The Dawn of the World, one of the great classics in American Indian oral literature, was collected from Miwok Indian peoples at the turn of the century by a natural scientist. C. Hart Merriam, famous in biology as well as anthropology, heard these myths and legends of the Miwok Indians of central California at a time when original cultural memories could still be recounted. This book provides the reader with a special view of their world--of the cultural and philosophical ways of the ancestors of today's Miwok Indian peoples. Until now rare and hard to find, it is to he enjoyed and used by peoples of many cultures."--Lowell J. Bean. The stories collected in The Dawn of the World were related by the Miwok elders "after the first rains of the winter season, usually in the ceremonial roundhouse and always at night by the dim light of a flickering fire. They constitute the religious history of the tribe, and from time immemorial have been handed down by word of mouth," writes C. Hart Merriam. Included are creation myths and accounts of the First People, beings who antedated humans, as well as tales about animals, death and ghosts, witches and giants, and natural phenomena. A professor of anthropology at California State University, Hayward, Lowell J. Bean is director of the C. F. Smith Museum of Anthropology. He is the author of Mukat's People: The Cahuilla Indians of Southern California (1972).