ABSTRACT
Like ‘bricolage’ on the technical plane, mythical reflection can reach brilliant unforeseen results on the intellectual plane. The analogy is worth pursuing since it helps us to see the real relations between the two types of scientific knowledge we have distinguished. The white man has been only a short time in this country and knows very little about the animals; we have lived here thousands of years and were taught long ago by the animals themselves. And it is only just beginning to be realized that the older accounts which we owe to the insight of such rare inquirers as Cushing do not describe exceptional cases but rather forms of science and thought which are extremely widespread in so-called primitive societies. The number thirteen, as we have seen, is first of all the sum of the two social groups, right and left, north and south, winter and summer; thereafter it is specified concretely and developed logically.
