pt. 1. The storytellers : Central Mexico ; Oaxaca ; Southern Mesoamerica ; Northwest Mexico ; Lower Central America

pt. 2. The basic myths : Beginnings : The emergence of ancestors (Aztec) ; The man of crops (Jicaque) ; Why the earth eats the dead (Bribri) ; Opossum steals fire (Mazatec)

Destructions and new beginnings : The loss of the ancients (Tarahumara) ; The flood myth (Mixe) ; The seeds of humanity (Guaymí) ; The tree and the flood (Cabécar)

The quest for corn : The hidden corn (Mopan) ; Corn woman's marriage (Cora) ; The grasshoppers and the corn (Pipil).

Sun myths : The sun and the fire (Huichol) ; How the sun was named (Yaqui) ; The childhood of Sun and Moon (Chatino) ; Sun and his brothers (Tzotzil) ; The courtship of Sun and Moon (Kekchi)

Journeys to the other world : Thunder's apprentice (Mam) ; The dead wife (Mískito) ; The buzzard husband (Tzutujil) ; The visit to the animal master (Chinantec)

pt. 3. Building mythologies : Myths in sequence ; Gods and the ordering of space ; Adventures of the hero ; Writing history ; Myths and nationalism.