THE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
VeL. xu. — JANUARY, 1878. — No. 1. 
SOCIAL LIFE AMONG OUR ABORIGINES. 
BY W. H. DALL. 
5 
« One touch of nature shows the whole world kin.” 
HE materials and the man have not yet come together which 
are to result in any picture of the social life of the American 
Indians or Eskimo equal in fidelity to that which is printed of our 
own social life on the pages of the ordinary “ society” novel. At 
least this is one of the reasons why nothing has ever been pub- 
lished which exhibits to the civilized reader the play of sentiment 
and passion, fear, hope, aspiration and reverence which actuate 
the red or the brown man as much, if in different mode, as” they 
do his paler cotemporary. It is true we have the novel of the 
Cooper class, in which a red man, evolved from the inner con- 
sciousness of the author, is impregnated with the ideas and senti- 
ments of a Chateaubriand. This has, however, become antiquated, 
even with the philanthropist, and seldom furnishes texts for mis- 
sionary meetings in these days. We have numerous graphic 
' accounts of the manners and customs of the Indian tribes as re- 
garded from the white standpoint, but these are wholly defective 
in the region of greatest interest, that of the native mental atmos- 
phere. There are speeches, still to be found in school readers, 
in which Indian chiefs apostrophize the “ Great Father” in lan- 
guage well chosen and eloquent, dignified by its simplicity and 
directness, and only unsatisfactory from the absence of any means 
_ of knowing how much of the reporter or interpreter is combined 
with the original. ` a 
It is hardly to be expected, perhaps, that the “squaw-man” of 
oe west or the keen-witted eae © of the abi would realize the oT 
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