Page:Natalie Curtis - The Indians' Book.djvu/35

THE INDIANS' BOOK whose feathers is breathed the supplication, to be wafted by the wind. Prayer is conveyed in the designs of woven fabrics, in bead-work, pottery, and decorations of all kinds, in dance, in ceremony, and in song.

Wellnigh impossible is it for civilized man to conceive of the importance of song in the life of the Indian. To the Indian, song is the breath of the spirit that consecrates the acts of life. Not all songs are religious, but there is scarcely a task, light or grave, scarcely an event, great or small, but has its fitting song.

In the Hebrew "Genesis" the creating word is spoken—"And God said, Let there be light." In nearly every Indian myth the creator sings things into life. For civilized man, the messages of truth, the traditions of his ancestors, the history of his race, the records of his thought have been secured upon the written page and so transmitted through the years. To the Indian, truth, tradition, history, and thought are preserved in ritual of poetry and song. The red man's song records the teachings of his wise men, the great deeds of his heroes, the counsel of his seers, the worship of his God. If all things Indian must, indeed, pass away under the white man's ban as being "pagan" and "uncivilized," then will be lost to the red man not only his whole unwritten literature, but also, and sadder still, the realm wherein his soul aspires. For to the primitive man of another race, no creed wholly alien to his thought and environment ever can replace his own entire spiritual world, which is the heritage of his past and the natural expression of his soul.

Throughout this book the effort has been made to render truthfully into English the thought in the Indian poetry. Translations have carefully been worked out with educated Indians as interpreters and old men of authority as informants. Indian poetry is difficult of translation, not only because of the differences in language (for there are Indian words that have no counterpart in English), but also because of the very nature of the poetry.

Indian poetry, like Indian art, is expressed in symbol. The cloud-form in Indian design is no copy of a cloud, but a conventionalized image that is a symbol meaning cloud, as a wavy line means water or a cross stands for a star. Even so in poetry. One