Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/138

 1 1 6 Reviews.

canoes, houses, and plantations. Crocodiles are held as sacred, and are fed with pigs, dogs, and even with human flesh. In case of sickness a devil-charmer is called in, and he often makes puppets of wood to imitate the devils, which are fed and carried about ; at a certain time these are burnt or thrown into the sea as the patient recovers. A. C. Haddon.

Traditions of the Skidi Pawnee. By George A. Dorsey (Memoirs of the American Folklore Society, vol. viii.). Boston, 1904, pp. xxvi., 366, with 15 Plates.

After an interval of five years the American Folklore Society has again begun to issue its Memoirs, which include up to the present one volume of Angola Marchen, three of white American, and one of Bahama Folklore, and one each of Navaho and Thompson River Indian legends. Few will regret that they now seem, to regard the Amerind as a specially suitable field of work, and it is satisfactory to know that the three other Pawnee bands, together with the allied Arikara, Wichita and Caddo, will be dealt with in due course.

The present volume opens with an account of the Skidi Pawnee, and gives some details as to their cult and their daily life; the tradi- tions and the classification adopted for them are also dealt with. By a wise decision, six of the plates are devoted to showing various types of Pawnees ; the Folklore Society might consider the advisa- bility of illustrating the series of County Folklore in the same way ; neither traditions nor customs can properly be studied except in connection with the life of a people, and into this we cannot get an insight from printed extracts.

The traditions, to which numerous explanatory notes are appended, fall into six classes — cosmogonic (23) and with them the religious myths, tales of boy heroes (22), medicine (14), animal (18), and transformation (6) tales, and finally miscellaneous (7). Two points of interest as to these may be noted at the outset.