Creation Myths of Primitive America

by Jeremiah Curtin

Boston: Little, Brown

[1898]

Scanned, proofed and formatted at sacred-texts.com, November 2003 by John Bruno Hare. This text is in the public domain in the US because it was published prior to 1923.

FRONTISPIECE
Jeremiah Curtin in the Ruins of Palenque,
Central America

DEDICATION

To

MAJOR J. W. POWELL,

Director of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, LL.D. of Harvard and Heidelberg:

SIR,--YOU lost your right hand in fighting to save American unity; but though the hand went from you its cunning remained, with the power to plan and to execute.

The same kind of impulse that sent you to the field of battle to serve the country and the world, sent you to the field of science to serve as a geologist and an explorer in the majestic region of the Colorado, and finally brought you to found the Bureau of Ethnology. Through your labors, combined with those of the men whom you have associated with you, the world has learned more of the great primitive race of our country than it learned from the discovery of the continent till the day when the Bureau was founded.

I beg to inscribe this book to you as a mark of my respect and friendship.

JEREMIAH CURTIN.

STEAMER "GERMANIC,"
ON THE MID-ATLANTIC OCEAN
October 21, 1898.