Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/209

Amerind Epic 621 Builders, who in turn are supposed to be the forebears of the present Cherokees. At first the Lenape made a treaty by which they were to be permitted to cross toward the south and east, but treachery arose. The Lenape retreated across Fish River, which was probably the Detroit crossing of the St. Lawrence, and, making an alliance with the Mingwe, the originals of the Five Nations, they descended on the Mound Builders and, after a hundred years' war, drove them south of the Ohio. The Red Score relates further how the descending northern peoples distributed themselves in the region south of the Great Lakes, andtheLenni Lenape finally separated themselves from their allies, going toward the East River, the Delaware, where the English found them. The record ends practically with the beginning of white settlements, and there is no reason to believe that the epic as a whole is anything other than a fairly accurate traditional account of actual tribal movements. The Zuni creation epic, though never committed to writing, is several literary stages in advance of the Wdlam Olum. The Zuni are a sedentary people living in the high valleys of what is now New Mexico. When Coronado discovered them in 1540 they were distributed among the Seven Cities of Cibola, sub- sisting on agriculture and an extensive trade with adjacent tribes in blankets, salt, cotton, and silver and turquoise jewelry. Like the Walam Olum their Creation Myth purports to give a history of the tribe from the creation of the world to its settle- ment in its present location. The manner in which it is pre- served in entirety is exceedingly interesting. It is serial in composition, and the various parts are each committed to one of the priestly orders called the Midmost, whose office is heredi- tary in a single clan, outranking all other clans and priesthoods as "Masters of the House of Houses." Each division of the Epic is called a "Talk/' but the completed serial is known as "The Speech." When performed in order accompanied by dance and symbolic rites, it constitutes the most interesting literary survival in the New World. In structure the parts of the Zuni myth indicate develop- ment from primitive song sequences, the narrative parts of which have been shaped, as already suggested, out of prose, into a blank verse matrix. Within this the speeches of the Uanami, or Beloved Gods, which were naturally the first parts