Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 11 (Latin American).djvu/29

Rh This, however, need not be accredited merely to cooler blood and calmer race: the North American colonies belong to the seventeenth century, a good hundred years after the Spaniards had completed their most golden conquests, and for the Spaniard, no less than for the others, the hour of intoxication and extravagance had by then gone by—leaving its flamboyant tones to warm the colours of succeeding times. Thus it is that Latin American myth is in no faint degree truly Latinian.

But while there is a certain Old World seasoning in Latin American myth, native traditions are, of course, the substantial material of the study. This material is striking and various. It embraces the usual substrata of demoniac beliefs and animistic credulities, and above these such elaborate formations as the Aztec and Maya pantheons, with their amazing astral and calendric interpretations, or the enigmatic and fervid religion of Peru. Many of the stories are little more than vocal superstitions; others, such as the conquering of death in the Popul Fuh, the Brazilian tale of the release of the imprisoned night, or the superb Surinam legend of Maconaura and Anuanaïtu, will compare, both for dramatic power and subtle suggestion, with the best that the world can show. There is, of course, the constant difficulty of deciding where myth clearly emerges from the misty realm of folk-lore, and, at the other extreme, where it is succeeded by science and religion; but this difficulty Is more theoretic than practical: in its central character mythology is present wherever there are animating gods operant in the body of nature, and myth is present wherever spirits or deities are shown as dramatically interacting causes. With a few possible exceptions (the possibility being probably but the expression of our ignorance), all American Indians are mythopoets, whose mythology is characterized in characterizing their beliefs.

The practical problem of handling and apportioning the subject-matter is similar to that presented in the case of North America, and rather more difficult. In the first place,