The Indian Fairy Book

From the Original Legends

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Pages: 168

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About this book

Cornelius Mathews presents these tales as stories long told around lodge-fires by Indian story-tellers. His preface says Henry R. Schoolcraft first interpreted them from the old legends and that Mathews re-interprets and develops them so that they may take a place beside the Arabian Nights and Cinderella. The title page gives the year 1869 and illustrations by John McLenan, and an illustration titled The Celestial Sisters is listed for page 11.

In one tale a boy grieves over the spoiling of his new coat of bird-skins and lies fasting for ten days, then ten more on his other side. He decides to catch the sun in a snare, and his sister braids a cord from her own black hair. In another tale the king of the buffalos seizes the long-haired daughter of Aggo Dah Gauda and carries her across a river to his lodge. A third passage has a young man as bright as the sun lead a woman to the door, and a shining track shows in the sky.

About the author

Cornelius Mathews

Cornelius Mathews was a nineteenth-century American author, editor, and advocate for a distinctly national literature. He worked closely with Evert A. Duyckinck, co-founding the literary periodical Arcturus, and belonged to the circle later called Young America.