Traditions of the North American Indians

Name: Traditions of the North American Indians
Author: James Athearn Jones

The first of three volumes of collected Native American folktales or oral traditions.

Born in Massachusetts in 1790, James Athearn Jones grew up with Native American culture all around him. His childhood nursemaid was from the Gay Head tribe, and his household was frequented by other local Indigenous people of all ages. He enjoyed hearing their folktales. As an adult, he traveled the continent and sought to preserve and collect these stories in a book.

In this first of three volumes, Jones shares eighteen captivating folktales from the North American Indians he encountered in his life. Discover such stories as “The Man of Ashes,” “Pomatare, the Flying Beaver,” and “The Resurrection of the Bison.” This enriching and enlightening collection serves as a fascinating means to explore some of the history and culture of Native Americans.

James Athearn Jones

James Athearn Jones (1790–1853) made several voyages to the West Indies, and subsequently became a teacher and an editor in Philadelphia. He lived in England from 1829–1831, and edited papers in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1846, and Buffalo. New York, in 1851. He published a collection of Native American folklore, Traditions of the North American Indians. Many of the legends were obtained from the Jones’s nurse, an Indigenous woman of the Gay Head tribe in Massachusetts.