Page:Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society V.djvu/41

Rh gatherings for dancing." "Their singing is but a succession of grunts, and is anything but agreeable."

38. The evidence of these gentlemen, one would think, might be taken as conclusive. Yet, fifteen years ago, when the author first found himself among the Navahoes, he was not influenced in the least by the authority of this letter. Previous experience with the Indians had taught him of how little value such negative evidence might be, and he began at once to investigate the religion, traditions, and poetic literature, of which, he was assured, the Navahoes were devoid.



39. He had not been many weeks in New Mexico when he discovered that the dances to which Dr. Letherman refers were religious ceremonials, and later he found that these ceremonials might vie in allegory, symbolism, and intricacy of ritual with the ceremonies of any people, ancient or modern. He found, erelong, that these heathens, pronounced godless and legendless, possessed lengthy myths and traditions&mdash;so numerous that one can never hope to collect them all, a pantheon as well stocked with gods and heroes as that of the ancient Greeks, and prayers which, for length and vain repetition, might put a Pharisee to the blush.

40. But what did the study of appalling "succession of grunts" reveal? It revealed that besides improvised songs, in which the Navahoes are adepts, they have knowledge of thousands of