Taytay's Tales - Folk-lore of the Pueblo Indians

Taytay's Tales were collected for a little girl with an insatiable thirst for "stories." The first ones were gotten by chance from the young Indian boy who has kindly illustrated this collection. Ann enjoyed them so thoroughly that we teased and cajoled other Indians into telling us other folktales, and so the number and our joy in them grew. We think perhaps other little children – and some grown-ups, too – may derive the same pleasure from them, so we should like to share our stories.

As mentioned above, the illustrations have been sketched and painted by a seventeen-year-old Hopi boy Fred Kabotie, whose Indian name is Na-kah-woh-ma (It happens again and again like the sunrise), with the exception of a few pen-and-ink sketches drawn by Otis Polelonema, another Hopi boy. Neither of these boys has had any training in art. They have drawn and painted the pictures according to their own conceptions of the stories. The dance pictures all represent real ceremonies still celebrated yearly by the Pueblo Indians of the Southwest. The medicine men's ceremony is "secret"; nobody is allowed to witness it except the nearest relatives of the sick person upon whom they are trying to work their charms.