history vs myth

Word after word my mind drifts.  The font is so tiny and my eyes squint further and further to relief.  Then, much to my surprise, I turn to the Iroquois Creation Story.  While the text tells us there are twenty-five different versions, Cusick's version intrigued me most.  In the introduction, the writer asserts, "With its monsters and supernatural events, Cusik's account of the Iroquois creation story cannot help but strike us as myth, yet he calls his work a history, one that will lead in time to the establishment of the Iroquois Confederacy" (18).  This statement inspired a great debate in my mind between the idea of myth vs. history.  Naturally, I turned to the internet and good ol' dictionary.com.  The first definition regarding history explains the term as the branch of knowledge dealing with past events.  Myth boils down to a definition of any invented story, idea, or concept.  Obviously, history and myth as concepts expand far beyond the limited boundaries of these definitions.  However, the conflict between these two terms got me thinking; who determines what is history and what is myth? Can any of us actually make that decision?  In the eyes of the Iroquois people, their creation story is the basis of all life; this story is their history.  But, to outsiders such as ourselves, the story becomes mere myth.  Does even the use of the word myth rather than history carry the connotation of Indian inferiority?  Are we outsiders saying that your creation story is full of "monsters and supernatural events" (18) and therefore cannot be true.  It is pure myth.  History is often regarded as objective but nothing is objective.  Everything is documented with some level of perspective and/or manipulation whether consciously or subconsciously.  Christians would shit themselves if the Bible was labeled myth yet for other cultures our vocabulary is reduced to but the one word.  After quite a stream of conscious, I step back and wonder, does the label of myth vs history really have such great implications or is a word just a word.  You tell me.