Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/199

The Conditions of Aboriginal Literature 6ii accumidation of private property, had already made its appear- ance within the territory that is now the United States. And along with these things had developed all the varieties of Hter- ary expression natural to that temperament and that state of society — oratory, epigram, lyrics, ritual-drama, folk-tale, and epic. In any competent account of this aboriginal literature of ours it will be necessary to refer to the points, in Mexico and Peru, where the racial genius that produced it reached its highest expression. But between the St. Lawrence and the Rio Grande the one item which primarily conditioned all liter- ary form was complete democracy of thinking and speaking. Such education as the aboriginal Americans had was "free" in the sense that there were no special advantages for particular classes. Their scholars were wise in life only, there were no "intellectuals." The language being native, there were no words in it derived from scholastic sources, no words that were not used all the time by all the people. It was not even possible for poet or orator to talk "over the heads" of his audiences. There was a kind of sacred patter used by the initiates of certain mysteries, but the language of literature was the common vehicle of daily life. This made for a state of things for which we are now vaguely striving in America, in which all the literature will be the posses- sion of all the people, and the distinction between "popular" and real literature will cease to exist. And in aboriginal litera- ture we have interesting examples of how this democracy of content modifies the form of what is written. The controlling factor in the form of aboriginal literature was its need of being rememberable. Transmitted as it was by word of mouth, every song and story had to shape itself, as natvirally as a river to its bed, to the retentive faculty of the mind. Ceremonies occupying several days for their perfor- mance must be passed, letter-perfect, from generation to gen- eration. It was etiquette in Indian assemblies for a speaker, on rising, to repeat all that had been said by previous speakers on that subject. Under these circumstances remembering became a profession. Individuals with exceptional endowment became the custodians of tribal history. "Keeper of the Wampum" grew to be a title of distinction, and it is related of one of these