Introduction
On the Nature of Tales
by Charles Johnson
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A writer sampling the rich offerings in A Treasury of North American Folktales,* hungrily reading each tale with an eye toward what he or she might learn about the craft of telling a good tale, comes away from this book at once humbled and reminded that folklore is the ancestral foundation for what we -- as modern fiction writers -- struggle mightily (and usually unsuccessfully) to achieve: a story worthy of being retold over and over for centuries.
 
* N.B. this phrase is somewhat altered in the QPB edition

Preface
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Who are these "folk" who tell folktales?

I
How the World Was Made
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Among the earliest North American folktales are stories that explain the phenomena that make up the natural world. -- from the first chapter, How the World Was Made