In presenting these specimens of songs, gathered among the recesses of the forest, it is hoped it will not be overlooked, by the reader, that they are submitted as facts or materials, in the mental condition of the tribes, and not as evidences of attainment in the arts of metre and melody, which will bear to be admitted or even criticised by the side of the refined poetry of civilized nations. And above all, not as efforts to turn Indian sentiments to account, in original composition. No such idea is entertained. If materials be supplied from which some judgment may be formed of the actual state of these songs and rude oral compositions, or improvisations, the extent of the object will have been attained. But even here, there is less, with the exception of a single department, i. e. versification and composition by cultivated natives, than it was hoped to furnish. And this little, has been the result of a species of labour, in the collection, quite disproportionate to the result. It is hoped at least, that it may indicate the mode in which such collections may be made, among the tribes, and become the means of eliciting materials more worthy of attention.
This much seemed necessary to be said in introducing the following specimens, that there might not appear, to the reader, to be an undue estimate placed on the literary value of these contributions, and translations, while the main object is, to exhibit them in the series, as illustrations of the mental peculiarities of the tribes. To dismiss them, however, with a bare, frigid word for word translation, such as is required for the purposes of philological comparison, would by no means do justice to them, nor convey, in any tolerable degree, the actual sentiments in the minds of the Indians. That the opposite error might not, at the same time, be run into, and the reader be deprived altogether of this means of comparison, a number of the pieces are left with literal prose translations, word for word as near as the two languages will permit. Others exhibit both a literal, and a versified translation.
All the North American Indians know that there is a God; but their priests teach them that the devil is a God, and as he is believed to be very malignant, it is the great object of their ceremonies and sacrifices, to appease him.
The Indians formerly worshipped the Sun, as the symbol of divine intelligence.
Fire is an unexplained mystery to the Indian; he regards it as a connecting link between the natural and spiritual world. His traditionary lore denotes this.
Zoroaster says: “When you behold secret fire, without form, shining flashingly through the depths of the whole world—hear the voice of fire.” One might suppose this to have been uttered by a North American Indian.