Dictated first in 1928 at Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, in the Chipewyan language, by FranÁois Mandeville, these stories were then transcribed by the Chinese linguist Li Fang-Kuei. They lay dormant in his notebooks for nearly half a century until they resurfaced in Taipei in 1976. Now, at last, Ron Scollon, pre-eminent linguist and one of the original translators, has returned to the texts to make this new, colloquial English version. Chipewyan is one of the many Northern Athapaskan languages, spoken in Alaska and western Canada. No other work of Northern Athapaskan literature has the power and range of Mandeville's cycle of stories, and no other work in any language gives such a rich picture of traditional life and thought in the Northern Athapaskan world.