They had to be gleaned and translated from time to time.
Seventeen years have passed since I first began them--not that anything
like this time, or the half of it, has been devoted to it. It was one of
my amusements in the long winter evenings--the only time of the year
when Indians will tell stories and legends. They required pruning and
dressing, like wild vines in a garden. But they are, exclusively (with
the exception of the allegory of the vine and oak), wild vines, and not
pumpings up of my own fancy. The attempts to lop off excrescences are
not, perhaps, always happy. There might, perhaps, have been a fuller
adherence to the original language and expressions; but if so, what a
world of verbiage must have been retained. The Indians are prolix, and
attach value to many minutiae in the relation which not only does not
help forward the denouement, but is tedious and witless to the last
degree. The gems of the legends--the essential points--the invention and
thought-work are all preserved.
Their chief value I have ever thought to consist in the insight they
give into the dark cave of the Indian mind--its beliefs, dogmas, and
opinions--its secret modes of turning over thought--its real philosophy;
and it is for this trait that I believe posterity will sustain the book.
Pages:
1366
1367
1368
1369
1370
1371
1372
1373
1374
1375
1376
1377
1378
1379
1380
1381
1382
1383
1384
1385
1386
1387
1388
1389
1390