"What I delivered to you were sacred truths, but this that you tell
me is mere fable and falsehood!"

"My brother," gravely replied the offended Indian, "it seems
that you have not been well grounded in the rules of civility. You
saw that we, who practice these rules, believed your stories; why,
then, do you refuse to credit ours?"

Every religion has its Holy Book, and ours was a mingling of
history, poetry, and prophecy, of precept and folk-lore, even such
as the modern reader finds within the covers of his Bible. This
Bible of ours was our whole literature, a living Book,
sowed as precious seed by our wisest sages, and springing anew in
the wondering eyes and upon the innocent lips of little children.
Upon its hoary wisdom of proverb and fable, its mystic and
legendary lore thus sacredly preserved and transmitted from father
to son, was based in large part our customs and philosophy.

Naturally magnanimous and open-minded, the red man prefers to
believe that the Spirit of God is not breathed into man alone, but
that the whole created universe is a sharer in the immortal
perfection of its Maker. His imaginative and poetic mind, like
that of the Greek, assigns to every mountain, tree, and
spring its spirit, nymph, or divinity either beneficent or
mischievous. The heroes and demigods of Indian tradition reflect
the characteristic trend of his thought, and his attribution of
personality and will to the elements, the sun and stars, and all
animate or inanimate nature.

In the Sioux story of creation, the great Mysterious One is