Creation - Myths of Primitive America. By Jeremiah Curtin. (Williams and Norgate.
10s. 6d.)—This is a specially valuable contribution to folk-lore. The American myths have a place of their own in the science, and the analogies and differences which we can discern between them and those of the Old World are instructive in no common degree It is impossible to overrate the importance of the fact of their isolation. One curious feature in it is that it is a story of metamorphoses. Mr. Curtin tells us that he has limited himself in this volume to the myths of two tribes, both belonging to the West, the Wintus and the Yanas. Incidentally, he tells us the terribly tragical story of the almost total extinction of the Yanas. They were slaughtered by parties of white men in revenge for two murders which they did not commit, men, women, and children being indiscriminately massacred. But if revenge was one motive, greed was another, for the Yana. were an industrious people. One of the murderers showed a friend $400 which he had taken from the bodies of his victims. No punishment, it is alleged, was inflicted, and no inquiry was made.
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