Perhaps the refinement of some of these sentiments may excite skepticism. It is a favorite doctrine among a certain class of writers that delicacy of sexual feeling is quite unknown among savage tribes, that, indeed, the universal law is that mere bestiality prevails, more or less kept in bounds by superstition and tribal law. I am well acquainted with this theory of several popular philosophers, and do not in the least accept it. Any such dogmatic assertion is unscientific. Delicacy of sentiment bears no sort of constant relation to culture. Every man present knows this. He can name among his acquaintances men of unusual culture who are coarse voluptuaries, and others of the humblest education who have the delicacy of a refined woman. So it is with families, and so it is with tribes. I have illustrated this lately by an analysis of the words meaning “to love” in all its senses in five leading American linguistic stocks, and have shown by the irrefragable proof of language how much they differ in this respect, and how much also the same tribe may differ from itself at various periods of its growth. As the result of this and similar studies I may assure you that there is no occasion for questioning the existence of highly delicate sentiments among some of the American tribes.
As I found the Mexican love poems the most delicate, so I have found their war songs the most stirring. We have a number of specimens written down in the native tongue shortly after the conquest. They have never been translated or published, but I will give you a rendering of one in my possession which, from intrinsic evidence, was written about 1510. I say written advisedly, for the nation who sang these songs possessed a phonetic alphabet, and wrote many volumes of poems by its aid. Their historian, Bernardino de Sahagun, especially mentions that the works used for the instruction of youth in their schools contained “poems written in antique characters.”
The first of my selections is supposed to be addressed by the poet to certain friends of his who were unwilling to go to war.
A WAR-SONG OF THE OTOMIS.
1. It grieves me, dear friends, that you walk not with me in spirit, that I have not your company in the scenes of joy and pleasure, that never more in union do we seek the same paths.
2. Do you really see me, dear friends? Will no God take the blindness from your eyes? What is life on earth? Can the dead return? No, they live far within the heavens, in a place of joy.
3. The joy of the Lord, the Giver of Life, is where the warriors sing, and the smoke of the war-fire rises up; where the flowers of the shields spread abroad their leaves; where deeds of valor shake the earth; where the fatal flowers of death cover the fields.
4. The battle is there, the beginning of the battle is there, in the open fields, where the smoke of the war-fire winds around and curls upward from the fatal war flowers which adorn you, ye friends and warriors of the Chichimecs.
5. Let not my soul dread that open field; I earnestly desire the beginning of the slaughter, my soul longs for the murderous fray.
6. O you who stand there in the battle, I earnestly desire the beginning of the slaughter, my soul longs for the murderous fray.