Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/218

630 Non-English Writings II Behold upon the river's bank we stand, River we must cross. Oh Kawas come, to thee we call, Oh come and thy permission give Into the stream to wade and forward go. Finally, on the other side, after stanzas representing every stage of the crossing, there is the flick of the ponies' tails as the wind dries them. Hither winds, come to us, touch where water O'er us flowed when we waded, Come, O winds, come! Again, as the visiting party draws up from the lowlands about the river, we have this finely descriptive rhythm : The mesa see, it's flat top like a straight line cuts across the sky, It blocks our path, and we must climb, the mesa climb. What work in any language more obviously illustrates the influence of environment on literary form? Other examples there are of much subtler and more discriminating rhythms, but they only announce themselves after long intimacy with the land in which they develop. The homogeneity of the Amerind race makes it possible to detect environmental in- fluences with a precision not possible among the mixed races of Europe. In the Mountain Chant, the Dislyidje qacal of the Navaho, we have the Odyssey of a nomadic people, of great practical efficiency, wandering for generations in such a country as pro- duced the earlier books of the Old Testament. It is notable that while the epics of their town-building neighbours, the Zuni, Hopi, and Tewa peoples, are tribal, the chief literary product of the wandering Dine, like the story of Abraham, is the personal adventure of one man with the gods. The full ceremony of the Night Chant is a nine days' per- formance of symbolic rites, song sequences, and dramatic dances. The final act of all, performed in public as a sort of tribal festival, at night, within a corral of juniper boughs, takes a special name, Ilnasjingo qacal, "chant within the dark circle of branches." This is the only part of the ceremony witnessed