Cultural folk stories and myths transmit cultural knowledge; however, the manner in which transmission is accomplished has not been satisfactorily resolved. Using three separate English-language versions of a single Dakota story "Iktomi," this study presents a novel qualitative method for analyzing folk tales to discern patterns among renderings of stories by different storytellers in various situations. The author analyzed similarities and differences in the three versions of the tale in order to separate idiosyncrasies related to the different tellers from the broader cultural tale itself. The study focused on the coding of character traits to elucidate character roles and relationships which reveal how they are used to represent progressive stages in the Dakota vision quest-one of seven sacred rites of the Dakota people. The author systematically analyzed the codes using simple word counts of individual character traits as well as gendered pronouns and enclitics and considered documenter effect on the individually rendered versions. The findings confirm that the story encodes a framework for the vision quest. The method involved identifying and coding traits exhibited by each story character according to type with regard to representation, ability, or attribute in order to ascertain patterns of relationship among the codes. Then, the reorganization of the coded traits into pairs of polarized correspondences provided more detailed comparison that further clarified relationships among traits. Pronoun and enclitic use pointed to genderspecific activity of characters which analysis of documenter effect reinforced. Emergent patterns from the analyses disclosed a male-specific focus on character activities that
