ABORIGINAL AMERICAN POETRY. 18 



Taking up the subject of early song nearly at the point where Signor Vignoli leaves 

 it, Professor Posnet traces all literature back to choral songs of war and peace. " In this 

 primitive song," he adds, " the words, the dance, the music (such as it is), and the gesti- 

 culations, contribute to make a unity, nameless in the langiiages of peoples far removed 

 from the beginning of social life. These curious combinations of mimicry and music, 

 dancing and words, vary in their purposes. Sometimes they are magic incantations, some- 

 times they are war-songs, sometimes they are songs of marriage, sometimes they are dirges 

 of death. In some the gestures predominate, in others the rude music, in others the refrain 

 of a few simple words. But the main points to be borne in mind are that these elements 

 are confused together, and that the mere preservation of the words alone cannot enable us 

 to imagine the true nature of primitive song. Hence the impossibility of applying our 

 highly-developed modern ideas of prose or verse to such performances. For not only have 

 dance and gesticulations among us ceased to convey any sacred meaning, not only have 

 we long distinguished these from the mimetic action of the regular drama, but we have 

 also separated words from any accompaniment of music or dance, poetry from recitation, 

 as well as from these accompaniments, and prose from metrical forms, which, iar from 

 being joined to dance and melodj^ or sustaining the memory in an age when writing was 

 unknown, simply appeal to the writer's sense of harmony through the medium of printed 

 letters. Accustomed to artistic ideas, based upon distinctions impossible in early social 

 life, it is not strange that we neither possess the words, nor, in many cases, the imagina- 

 tive power, needful to carry us out of our own literary conditions into the primitive homes 

 of literary development.' " Dr. Posnet then goes on to show how, in the course of time, 

 acting, dancing and music, became separated from the words of the song ; how a greater 

 change (including the study of metres) was introduced by the invention of writing, and 

 how, subsecjuently, prose was differentiated from verse, and, ultimately, science from 

 literature. 



The survey of the aboriginal poetry of America will only carry us a part of the way 

 thus indicated. The passage quoted is not only an accurate description of its general fea- 

 tures, but also implies the difficulty of subjecting it to such criticism as would be suitable 

 in the estimate of ordinary literary productions. The interest which it has for us is, 

 indeed, rather scientific than literary, its value chiefly consisting in the analogies which it 

 offers to the early intellectual exjiansion of the civilised nations of the Old World. 

 Unhappily, however, it furnishes but scanty opportunity for the observation of communi- 

 ties undergoing development. The indigenous progress of the half-civilised nations of 

 Central and South America was arrested by the Spanish conquerors. How they attained 

 the status in which they were found by the European adventurers — whether from an 

 inner imptilse, or aided in some way from without — we can only conjecture from the 

 meagre data at our disposal. As for the lower types of aborigines, they have not, on the 

 whole, improved through intercourse with the foreigner. South of the Grulf of Mexico, 

 where the natives have, to a great extent, intermarried with the new-comers, the honour 

 for whatever advance has been made in the arts of life is, of course, divided, but in what 

 proportion, it would not be easy to decide. To do so fairly would call for a great deal of 

 information which we do not possess and cannot reasonably expect to obtain. In the first 



' Comparative Literature, pp. 127, 128. 



