Introduction

The fourteen stories presented in this collection were secured during 1913 and 1914 among the Central Sierra Miwok of Tuolumne County, California. Three, which are exceedingly brief, were told by William Fuller of Soulsbyville. The remaining eleven were obtained from Thomas Williams of Jamestown, whose picture appears in plate 6.

All are sentence-by-sentence translations into English of myths which were recorded in Miwok on the phonograph.

These stories were formerly related at night in the Circular assembly houses of the Miwok. Certain men versed in the myths often