Ella Elizabeth Clark Libri

Includes tales from the Wasco, Aleuts, Navaho, Apache, Yosemite, Cheyenne, Sioux, Chippewa, Cherokee, and other tribes with informative introductions for each.

The role of storyteller was always a very special one among Native Americans, combining the functions of philosopher, historian, and entertainer. Winter was the time for the stories around the fire, when the hunt was over and people longed to be “lifted to the fairyland of pure imagination,” as an early twentieth-century Native American has said. This book contains the magic created around the Indian fireside, for readers of all ages. It includes myths of creation, culture myths, nature myths, and beast fables, as well as the legends, personal narratives and historical traditions of thirty North American Indian tribes.

This collection of more than one hundred tribal tales, culled from the oral tradition of the Indians of Washington and Oregon, presents the Indians' own stories, told for generations around their fires, of the mountains, lakes, and rivers, and of the creation of the world and the heavens above. Each group of stories is prefaced by a brief factual account of Indian beliefs and of storytelling customs. Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest is a treasure, still in print after fifty years.