These Indian fairy tales are chosen from the many stories collected by Mr. Henry R. Schoolcraft, the first man to study how the Indians lived and to discover their legends. He lived among the Indians in the West and around the Great Lakes for thirty years in the first part of the Nineteenth Century and wrote many books about them. When the story-tellers sat at the lodge fires in the long evenings to tell of the manitoes and their magic, of how the little boy snared the sun, of the old Toad Woman who stole the baby, and the other tales that had been retold to generation after generation of red children, time out of mind, Mr. Schoolcraft listened and wrote the stories down, just as he heard them. In 1856 this collection of his stories was published by Mason Brothers in New York City. A small brown book with quaint engravings for pictures, it is now only to be found here and there in families that have always treasured its delightful contents. It is republished, with revisions and with new illustrations in color, so that these stories may be passed on as they deserve. - Summary from the Foreword of "The Indian Fairy Book