Aboriginal American Authors

by Daniel G. Brinton

Some genuine specimens of the oratory of the northern tribes are preserved by Mr. Hale, in the Iroquois Book of Rites, to which I have referred on a previous page. The speeches it contains were learned by heart, and transmitted from generation to generation, long before they were committed to writing, and long after some of the words and expressions they contain had become lost to the colloquial language of the tribe.

The ancient Mexicans were much given to this sort of formal speech-making. They had a large number of cut-and-dried orations, which professional rhetoricians delivered on all important occasions in life. The new-born child was harangued at, in good set terms, when it was but a few days old. Betrothals, marriages, festivals, the commencement of puberty and of pregnancy, etc., were all celebrated by the delivery of discourses. Fathers taught their children, teachers their pupils, monarchs their vassals, war chiefs their soldiers, by such declamations. The general name for these speeches was huehuetlatolli, ancient orations.[63]

Many have been preserved, and a tolerably complete collection could be made in the original tongue. To effect this, we should have to have recourse to the original Nahuatl MS. of Sahagun's history, which, I have already said, exists in Madrid; next, to the extremely rare work of the eminent Nahuatl scholar, Father Juan Baptista, Platicas Morales, in which, according to Vetancurt, he gives, in the original, the ancient addresses of fathers to their children, and of rulers to their subjects;[64] and lastly, to the recently published, though very early written, Mexican Grammar, of the Franciscan Andre de Olmos, which contains a number of these discourses, carefully edited and translated by the accomplished scholar, M. Remi Simeon.[65]

The numerous prayers to the heathen gods, preserved by Sahagun, are, doubtless, faithfully recorded, and are accurate examples of the elevated literary style of the ancient Aztecs. They should, by all means, be printed, so that they could be accessible to those who would acquaint themselves with the genius of the language and the psychology of the people.

In the Qquichua of Peru, a few similar prayers to Viracocha have been saved from oblivion, in the pages of Cristobal de Molina. One or more copies of his Relacion are in the United States, but it has only appeared in print through a translation by Mr. Markham, in the Hackluyt Society's publications.[66] Some modern prayers of the Mayas are to be found in the collection of Brasseur,[67] and, doubtless, several of the so-called ancient "prophecies," preserved in the Books of Chilan Balam, are, in fact, specimens of the impassioned and mystic rhapsodies with which the priests of their heathendom entertained their hearers, as Cortes and his followers heard, one day, on the island of Cozumel.[68]

Section 6. Poetical Literature.

Man, remarks Wilhelm von Humboldt, belongs to the singing species of animals. True it is, that wherever found, he has some notion of music, cultivates the accord of sounds by some sort of instrument, and gives expression to his most acute emotions in modulations of vocal tone.

The earliest and simplest poetry is nothing more than such modulated sounds; it is not in definite words, and hence, is not capable of translation; it is but the expression of feeling through the voice, as is the wail of the infant, the rippling laughter of youth, the crooning of senility, the groans of pain or sorrow.

Perhaps this first is also the highest expression of the aesthetic sense. The most admired cantatrices of to-day drown the words in a wealth of vocalization, and the meaning is lost, even were the language one known to their hearers, which it usually is not. I have heard a living poet, himself of no mean eminence, maintain that the harmony of versification is a far higher test of true poetic power than the ideas conveyed.

These principles must be borne in mind when we apply the canons of criticism to the poetry of the ruder races. It is not composed to be read, or even recited, but to be sung; its aim is, not to awaken thought or convey information, but solely to excite emotion. It can have a meaning only when heard, and only in the surroundings which gave it birth.