Birds of Song and Story

by Elizabeth Grinnell; Joseph Grinnell

In the Old World, ornithology as a science dates perhaps from Aristotle, 384 years before Christ. True, he was a teacher of A, B, C's on the subject, but he set students to "thinking," But there were students before Aristotle; if not students of science, they were students of religion. It is to religion in many forms that we owe the romance of ornithology. We may call this phase of the subject "superstition." The word itself is almost gruesome to the unlettered imagination. It suggests uncanny things, ghosts and goblins, and other creatures that are supposed to wander around in the dark, because they were never seen at midday or any other time. To the educated person actual faith in ghosts and goblins has given place to a mildly fanciful imagination which indulges in the flavor of superstition, as one takes light desserts after a full meal. And so we have the romance of superstition for the intelligent.

Stopping to consider that the word itself means a "standing still" to "stare" at something, an attitude of reverence, so to speak, we see how religion in ornithology preceded the romance of it. Certain of the birds waited on the deities, or had access to their presence, in consequence of which they were set apart and protected. Sometimes they were prophets of the gods, foretelling future events with accuracy. Their flights were noted by religious devotees, who, unconsciously to themselves probably, and certainly unsuspected, by their followers, were sure to be "out" at migration times. At such times, should the birds choose a natural course past a city and be seen only after they had left it behind them, the prophet knew, in the depths of his religious being, that the gods had doomed that city. It was only when the study of birds as an actual science developed the fact that these denizens of the air depended more upon climate and necessary diet than upon the will of gruesome gods that the religion of ornithology gave place to romance. And romance is the after-dinner course of real ornithology—romance lends a fanciful touch to figures and data, and apologizes to the average student for intermissions that seem dedicated to frolic.

In the universe of romance, North America has its full share. Preceding the romance was, and still is (among the native tribes), the religion of superstition. The deities foretell certain death of persons among the Eskimos by the passing of a bluejay or the croak of a raven.

Our own poet, Edgar Allan Poe, was not an Eskimo, but he indulged in the well-known superstitions about the bird when he permitted the raven to perch above his door. Many of the Arctic tribes are known to protect the ominous bird to this day. The Indians of Alaska revere and even fear it, like a black spirit from the land of demons.

Song and story among American aborigines are replete with bird superstition. So prominent was it that early historians made mention of it to preserve it, and students of languages are putting it into books, so that romance and legend may not pass away with our native Indians.

The government itself is preserving the history of American superstition among its precious archives. Reports of the Ethnological Bureau are entertaining reading for vacation times. True, they are "heavy volumes" in some cases, but there are supplements. Were these reports placed in more school and other libraries, the inclination to read more objectionable and not half so entertaining literature would go quickly out, like a fire-proof match, without burning the fingers.

To those who find a fascination in prehistoric legends the study of bird representation on the ancient pottery of some of our western Indians, and in the mounds of the Mississippi Valley, is offered in some of these government reports. They are a very mine of suggestion and information. Imagination, subtle guide to many a self-entertaining mind, runs fast and faster on before while one reads, and one wonders how it came to pass one never knew about government reports before.

The Ethnological Bureau is the poet's corner of our government—the romance of our dull facts and figures. Without its unsleeping eye forever scanning the sky of unwritten literature for gems, how would some of us know about the history of the human race as preserved by the Iroquois Indians? And that birds had a wing, if not a hand, in the peopling of America at least?

Of course America was "all the world" to these Indians, and naturally enough their priests and poets combined to give some adequate genesis for the people.

It is said that a story, once started on its rounds in civilized society, gathers facts and things as it goes, until at last—and not before very long—its own original parent "wouldn't recognize it." Not so the legends that have come to us through savage tongues. Simple to start with, they maintain their original type without a trace of addition. What students gather for us of folk-lore is as correct as though the first text had been copyrighted by its author. Note this simplicity in all barbaric legends, the discourse coming straight to the facts and leaving off when it is done.