Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/406

338 the briar patch is identical with the close of the famous Tar Baby story, and several other points will be found in other legends. This mixture seems to be a strong argument for one original source of them all.

As a natural consequence of the present environment of the Afro-American, his legendary gifts are fast leaving him; with the present generation they will be quite lost to the world, and if any effort is to be made to secure them it must be done quickly and skilfully, for the generation of to-day scorns the old time legends and superstitions. Only the old-timers prize and cherish them, and these are not only rapidly passing away, but it is difi&cult to find the key to their hidden treasures. "When they have vanished, the curio-hunter in the realm of Afro-American folk-lore will realize that the mines he sought to open have disappeared like submerged lands, and that the generation most closely allied to the primitive state of man, and which yet was near enough to him for scientific investigation, has disappeared forever.

Having briefly compared some of the distinctive superstitions of the Afro-American and African proper,—having realized that the negroes in different parts of the South hold the same superstitions Just as they do national other peculiarities, attention must be directed to another division on the subject. Before turning to this reference, must be made to the very remarkable book recently published by Miss Owen; but since it deals with a separate and distinct class of folk-lore, that in which the Negroes and Indians unite as collaborators and equally share the percentage of the legends, it will not be discussed here.

The other division, and one which sustains an important relation to the subject of this paper, is to be discovered in the legends of the Indians of the Northwest which are yet to be unearthed by the student of ethnology. I have found among legends secured from the Indians themselves, and such as were located in distant portions of the country where it is not possible that Afro-American influence could have penetrated, some which contain identical incidents with those in legends current among our Southern negroes. How shall we