[cami'bell] the ancient LITERATURE OP^ AMERICA 45 



languages evince wonderful memory, observation, descriptive power, 

 imagination, humoui-, and moral judgment. The Indian is naturally 

 taciturn, some tribes much inore so than the others, and one must stand 

 high in his contidence before he will impart to a white man his ancestral 

 lore. He rather prides himself on making little display of what he 

 knows. A garrulous American, having oppressed one of the aborigines 

 with his wisdom, and finding little response, finally sought to draw him 

 into conversation over his dog, one of the sharp-eared native variety. 

 He asked the red man if the dog could tight, could hunt, could herd 

 cattle, could watch the house, to all of which questions the Indian 

 answered "No," always, however, adding the words, " He good dog ! " 

 " Why," said the American, " if he can't tight, nor hunt, nor herd, nor 

 watch, what's the use of him anyway ? " 



"Ugh!" replied poor Lo. with a knowing look, "he good dog; 

 don't know too much." 



Before he came into contact with Christianity, oral tradition was the 

 Indian's Bible, as was their mythology that of the Greeks and Romans. 

 Hans Egede, the first Norwegian missionary to the Esquimaux, began to 

 teach them theology at what he thought the right end, namely the Book 

 of Genesis. When he had given his account of the Creation and the 

 Fall, the Esquimaux chief, not to be behind in politeness, gave the 

 native version of the same subjects. This incensed the good mis- 

 sionary, who exclaimed, "These are fables; what I have told you is 

 Divine Truth." " Brother," replied the chief, " we listened attentively to 

 you when you related to us what you had heard from your grandmother ; 

 it is not polite in you to fepeak in that way of what we have heard from 

 our grandmothers." Yet that same chief, Kaiarnack, when the Mora- 

 vian missionaries sought his help in translating the Gospel of St. John^ 

 and came to the sixteenth verse of the third chapter, cried out, " Tell 

 me that again, for I do want to be saved," and became at once the first 

 Christian convert. 



While in one sense Folk-Lore is literature, just as the poems of 

 Homer were when recited by the rhapsodists of Asia Minor, long 

 before Lycurgus or Pisistratus reduced them to writing, in the 

 ordinary acceptation of the term it is not. Taking the narrower view 

 which excludes the oral or unwritten tradition, not only is the native 

 folklore ruled out; certain more extensive compositions of a semi- 

 historical character share the same fate. We cannot positively deny 

 that they were not in writing before the time of Columbus, but we have 

 not a scrap of evidence to prove that they were. Probably the most 

 important of these is the Book of Eites of the Iroquois or Five Nations, 

 now generally known as the Six Nations through the addition to their 

 number of the Tuscaroras who formerly inhabited North Carolina. Mr. 

 Horatio Hale, for many years a resident in Clinton, Ontario, sought for 



