These stories are quaint and whimsical, but they lack the
beauty of the myths of the desert tribes. There is nothing in all
Californian myths, so far as I have studied them, which in any way
compares with the one of the Corn Maidens, referred to above, or the Sia
myths of the Cloud People. In the compilation of this volume, the same
idea has governed as in the two preceding volumes?simply the preparation
of a volume of the quainter, purer myths, suitable for general reading,
authentic, and with illustrations of the country portrayed, but with no
pretensions to being a purely scientific piece of work. Scientific
people know well the government documents and reports of learned
societies which contain myths of all kinds, good, bad, and indifferent.
But the volumes of this series are intended for popular use. Changes
have been made only in abridgments of long conversations and of
ceremonial details which detracted from the myth as a myth, even though
of great ethnological importance.
Especial credit is due in this volume to the work of the ethnologists
whose work has appeared in the publications of the Smithsonian
Institution, and the U. S. Geographical and Geological Surveys West of
the Rocky Mountains: to Mrs. Mathilda Cox Stevenson for the Sia myths,
and to the late James Stevenson for the Navajo myths and sand painting;
to the late Frank Hamilton Cushing for the Zuni myths, to the late Frank
Russell for the Pima myths, to the late Stephen Powers for the
Californian myths, and also to James Mooney and Cosmos Mindeleff.
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