sentences:  One important difference between Salishan oral traditions and Western literature is that Salishan traditional narratives are not considered to be fictive, or to be the result of the creativity of the narrator, rather they are considered to convey real knowledge of the world as passed down from the elders.The storyteller also does not "own" the story, although the best storytellers do give the narratives a personal flavor.Rather the stories are considered to be pre-existing and to contain all the knowledge of the world.