22 JOHN EBADE ON THE LITEEAEY FACULTY 



the Cherokee chief, Sequoyah. Of it Sir John Lubbock said that, as far as the inventor's 

 own hiuguage was concerned, it was superior to ours. It is syllabic and has eighty-five 

 characters. 



We have now prepared the way for a consideration of the literary faculty of some of 

 the American races, not as possessing so admirable an instrument for recording their 

 thoughts as the Cherokee, or even the English alphabet, but as being, even the most 

 advanced of them, like the Hindoos, the Greeks, the Romans, the Grermans, when they 

 were literally in that stage of progress which the Italians figuratively describe as anal- 

 fabeti. They are universally conceded the story-telling instinct. " As a raconteur,'" says 

 Ur. Brinton, in his excellent monograph on " Aboriginal American authors," he (the Ame- 

 rican Indian) " is untiring. He has in the highest degree Goethe's Lust zu fabuliren. In 

 no Oriental city does the teller of strange tales find a more willing audience than in the 

 Indian wigwam. The folk-lore of every tribe which has been properly investigated has 

 turned out to be most ample. Tales of talking animals, of mythical warriors, of giants, 

 dwarfs, subtle women, potent magicians, impossible adventures, abound to an extent 

 that defies collection." {Aboriginal American Avlhors, p. 10). An important branch of the 

 education of the young Peruvian nobility was to listen to the chronicles of the amantas 

 and they were also taught to speak their own language with purity and elegance. [Pres- 

 cotCs History of the Conquest of Peru, Book I, chap. 4). That some of the American languages 

 were susceptible of all the phases of style has been already shewn, and they doubtless 

 improved from generation to generation, as the teachers, chiefs and orators brought out 

 their excellence by practice and a well trained ear. Mr. Strong says that, in seeking north- 

 ward the lingual traces of Aztec migration, the fact has been too often forgotten that the 

 Mexican tongue, at the time of the Conquest had been modified by centuries of cultiva- 

 tion.' No Peruvian production has been published. Dr. Brinton says, but there are Quichua 

 manuscripts accessible. Of these the most imijortaut is a treatise on " The errors, false 

 Gods, superstitions and diabolical Rites of the provinces of the Inca Empire." It has been, 

 in part, translated by Dr. F. DeAvila and the fragment has been done into English by Mr. 

 Clements Markham for the Hakluyt Societj'. Another Quichua manuscript is the '' Adver- 

 tencias " of Don Luis Inca, a member of the royal line, but its fate is unknown. That the 

 educated speakers of the Quichua tongue were accustomed to historical or narrative com- 

 position we learn from Prescott. " Annalists," he says, " were app>ointed in the principal 

 communities whose business it was to record the most important events that occurred in 

 them. Other functionaries of a higher character, usually the amantas, were entrusted with 

 the history of the empire and were selected to chronicle the great deeds of the reigning 

 Inca or his ancestors. The narrative thus concocted could be communicated only by oral 

 tradition ; but the quijms served the chronicler to arrange the incidents with method and to 



1 j\Ir. J. E. Bartlett {Personal Narrative, etc., vol. ii, p. 283) saj's that "no analogy has yet been traced be- 

 tween the language of the old IMexicans and any tribe at the north, in the district from which they are supposed 

 to have come ; nor, in any of the relics, or ornaments, or worts of art, do we observe a resemblance between them." 

 But Dr. D. Wilson points to some probable connection between the " uncouth, clicking sounds " of the Chinooks 

 and other tribes and the tli, txl, at!, izfli and yotl of the most characteristic INIexican terminations. These simil- 

 arities of speech Dr. Wilson regards as the " mere reflex traces of later and indirect Mexican influence." Perhaps, 

 from the same point of view, the syllables (/ and lil, which occur in Haida words and which. Dr. G. M. Dawson 

 suggests, may represent the article, are not without significance. (^Report of Progress of Geol. Survey of Canada for 

 1878-79, p. 177.B). 



