Abstract
Wf T THILE doing field-work on a Chippewa reservation in northern Wisconsin during the summer of I944, I had as my informant a conservative seventy-year-old Mide priest called Tom Badger,2 who agreed to dictate to me the origin legend which is told in conjunction with the rituals of the Midewiwin, or Medicine Dance. His version of this legend will be presented in this paper. There are, of course, many points of view from which one could analyze a document of this kind. An origin legend is always of interest as a long-treasured storehouse of cosmological belief, historical tradition, and folklore. It may be combed by the ethnologist for historical clues-for evidence of past migrations and contact with other cultures-or to gain some conception of preliterate beliefs concerning natural phenomena, astronomical lore, etc. But an origin legend may be regarded from still an-
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