The Cherokee husband-and-wife team who recorded and translated these folktales in 1961 helped to preserve the lore of seventeen elder Oklahoma Cherokees. This volume includes a wide variety of folklore; talking-animal stories, tales of a dragon-like creature and other monsters, accounts of little people inhabiting the hills of eastern Oklahoma, variants of European tales, fragments of Cherokee mythology and cosmology, and legends and lore of historical personages and events. The authors present the stories exactly as they were told, adding brief comments to place the stories clearly in the context of Cherokee life and thought. Musical notations are included wherever a song formed part of a story.

Jack F. Kilpatrick and Anna G. Kilpatrick both were natives of Stilwell, Oklahoma. Jack was Chair of the Department of Music at Sothern Methodist University. Anna, a descendant of Sequoyah, was in the United State Indian Service. Together the Kilpatricks wrote several books on the Oklahoma Cherokees.