Connected with Indian names the investigator will find Indian legends. A rich mine is sure to open before a diligent worker. The fact that there are different versions of the same legend makes the material all the more valuable as a field of study. The student of ethnography as well as the student of literature finds the history of the Biloxi Indians full of interest. There is poetry even in the naming of the legend of the singing waves of the Pascagoula. There are many and complicated stories connected with the driving of the Natchez Indians from their ancestral seats. Every year makes the collecting of these legends more and more difficult. The patriotic Mississippi student will see to it that they are not lost, but are gathered into the store house for use in days to come.
Joel Chandler Harris has done a wonderful work for Georgia and the Atlantic Coast in the collection of Lore. It cannot be that Uncle Remus had no kinsmen in Mississippi. Yet no one has sought to preserve these Mississippi versions of negro folk tales. It will be remarkable if these tales have not been influenced by Indian admixtures. No student has investigated the subject to find out whether Mississippi has its distinct group of Brer Rabbit stories and whether the distinctive quality of our group is due to contact with Indian legends. Surely nobody will suggest that the work is not worth while doing. With the disappearance of the Indian and the complete conventionalizing of the negro, the opportunity will have passed away.
Not less valuable to the collector of material for the use of the future maker of Mississippi literature is the full account of the doings of famous Mississippi outlaws. It may not be too soon to investigate the deeds of Murrell and his gang. If the story of his exploits is to become literary property it must be learned before all his contemporaries have passed off the stage of life. It is not too much to expect that the William Gilmore Simms which Mississippi will some day produce may find in the doings of Murrell material for a story that may compare with some of the wildest exploits described by the South Carolina writer. May he who is to portray the early life of our State be not too slow in the coming.
Who knows but that the Mississippi literary man whom we confidently expect and to whom we await to do honor—who knows but that he may belong to the school of Cable and of Murfree and may therefore wish to write in dialect. If the student have some philological training he may wisely prepare for the writer's coming by collection of word lists—of words heard in Mississippi but words that have no literary standing—words which are for the most part confined to the use of the illiterate. Dr. Shands has already collected a list along this line in his dissertation entitled Some Peculiarities of Speech in Mississippi. I am sure he is mistaken in thinking that any of his words are peculiar to Mississippi, but nevertheless his list is valuable as enumerating expressions that are to be heard in our state—words which he who tries to reproduce the speech of Mississippi illiterates may not be afraid to use.
The student of our literature may wisely include in the range of his studies all references to Mississippi to be found in the literature of other sections. Not only such references as those but all accounts of Mississippi in books of travel have a rightful place in the collections of him who would gather together the raw material from which literature may some day be woven.
To the writer of reminiscences the literary student looks with hopeful eye. From such an one may be had biographical data, personal traits, literary anecdotes—in fact all the ana which the literary student of this day delights in. The humble collector of this material may not win much of fame for self—except so far as that the humbler work well done does not need to be done again and therefore wins the reward due to honest endeavor—But if he gains no reward he may rejoice in the consciousness that he is making possible the day when Mississippi may stand as a peer with other Southern States, delight to honor her own Lanier, her own Harris, her own Cable, her own Murfree, and her own Allen.
Some one is already asking what's the good of all this? Such matters may perhaps be wisely assigned as school boy tasks but there certainly can be but little value in the material after it has been laboriously collected. The study of literary history supports the contention that the accumulation of the subject matter of literature is in necessary precedence to the creative work of the producer of literature. It will but be in accord with what has taken place in the past, if a student who sets to work along lines I have suggested, who accumulates material, who immerses himself in the history and traditions of his state—it will be but natural, I say, if such an one have his heart set on fire by the enthusiasm engendered by his work and be transformed from a journeyman toiling over his tasks of accumulator into literary wizard who by the incantations of his genius may call forth the spirit of his time. Such work made Walter Scott.
May Mississippi see not another Scott but a literary man who under new conditions and with new material may create for Mississippi a new literature which may have like place in the world's literature with the immortal contributions of the great Scotchman. When that day comes the Mississippian will not have on his shoulders the burden of being an apologist and will not have to compound with his conscience in order to win the name of being patriotic in matters literary.