Every spring in ancient Delphi was repeated in scenic ceremony the combat of Apollo and the Dragon, the victory of the lord of bright summer over the demon of chilling winter.
Thus do forms and ceremonies reveal the meaning of mythology, and the origin of its fables.
Let it not be objected that this proposed method of analysis assumes that religions begin and develop under the operation of inflexible laws.
The soul is shackled by no fatalism.

Formative influences there are, deep seated, far reaching, escaped by few, but like those which of yore astrologers imputed to the stars, they potently incline, they do not coerce.

Language, pursuits, habits, geographical position, and those subtle mental traits which make up the characteristics of races and nations, all tend to deflect from a given standard the religious life of the individual and the mass.

It is essential to give these due weight, and a necessary preface therefore to an analysis of the myths of the red race is an enumeration of its peculiarities, and of its chief families as they were located when first known to the historian.
Of all such modifying circumstances none has greater importance than the means of expressing and transmitting intellectual action.

The spoken and the written language of a nation reveal to us its prevailing, and to a certain degree its unavoidable mode of thought.