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How did Indigenous American traditions distinguish a myth from a folktale?

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Mythologies of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas Haida argillite carving, c. 1890, depicting a folktale in which the Bear Mother endures a cesarean birth; in the National Museum of the American Indian, George Gustav Haye Center, Smithsonian Institution, New York City.

In the traditional view of Indigenous American oral literature, the terms myth and folktale are often used interchangeably, as the distinction between them is based on a matter of time rather than content.1

The primary criteria for distinguishing between the two are as follows:

Myth: These stories are set in a distant past, specifically during a time when the world had not yet assumed its present form. They often describe an era when people could not be distinguished from animals, or they begin with phrases such as "before the people came" or "when Coyote was a man".1
Folktale: These stories involve the same characters or themes but are set in the "modern" present, or a time when the world had already taken its current shape.1

Ultimately, for many Indigenous cultures, the specific timing of an event—whether it occurred yesterday or generations ago—is considered less significant than the fact that it belongs to the past.1