No, children, you are mistaken. Once upon a time there was a piece of wood. It was not an expensive piece of wood. Far from it. Just a common block of firewood, one of those thick, solid logs that are put on the fire in winter to make cold rooms cozy and warm. I do not know how this really happened, yet the fact remains that one fine day this piece of wood found itself in the shop of an old carpenter. His real name was Mastro Antonio, but everyone called him Mastro Cherry, for the tip of his nose was so round and red and shiny that it looked like a ripe cherry. As soon as he saw that piece of wood, Mastro Cherry was filled with joy. Rubbing his hands together happily, he mumbled half to himself: "This has come in the nick of time. I shall use it to make the leg of a table."

Raised among the Sioux until the age of 15, Charles Alexander Eastman completed his education at the Boston University School of Medicine and then accepted an appointment to a South Dakota Indian reservation, where he was the only doctor available to the victims of the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. Eastman further distinguished himself both as a writer and as a uniquely qualified interpreter of Native American ways. In The Soul of the Indian, Eastman defines American Indian religious life as it existed before contact with missionaries and other whites. Rather than a scientific treatise, Eastman has written a book "as true as I can make it to my childhood teaching and ancestral ideals, but from the human, not the ethnological standpoint." His discussions of the forms of ceremonial and symbolic worship, the unwritten scriptures, and the spirit world emphasize the universal quality and personal appeal of Native American religion. Unabridged republication of the classic 1911 edition.

Twenty-seven entertaining, instructive tales include creation myths, animal fables, and stories of brave heroes, beautiful princesses, cruel giants, and other seemingly universal characters.