Ethnology, vol. 35, 1916, p. 393.]


=How and Why Myths Are Kept=

There are set times and seasons for story-telling among the various
Indian tribes, but the winter season, when there is likely to be most
leisure and most need of fireside entertainment, is a general favorite.
However, some tribes have myths that "can not be told in summer, others
only at night, etc."[16] Furthermore there are secret cults and
ceremonials rigidly excluding women and children, whose basic myths are
naturally restricted in their circulation, but in the main the body of
tribal myth is for the pleasure and profit of all.

[Footnote 16: Wissler, Clark, Op. cit., p. 256.]

Old people relate the stories to the children, not only because they
enjoy telling them and the children like listening to them, but because
of the feeling that every member of the tribe should know them as a part
of his education.

While all adults are supposed to know something of the tribal stories,
not all are expected to be good story-tellers. Story-telling is a gift,
we know, and primitives know this too, so that everywhere we have
pointed out a few individuals who are the best story-tellers, usually an
old man, sometimes an old woman, and occasionally, as the writer has
seen it, a young man of some dramatic ability. When an important story
furnishing a religious or social precedent is called for, either in
council meeting or ceremonial, the custodian of the stories is in
demand, and is much looked up to; yet primitives rarely create an office