II.— DRAMATIC ELEMENTS IN AMERICAN INDIAN 

 CEREMONIALS 



By Virginia Shropshire Heath 



" Poetry in general," says Aristotle, " seems to have sprung 

 from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature — first, 

 the instinct of imitation . . ., next, . . . the instinct for ' har- 

 mony ' and ' rhythm.' " Many of the lyric-legend-dance com- 

 plexes of certain North American Indian religious ceremonials 

 would seem to bear out this judgment. Indeed, in not a few of 

 the unmistakably poetic expressions, there may be found well- 

 defined dramatic elements suggesting the possibility of a devel- 

 oped, independent dramatic literature, had these savage peoples 

 been left alone to initiate a civilization and culture of their own. 

 The South American Indians were capable of evolving a secular 

 form of drama, as Sir Clements Markham affirms on the strength 

 of the romantic " Ollantay " of the Incas of Peru, Certainly the 

 North American Indians, many of whom were superior in reli- 

 gious conceptions and practices to their more civilized kindred 

 of the south, could have equalled if not surpassed them in the 

 matter of dramatic expression. For the peoples of the north, 

 the idea of religion, of genuine worship, still lay at the root of all 

 dramatic production. Hence, out of the great admixture of 

 savage love of song, of story, and of rhythm, heightened by 

 religious terrors and spiritual yearnings, must be sifted the 

 mimetic actions and speeches fundamental to the drama proper, 

 especially to serious drama; for to the savage mind. Nature, in 

 one conception or another, the great dispenser of the necessities 

 as well as of the "good things" of life, is a matter of deadly 

 earnest. 



It is the red man's promise of a finished dramatic literature 

 unaffected by the white man's tampering that constitutes my 

 reason for investigating the ancient religious ceremonials of a 



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