38 Virginia Shropshire Heath 



one of the latest religious cults, the Ghost Dance,* permeated 

 with Christian lore, evinces much dramatic material purely Indian 

 in conception. But further citations are not needed. 



It is not to be maintained that every Indian ritual shows evi- 

 dences of the high and of the noble, qualities beautiful and in- 

 spiring. Like certain Greek religious practices, Indian ceremo- 

 nials are at times characterized by the base and the irreconcilably 

 terrible. In Greek literary records, however, these features were, 

 for the most part, ignored ; and so should they be in the attempt 

 to discover literary values in Indian rituals. As a judgment on 

 life, life idealized and made worth living, literature should reflect 

 the best thoughts, the best emotions of which a people is capable. 

 Matthew Arnold^ says : 



" The critical power . . . tends ... to make the best ideas pre- 

 vail." And again, the business of criticism is " a disinterested en- 

 deavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought 

 in the world, and thus to establish a current of fresh and true 

 ideas." 



In following out this program, it is not necessary to fall into the 

 common error of enthusiasts. 



" There is a curious tendency," Dr. Powell^ remarks, " observable 

 in students to overlook aboriginal vices and to exaggerate aborigi- 

 nal virtues." 



After all the Indian is merely a savage. The low and the base 

 exist even in his religious practices, to be sure; yet towering far 

 above these ignoble features are idealistic conceptions. In the 

 end, it is the idealizations of which a people is capable, that sur- 

 vive, those finer thoughts that make possible the exalted life as 

 distinguished from mere physical existence. Such literary quali- 



4 See nth A. R. B. E.. Washington, 1890, "A Study of Siouan Cults," 

 p. 484; 14th A. R. B. E., Washington, 1896, "Ghost Dance Religion." 



5 Arnold, On the Function of Criticism. 



^ See 7th A. R. B. E., Washington, 1886, " Indian Linguistic Families of 

 North America." 



414 



