There are only a few points at which the composite photograph, produced by these twenty-seven stories, should be used with caution, and these disproportions or deficiencies are unavoidable at present. The first of them is religion. The book is likely to make the impression that some sixty per cent, of Indian life must have been concerned with religion. This imbalance is due to the fact that religion has become the best known aspect of Indian life. Ritual and ceremony follow exact forms which the native is able to relate with accuracy from memory, long after the practices have become defunct. Moreover, once his confidence is gained, he often delights in occupying his mind with the matters of belief and rite that put an emotional stamp on his youth. Social usages are much more plastic, more profoundly modified to suit each exigency as it arises, and therefore more difficult to learn and portray. The mechanical and industrial arts have a way of leaving but pallid recollections, once they have been abandoned for the white man’s manufactures; and to get them recreated before one’s eyes is usually very time-consuming. Thus, through a tacit coordination of Indians and ethnologists to exploit the vein of most vivid productivity, religion has become obtruded; and some excess must be discounted. Yet the over-proportion is perhaps all for the best. For the Indian is, all in all, far more religious than we, and the popular idea errs on the side of ignoring this factor. The stories are substantially truthful in their effect, in that the average Indian did spend infinitely more time on affairs of religion than of war, for instance.