Part 1 comprises the matter recorded in the field by the late Jeremiah

Curtin in 1883, 1886, and 1887 on the Cattaraugus reservation, near Versailles, New York, including tales, legends, and myths, several being translations of texts belonging to this collection made by the editor. This work of Mr. Curtin represents in part the results of the first serious attempt to record with satisfactory fullness the folklore of the Seneca.

The material consists largely of narratives or tales of fiction—naïve productions of the story-teller’s art which can lay no claim to be called myths, although undoubtedly they contain many things that characterize myths—narratives of the power and deeds of one or more of the personified active forces or powers immanent in and expressed by phenomena or processes of nature in human guise or in that of birds or beasts. They do not refer to the phenomena personified as things unique, but as equaled or fully initiated by human personages made potent by orenda, or magic power, hence they describe a period long after the advent of man on earth, and in this respect do not exhibit the character of myths.

Again, in some of the narratives the same incident or device appears as common property; that is to say, these several stories employ the same episode for the purpose of expansion and to glorify the hero as well as his prowess. An instance in point is that in which the hero himself, or others at his order, gathers the bones of the skeletons of other adventurous heroes like himself, who failed in the tests of orenda and so forfeited their lives to the challenger, and, hastily placing them in normal positions with respect to one another, quickens them by exclaiming, “This tall hickory tree will fall on you, brothers, unless you arise at once,” while pushing against the tree itself. Sometimes it is a tall pine that so figures in these accounts. Again, a pupil of a sorcerer or a noted witch is forbidden to go in a certain direction, while permission is given to go in any other direction. But at a certain time the budding hero or champion wizard goes surreptitiously in the forbidden direction, and at once there is collision between his orenda, or magic power, and that of the well-known wizards and sorcerers dwelling in that quarter. This pupil is usually the only living agent for the preservation of the orenda of some noted family of wizards or witches. The hero, after performing certain set tasks, overcomes the enemies of his family and then brings to life those of his kindred who failed in the deadly strife of orendas.

The identifications and interpretative field notes accompanying Mr. Curtin’s material by some mischance were not made a part of the present collection. Their loss, which has added greatly to the work of the editor, is unfortunate, as Mr. Curtin possessed in so marked a degree the power of seizing readily the motive and significance of a story that his notes undoubtedly would have supplied material for the intelligent explanation and analysis of the products of the Indian mind contained in this memoir.

The texts recorded in the Seneca dialect by Mr. Curtin were very difficult to read, as they had been recorded with a lead pencil and had been carried from place to place until they were for the greater part almost illegible. The fact that these texts were the rough field notes of Mr. Curtin, unrevised and unedited, added to the difficulty of translating them. Fortunately, in editing a large portion of one of these manuscripts, the editor had the assistance of his niece, Miss Caroline G. C. Hewitt, who speaks fluently the Seneca dialect of the Iroquois languages.