the feelings which lead an Indian to perform a particular action are not
those which would induce a white man to do the same thing, or if they are,
the train of reasoning which led up to the Indian's motive is not the
reasoning of the white man.

In a volume about the Pawnees,[1] I endeavored to show how Indians think
and feel by letting some of them tell their own stories in their own
fashion, and thus explain in their own way how they look at the every-day
occurrences of their life, what motives govern them, and how they reason.

[Footnote 1: Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-Tales.]

In the present volume, I treat of another race of Indians in precisely the
same way. I give the Blackfoot stories as they have been told to me by the
Indians themselves, not elaborating nor adding to them. In all cases except
one they were written down as they fell from the lips of the storyteller.
Sometimes I have transposed a sentence or two, or have added a few words of
explanation; but the stories as here given are told in the words of the
original narrators as nearly as it is possible to render those words into
the simplest every-day English. These are Indians' stories, pictures of
Indian life drawn by Indian artists, and showing this life from the
Indian's point of view. Those who read these stories will have the
narratives just as they came to me from the lips of the Indians themselves;
and from the tales they can get a true notion of the real man who is
speaking. He is not the Indian of the newspapers, nor of the novel, nor of
the Eastern sentimentalist, nor of the Western boomer, but the real Indian
as he is in his daily life among his own people, his friends, where he is
not embarrassed by the presence of strangers, nor trying to produce
effects, but is himself--the true, natural man.