THE Indians neither built monuments nor wrote books. The only records they made were those picture writings known in after years as wampum, which were mere symbols, recording feats of arms. Consequently, all that is known of them prior to the coming ... Read more

THE Indians neither built monuments nor wrote books. The only records they made were those picture writings known in after years as wampum, which were mere symbols, recording feats of arms. Consequently, all that is known of them prior to the coming to America of Europeans is traditional or conjectural. Not a page of their history has ever been written by any save their foes, and the history thus written is so distorted and marred by prejudice that much of it is misleading. In the veins of the red man ran the wild poetry and imagination of the hunt, the chase, the battle, the capture, the dance, the forests, the valleys, the mountains, the streams, lakes and rivers, for a thousand generations; and yet they were without accomplishment in letters or arts. Is it, therefore, strange that they held in great reverence the traditions and legends common in their tribes—revered them as the early Christians revered the first copies of the sacred writings? These legends were told over again and again for unknown years. They were transmitted from one to another, as the unwritten work of Freemasonry has been transmitted by frequent and careful repetition. They were not bandied about like ordinary stories, but, repeated with something of a religious or sacramental spirit, as though the tales imparted an especial virtue to those who learned them from reliable sources; were held as sacred as we hold the transactions of an honored secret society. The legends common to one clan were known all over the continent wherever Indians of that clan lived, and there is little doubt that many of the legends of the Iroquois can be found in some form among those of the Western Indian tribes of the present time. Yet the traditions of the Iroquois herein contained are known positively to be two hundred years old, and are confidently believed to be the stories told by the red men thousands of years ago. The Indians never explained anything by the science of natural philosophy. Every effect had to them a mysterious, supernatural cause. They could not comprehend how sound thrown against an obstructing surface would be repeated and form an echo. Instead they found supernatural reasons for the phenomenon, and certainly very pretty ones. Only the absurdity of their ideas may appear to some, for in the light of present intelligence they are absurd, but, none the less, they are beautiful. If our forefathers had taken more interest in the peoples they found on the Western Continent, spending less of their energies in devising plans for cheating the Indians out of their furs and lands—a policy their descendants have closely followed and admirably succeeded in—our libraries might contain volumes of fairy tales that would delight the youth of many generations. It is not too much to ask the reader to remember that these stories were told in the homes of the red men many centuries ago, long before they learned from the whites the cruel, heartless, treacherous and vindictive characteristics that unfair history has fastened upon them as natural and inherent traits. If this is borne in mind, the perusal and study of these stories will, it is believed, give as much pleasure to the reader as the study of the Indian character, made necessary in order to properly clothe their almost forgotten legends with something like their original embellishment, has given the author. Less