or station for the narrator, nor is the distinction so marked as the
profession of the medicine man and the priest.


=Service of Myth=

As to the service of myth in primitive life, Wissler[17] says: "It
serves as a body of information, as stylistic pattern, as inspiration,
as ethical precepts, and finally as art. It furnishes the ever ready
allusions to embellish the oration as well as to enliven the
conversation of the fireside. Mythology, in the sense in which we have
used the term, is the carrier and preserver of the most immaterial part
of tribal culture."

[Footnote 17: Wissler, Clark, Op. cit., p. 258.]


=Hopi Story-Telling=

There comes a time in the Hopi year when crops have been harvested, most
of the heavier and more essentially important religious ceremonials have
been performed in their calendar places, and even the main supply of
wood for winter fires has been gathered. To be sure, minor dances, some
religious and some social, will be taking place from time to time, but
now there will be more leisure, leisure for sociability and for
story-telling.

[Illustration: Figure 4.--Kiva at Old Oraibi.

--Courtesy Arizona State Museum.]