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.
_The Authority_