Book excerpt: "In my opinion this project of publications devoted to folk literature of South America is of paramount importance. South American mythology belongs to the spiritual inheritance of mankind on par with the great masterpieces of Greek and Roman antiquity and of the Near and Far East. At the present time this material is scattered in numerous publications most of which are not easy to locate. It would do a great service to scholars all over the world and to the general public to have them collected in a series of volumes."--Claude Levi-Strauss "It is time we had a set of volumes containing good source material for those who wish to study South American indigenous narratives; I am also quite certain that many nonspecialists would be interested in original documents of this kind."--Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff