The fundamental myths of a race have a surprising tenacity of life.

How many centuries had elapsed between the period the Germanic hordes left their ancient homes in Central Asia, and when Tacitus listened to their wild songs on the banks of the Rhine?
Yet we know that through those unnumbered ages of barbarism and aimless roving, these songs, "their only sort of history or annals," says the historian, had preserved intact the story of Mannus, the Sanscrit Manu, and his three sons, and of the great god Tuisco, the Indian Dyu.[9-1] So much the more do all means invented by the red race to record and transmit thought merit our careful attention.

Few and feeble they seem to us, mainly shifts to aid the memory.

Of some such, perhaps, not a single tribe was destitute.

The tattoo marks on the warrior's breast, his string of gristly scalps, the bear's claws around his neck, were not only trophies of his prowess, but records of his exploits, and to the contemplative mind contain the rudiments of the beneficent art of letters.