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Show ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT XXXIX of the lore repeated by the eldermen- and elderwomen night after night to while away the long evenings by the camp fire, and in this way they become impressed on the memory and imagination of the younger associates; for under the conditions of prescriptorial life they come to take the place of learning and literature in the growing mind of the youth. In the successive repetitions the weaker fables are eliminated, while the more vigorous are gradually combined and eventually strung together in an order made definite by custom; at the same time they acquire sacredness with age, and some of them become so far esoteric that they may not be repeated by youths, or perhaps even by laymen, but they are the exclusive property of sages or shamans. Now the fable, per se, is seldom vigorous enough to pass unaided into the esoteric lore of the tribe; but when it serves to interpret some interesting natural phenomenon, either in its original form or in its subsequent association, it is thereby fertilized, and with the combined vitality of fable and interpretation enjoys greatly increased chance of survival. Sometimes the historical element is also added, when the composite intellectual structure is still further strengthened, and may persist until history blends with fancy- painted prehistory, and the story becomes a full- fledged cosmogonic myth. Accordingly, the character and the age of myths are correlated in significant fashion. TUSAYAN MIGRATION TRADITIONS The most pressing and at the same time the most obscure problems presented to the archaeologic student relate to the interpretation of relics. Different methods of solving these problems have been pursued by the students of various countries; but it is held that the method employed in the Bureau of American Ethnology, and now pretty generally adopted throughout the United States, is by far the most trustworthy of all- it is the method of interpretation in terms of the observed activities of cognate tribesmen still living. It is in pursuance of this method that Dr Fewkes has passed from a sttidy of the abundant relics exhumed from ruins in the pueblo region to a study of the aboriginal inhabitants of neighboring |