In the late 1880s the ethnologist and writer George Bird Grinnell visited the Pawnee Agency in Indian Territory. To Eagle Chief, whom he had known for many years, he explained the object of his visit: "Father, we have come down here to . . . ask the people about how things used to be in the olden times, to hear their stories, to get their history, and then to put all these things down in a book." The chief meditated for a time and then said: "It is good and it is time. Already the old things are being lost, and those who know the secrets are many of them dead. . . . The old men told their...