Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/207

Amerind Epic 619 blank verse had developed, capable of carrying long narrative and susceptible of variation to meet the demands of dialogue. In one or another of these forms all that was really impor- tant to the aboriginal American was stated. Longfellow, had he been more of an American and less of an academician, could have easily found native measures for his Hiawatha cycle with- out borrowing from the Finnish, although he showed more dis- crimination than most writers who have attempted to render Indian epics, in choosing a form that was very closely akin to the Amerind. It is possible that the literary mode of the Amerind epics has been influenced by the native choice of story interest. While all of the longer poems begin with the creation of the world and purport to record the early wanderings of the tribe and its subsequent history, there is a notable lack of the warrior themes that occupy the epics of the old world. The Amerind hero is a culture hero, introducer of agriculture, of irrigation, and of improved house-building. Hiawatha, not Longfellow's Ojibway composite, but the original Haion 'hwa'tha of the Mo- hawks, was a statesman, a reformer, and a prophet. His very name ("he makes rivers") refers to his establishment of canoe routes among the Five Nations and with the peoples along the headwaters of the Ohio River. In company with Dekanawida, an Onondaga coadjutor, he formed the original League of Nations with the object of "abolishing the wasting evils of inter-tribal blood feuds." We may select for analysis two of the best and best known of these culture epics, the Walam Olum already mentioned as the earliest American book, and the Zuni Creation Myth as it has been made known to us through the labours of Frank Gushing. The record of the Red Score was obtained by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque while he was holding the chair of Historical and Natural Science in the Transylvania University of Ken- tucky, and a translation was printed by him in 1836. The original copy was a collection of the before-mentioned bark or "board plates," incised and painted with the picture writings of the Lenni Lenape. The words, found somewhat later by Pro- fessor Rafinesque, have been pronounced by Daniel Brinton to be a genuine oral tradition written down by one not very familiar with the language.