As the space originally apportioned to this merely preliminary essay on the Myths of Creation has already been greatly exceeded, the consideration even in outline of the cultural characteristics of the Zuñis, which would do much to further illumine the meaning of the myths, must be left to the second paper of the series. This will constitute a key or appendix to the present paper, and will contain such glossaries and detailed explanations as will render, it is hoped, all obscure passages clear, and will at the same time give my authority for framing and translating the myths as I have. Chiefly, however, it will in turn introduce a third paper on the sacred dances or creation dramas of the Kâ´kâ, which originally the myths themselves (as the source of the songs, rituals, and forms of these dramas) were designed to introduce. Lastly, the whole series are but preliminary to a very extensive work on the subject which I contemplate producing so soon as health and opportunity for further researches among the Zuñis will permit. As inclusive of the dramaturgies or dances, and nearly all other ceremonials of the Zuñis, this subject of their creation myths is almost inexhaustible. I, at least, can not hope to complete it, and I have therefore chosen to treat it in its relation especially to their so-called dances, particularly to those of the Kâ´kâ. With other primitive peoples as with the Zuñis, there seems to be no bent of their minds so strong or pervasive of and influential upon their lives as the dramaturgic tendency. That tendency to suppose that even the phenomena of nature can be controlled and made to act more or less by men, if symbolically they do first what they wish the elements to do, according to the ways in which, as taught by their mystic lore, they suppose these things were done or made to be done by the ancestral gods of creation time. And this may be seen in a searching analysis not only of the incidents and symbolisms in folk-tales as well as myths of such primitive peoples, but also in a study of the moods in which they do the ordinary things of life; as in believing that because a stone often struck wears away faster than when first struck it is therefore helpful in overcoming its obduracy to strike it--work it--by a preliminary dramatic and ritualistic striking, whereupon it will work as though already actually worked over, and will be less liable to breakage, etc. All this and much more to the same effect will be illustrated in the papers which I have mentioned as designed to follow the present one.