touch that is
unfamiliar and fascinating.

The "Little Boy Man," the Adam of the Sioux, has a singular interest for
us in that he is a sort of grown-up child, or a "Peter Pan" who never
really grows up, and whose Eve-less Eden is a world where all the
animals are his friends and killing for any purpose is unknown. Surely
the red man's secret ideal must have been not war, but peace! The
elements, indeed, are shown to be at war, as in the battle between Heat
and Frost, or that of the mighty Thunder and the monstrous Deep; but let
it be noted here that these conflicts are far more poetic and less
bloody than those of Jack the Giant-killer and other redoubtable heroes
of the Anglo-Saxon nursery.

The animal loves are strange--perhaps even repellent; yet our children
have read of a prince who falls in love with a