Includes bibliographical references.

Part I: Preludes -- What the informant said to Franz Boas in 1920 (Keresan) -- Thank you: a poem in seventeen parts (Seneca) -- The artist (Aztec) -- Song of the bald eagle (Crow) -- Part II: Shaking the pumpkin (Seneca) -- Part III: A first service -- Magic words and more more more magic words (Eskimo) -- Magic words -- Magic words to feel better -- Magic words for hunting caribou -- Magic words for hunting seal -- Moon eclipse exorcism (Alsea) -- Poem to ease birth (Aztec) -- Crow versions -- A poem for catching turtles (Tule/Cuna) -- Archaic song of Dr. Tom the shaman (Nootka) -- Magic words from Run Toward the nightland (Cherokee) -- The killer (Cherokee) -- The archer's dance song (Maya) -- Snake medicine poem for a toothache (Yokuts) -- A song from Red ant way (Navajo) -- The deadly dance (Aztec) -- Part IV: A book of narratives (I) -- A myth of the human universe (Maya) -- From the Popol Vuh: the destruction of the dolls (Maya) -- From the Popol Vuh: Alligator's struggles with the 400 sons (Maya) -- The origin of the Skagit Indians according to Lucy Williams -- The creation of the world according to Charles Slater (Cuna) -- The sorcerer (Okanagan) -- Coon cons coyote, coyote eats coon, coyote fights shit-men, gets immured in a rock-house, eats his eyes, eats his balls, gets out, cons bird-boy for eyes, loses them to the birds & gets them back (Nez Percé) -- Coyote borrows farting boy's asshole, tosses up his eyes, retrieves them, rapes old women, & tricks a young girl seeking power (Nez Percé) -- The flight of quetzalcoatl (Aztec) -- Part V: A book of narratives (II) -- The boy and the deer (Zuni) -- Part VI: A second service -- Wolf songs and others of the Tlingit -- Eskimo songs about people & animals -- Travel song -- Song of the old woman -- Spring fjord -- The old man's song, about his wife -- Dream -- A man's song, about his daughter -- A woman's song, about men -- Lullaby (Tsimshian) -- Tsimshian mourning song -- Two divorce songs (Tsimshian) -- Insult before gift-giving (Tsimshian) -- Spyglass conversations (Tule/Cuna) -- Navajo animal songs -- More Eskimo songs about people & animals -- Orpingalik's song: in a time of sickness (Eskimo) -- Part VII: A book of events (I) -- Dream event 1 (Iroquois) -- Dream event II (Iroquois) -- A masked event for comedian & audience (Lummi) -- Butterfly song event (Maricopa) -- Autumn events (Eskimo) -- Tamale event (Aztec) -- Mud events (Navajo) -- Dakota dance events -- Gift event II (Kwakiutl) -- Gift event IV (Winnebago) -- Language event I (Eskimo) -- Language event II (Navajo) -- Picture event (Navajo) -- Naming events (Papago) -- Pebble event (Omaha) -- Crazy dog events (Crow) -- Animal spirit event (Lummi) -- Vision event I (Eskimo) -- Vision Event II (Eskimo) -- Vision event III (Sioux) --

Part VIII: A book of events (II): theater & ritual-theater -- Sixty-six poems for a Blackfoot bundle -- The text of the raingod drama (San Juan Pueblo) -- Rabinal-Achí: Act IV (Maya) -- Part IX: A third service -- The little random creatures (Fox) -- Poems from a deer dance cycle (Yuma) -- The eagle above us (Cora) -- A song of the red & green buffalo (Oto) -- The song of the rollhead owl (Modoc) -- One for coyote (Skagit) -- The great farter (Eskimo) -- How her teeth were pulled (Paiute) -- Three songs of mad coyote (Nez Percé) -- The evil song of Taweakame peyote god of lush (Huichol) -- The invisible men (Eskimo) -- Sweat-house ritual no. 1 (Omaha) -- A poem to the mother of the gods (Aztec) -- A poem to Xipe Totec (Aztec) -- Before they made things be alive they spoke (Luiseño) -- Sioux metamorphoses -- Part X: A book of extensions (I) -- The tablet of the 96 heiroglyphs (Maya) -- From a book of the Maya -- The calendars -- Lean wolf's complaint (Hidatsa) -- Zuni derivations -- Navajo correspondences -- Muu's way of pictures from the uterine world (Cuna) -- The winter revelation of Battiste Good (Dakota) -- The myth of Atosis (Abnaki) -- String games (Bella Bella) -- The story of glooscap, or black cat (Passamaquoddy) -- Ojibwa love poem -- Poems for the game of silence (Chippewa, Mandan) -- Songs & song pictures (Chippewa) -- Part XI: A book of extensions (II): soundings -- Sound-poem no. 1 (Navajo) -- Sound-poem no. 2 (Seneca) -- A poem from The Sweatbath Poems (Fox) -- From Ceremony of Sending: a simultaneity for twenty choruses (Osage) -- Tepehua thought-songs -- The 12th horse-song of Frank Mitchell (Navajo) -- The 13th horse-song of Frank Mitchell (Navajo) -- Part XII: A fourth service -- The net of moon: a Pawnee hand game vision -- Peyote visions (Winnebago) -- For the god of peyote (Huichol) -- First peyote song -- Second peyote song -- Song of an initiate -- Third peyote song -- How the violin was born: a peyote account -- The flowering war (Aztec) -- A song of Chalco -- A song in praise of the chiefs -- A song for the eagles and jaguars -- The eagle and the jaguar -- What happened to a young man in a place where he turned to water (White Mountain Apache) -- Poem to be recited every 8 years while eating unleavened tamales (Aztec) -- Heaven and hell (Eskimo) -- From The Book of Chilam Balam: "A chapter of questions and answers" (Maya) -- Her elegy (Papago) -- Dance of the rain gods (Cora) -- Part XIII: Postludes -- A Kalapuya prophecy -- Hunger (Eskimo) -- Three ghost dance songs -- Part XIV: Commentaries -- A breakdown by region and tribe -- The commentaries.