Very few strictly scholastic works seem to have been produced by the natives. Nearly all those which I have seen for use in the Mission schools appear to be the productions of the white instructors, generally, of course, aided by some intelligent native. I have in my possession an Ortografia en Lengua Kekchi, picked up by Dr. Berendt in Vera Paz, which was the work of Domingo Coy, an Indian of Coban (MS. pp. 32). But on examination it proves to be merely an adaptation of a Manual de Ortografia Castellana, in use in the schools, and not an original effort. For all that, it is not without linguistic value. In Mexico a useful little book of instruction in Nahuatl has been prepared by the licentiate Faustino Chimalpopoca Galicia, a scholar of indigenous extraction.[53] An older work, of a similar character, by Don Antonio Tobar, a descendant of the Montezumas, is mentioned by bibliographers, but never was printed, and has probably perished.[54]
It has always been part of the policy of both Catholic and Protestant missions to permit the natives to enter the career of the church; in the territories of both confessions instances are moderately numerous of priests and preachers of half or full Indian blood. Most of these educated men, however, rather shunned the cultivation of their maternal tongues, and preferred, when they wrote at all, to choose that of their white brethren, the Spanish, Portuguese or English. The extensive theological literature which we possess, printed or in manuscript, in American tongues, and in many it is quite ample, is scarcely ever the result of the efforts of the Christian teachers of indigenous affiliations.
A notable exception was the licentiate Bartolome de Alva, a native
Mexican, descended from the Tezcucan kings, who composed, in Nahuatl and
Spanish, a Confessionario, which was printed at Mexico in 1634.
It contains some interesting references to the mythology and
superstitions of the natives.[55]
The Indian Elias Boudinot and other Cherokees have printed many essays and tracts in that tongue, but whether original or merely translated I do not know. The sermons of the native Protestant missionaries to their fellows were probably extempore addresses. At any rate, I have not seen any in manuscript or print. A volume of the kind exists, however, in manuscript, in the Library of the Instituto Historico of Rio Janeiro, which it would be very desirable to have printed. It is the Sermones e Exemplos em lengua Guarani, by Nicolas Japuguay, cura of the Parish of San Francisco in 1727.[56] But when it is edited, let us hope that it will be a more favorable example of critical care than the Crestomathia da Lingua Brasilica, edited by Dr. Ernesto Ferreira Franca (Leipzig, 1859), which, according to Professor Hartt, is "badly arranged, carelessly edited, and disfigured by innumerable typographical errors."[57]
A curious variety of religious literature is what are called the Passions, Las Pasiones, which are found among the natives of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. These prose chants took their rise at an early period among the sodalities (cofradias), organized under the name of some particular saint. Each of these societies possessed a volume, called its Regulations (Ordenanzas), containing, among other matters, a series of invocations, founded on the history of the Passion of Christ. During Holy Week, certain members of the fraternity, called fiscales, gather in the church, around one of their number, who reads a sentence in a loud voice. The fiscales repeat it in a chanting tone, with a uniform and monotonous cadence. It is probable that these chants are the compositions of the Indians themselves. Dr. Berendt obtained several copies of these, some in the Chapaneca of Chiapas, and others in the Zoque of the Isthmus, which are now in my hands.
Section 5. Oratorical Literature.
The love of the American Indian for oratorical display has been commented on by almost all writers who have studied his disposition. Specimens of native eloquence have been introduced into school books, and declaimed by many an aspiring young Cicero. Most of them are, doubtless, as fictitious as Logan's celebrated speech, which was exalted by the great Jefferson almost to a level with the outbursts of Demosthenes, to be reduced again to very small proportions by the criticisms of Brantz Mayer.[58]
In fact, in spite of all that has been said about the native oratory, we are in a very inadequate position to judge of it correctly, and this because we have no accurate reports in the original tongues of their speeches. Translations, more or less loose, more or less imaginary, we have in abundance; but, for critical purposes, they are simply worthless.
Yet that even the ruder tribes in both the northern and southern continents, attached great weight to the cultivation of oratory, is amply evident. James Adair, who is competent authority, tells us that the southern Indians studied public speaking assiduously, and that their speeches "abound with bolder tropes and figures than illiterate interpreters can well comprehend or explain."[59] Mr. Howse writes that, among the Crees, those who possess oratorical talent are in demand by the Chiefs, who employ them to deliver the official harangues.[60] Among the Aztecs, the very word for chief, tlatoani, literally means "orator" (from the verb tlatoa, to harangue). In the far south, among the Araucanians of Chili, and their relatives the migratory hordes of the Pampas, no gift is in higher estimation than that of an easy and perspicuous delivery. This alone enables the humblest to rise to the position of chieftain.[61] So it was over the whole continent.
In most of their languages, the oratorical was markedly different from the familiar or colloquial style. The former was given to antithesis, repetition, elaborate figures, unusual metaphors, and more sonorous and lengthened expressions. The Rev. Mr. Byington gives a number of the oratorical affectations in the Choctaw, as akakano for ak, okakocha for ok, etc.[62]