[Footnote 12: Wissler, Clark, Op. cit, p. 254.]

Such of these tales as were considered sacred or accounted for the
origin of the people, were held in such high regard as to lay an
obligation upon the tribe to see to it that a number of individuals
learned and retained these texts, perhaps never in fixed wording, except
for songs, but as to essential details of plot.

Many collectors have recorded several versions of certain tales, thus
giving an idea of the range of individual variation, and the writer
herself has encountered as many as three variants for some of her
stories, coming always from the narrators of different villages. But
Wissler,[13] while allowing for these variations, says: "All this
suggests instability in primitive mythology. Yet from American data,
noting such myths as are found among the successive tribes of larger
areas, it appears that detailed plots of myths may be remarkably
stable."

[Footnote 13: Wissler, Clark, Op. cit., p. 254.]


=Intrusion of Contemporary Material=

However there is another point discussed by Wissler which troubled the
writer greatly as a beginner, and that was the intrusion of new material
with old, for instance, finding an old Hopi story of how different
languages came to exist in the world and providing a language for the
_Mamona_, meaning the Mormons, who lived among the Hopi some years ago.
The writer was inclined to throw out the story, regarding the whole