OF TUB NATIVE EACES OP AMEKICA. 19 



Going still northwards, we meet with the Nahiia or âztec, which is said to have been at 

 its best in the century just preceding the Conquest. "If the Maya," says Mr. Strong in 

 " The North Americans of Antiquity," " has been compared to the G-reek, the Aztec has 

 been likened to the Latin, not in structure or vocabulary, but in its relation to ancient 

 American civilization, in its expressiveness, politeness, its capability for the sublime and 

 for the romantic coloring with which it is able to clothe that which is humble and even 

 insignificant." " Those who imagine," writes Dr. Brinton, " that there was a poverty of 

 resources in these languages or that their concrete form hemmed in the mind from the 

 study of the abstract, speak without knowledge. One has bixt to look at the inexhaustible 

 synonymy of the Aztec, as set forth in Olmos or Sahagun, or at its power to render cor- 

 rectly the refinements of the scholastic theology, to see how wide of the fact is any such 

 opinion. And what is true of the Aztec is not less true of the Quichua and other tong^^es." 

 — (American Hero-Mijths, p. 24). 



If we still advance northward, we enter upon the apparent chaos of the numerous 

 languages that have been or are still spoken by the Indians of the area comprised within 

 the United States and Canada. Several of these languages have won praise almost as 

 emphatic as that which has been bestowed on the tongues of Central and South America, 

 while others are of a low type and incapable of development for literary purposes. Of 

 the former class may be mentioned the Creek, the Cherokee, the Zuni, the Crée, the Ojib- 

 way, the Dakota and the Iroquois, on some of which fresh light has recently been shed 

 by Canadian students siich as Fathers Lacombe and Cuoq. A notable instance of the 

 other class is furnished by Dr. Wilson, who compares the utterances of the Chinook to the 

 " inarticulate noises made from the throat, with the tongue against the teeth or palate, 

 when encouraging a horse in driving." {Prehistoric Man, II, 335). The same author refers 

 to the Babel of languages heard at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia river, which is visited 

 by "VValla-Walla and other tribes for jjurposes of trade, and describes the patois, with a sub- 

 stratum of strangely metamorphosed English, which serves as a common means of com- 

 munication. The fact, noted by Mr. Hale, (to which Dr. Wilson draws attention) that this 

 factitious language is spoken by the rising generation more readily than any other form 

 of speech, may supply a key to some puzzles in American philology. For who can tell 

 how often the same process has been gone through in days when there was no European 

 language to form a basis for the mongrel structure ? The sight of such unlooked for and 

 really unimaginable distortions of our English speech as "pos," ''paia," "tumola," for "sup- 

 pose," " fire," " to-morrow," should prove a warning to those who love to detect kinship 

 in mere verbal likeness. 



Having now shown by respectable authority that some of the American languages 

 are not unfit to serve as media for literary production, let us see whether there is evidence 

 of any kind of writing being employed by those who thus turned them to account. If 

 that evidence should be deemed too slender, are we to be expected to give tip the main 

 inquiry as practically futile ? Is it not absurd to look for any traces of literature where 

 there is no written language, or means of committing it to writing ? On this question it 

 is to the point to hear Max Miiller. " Here, then," he says, " we are brought face to face 

 with a most startling fact ; writing was unknown in India before the fourth century before 

 Christ, and yet we are asked to believe that the Vedic literature in its three well defined 

 periods, the Mantra, Brahmana and Sutra periods, goes back at least a thousand years 



