Like the region's first inhabitants, the 'Cat People,' who made clothing from the mountain lions and panthers that they hunted, Western New Yorkers still savor the tradition of storytelling. Tales such as the 'Mail-Riding Mamma' of Chautauqua County, who carried both the post and her infant child above her head as she journeyed across perilously flooded creeks, and the Ossian Giant, who at age nineteen stood seven feet, six inches tall and weighed...