be,
I tell the tale as 'twas told to me."
First and chief in the list of story tellers comes A'yun'ini, "Swim-
mer," from whom nearly three-fourths of the whole number were
originally obtained, together with nearly as large a proportion of the
whole body of Cherokee material now in possession of the author.
The collection could not have been made without his help, and now
that he is gone it can never be duplicated. Born about 1835, shortly
before the Removal, he grew up under the instruction of masters to be
a priest, doctor, and keeper of tradition, so that he was recognized as
an authority throughout the band and by such a competent outside
judge as Colonel Thomas. He served through the war as second
sergeant of the Cherokee Company A, Sixty-ninth North Carolina
Confederate Infantry. Thomas Legion. Hewas prominent in the
local affairs of the band, and no Green-corn dance, ballplay, or other
tribal function was ever considered complete without his presence and
active assistance. A genuine aboriginal antiquarian and patriot,
proud of his people and their ancient system, he took delight in
recording in his native alphabet the songs and sacred formulas of
priests and dancers and the names of medicinal plants and the pre-
scriptions with which they were compounded, while his mind was a
storehouse of Indian tradition. To a happy descriptive style he added
a musical voice for the songs and a peculiar faculty for imitating
the characteristic cry of bird or beast, so that to listen to one of his
recitals was often a pleasure in itself, even to one who understood not a
word of the language. He spoke no English,