Comment by UniverseHacker

This isn't a lie- it's mythology. The information is stored in the emotion and values presented in the story, not the literal details.

Most native american cultures have a complex mythology that explains the worldview, values, and philosophy of the culture. This is how the culture is transmitted, and even young children in these societies are used to mythology, and understand how to use it without interpreting it as a simple literal explanation of 'fact.'

The 'literal truth' doesn't work in place of mythology, it is hard to remember and interest kids with unless they've experienced it directly... unlike mythology, it fails to serve as a stable and effective way of transmitting cultural values over long time spans. The emotional content is critical for memorization, and attention... and also serves as a sort of 'checksum' where erroneous changes to the story generally reduce the emotional content, thereby causing the original 'correct' version to remain dominant.