Brinton was aware of the 19th century racism of many who wrote about the American Indian and reacted against it in his writings by taking a stance which in some ways anticipates Ruth Benedict's involvement in similar questions half a century later. Aboriginal American Authors is written as an early attempt at placing the literature of the American Indian with the other great literary traditions of the world; that is why its usefulness endures.
John Hobgood
Social Science Department
Chicago State College
1970
PREFACE.
The present memoir is an enlargement of a paper which I laid before the Congres International des Americanistes, when acting as a delegate to its recent session in Copenhagen, August, 1883. The changes are material, the whole of the text having been re-written and the notes added.
It does not pretend to be an exhaustive bibliographical essay, but was designed merely to point out to an intelligent and sympathetic audience a number of relics of Aboriginal American Literature, and to bespeak the aid and influence of that learned body in the preservation and publication of these rare documents.
Philadelphia, Nov. 1883.
CONTENTS.
Section 1. Introductory
Section 2. The Literary Faculty in the Native Mind
Vivid imagination of the Indians.
Love of story telling.
Appreciation of style.
Power and resources of their languages.
Facility in acquiring foreign languages.
Native writers in the English tongue.
In Latin.
In Spanish.
Ancient books of Aztecs.
Of Mayas, etc.
Peruvian Quipus.