Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/137

Rh so abounding in images, pictures, and symbols. It was this paucity of words and expressions suited to their use in moral and religious teachings that greatly impeded the work of missionaries among the savages. Doubtless, in many of the Treaty Councils with them speeches have been very erroneously conveyed, and covenants greatly mystified.

Of the power and graces of Indian oratory the evidences and the illustrations are abundant. The famous speech of Logan, even if apocryphal, is ranked among the gems of eloquence. When his fellow-chief Cornstock, in Cresap's war, 1774, held his interview with Lord Dunmore, Colonel Wilson, who was present, thus describes the scene: —

Among the efforts of labor and zeal which have been spent by Europeans — generally, too, in unselfish and self-sacrificing toils — for the benefit of the Indians, might well be mentioned with special emphasis the task-work given to the acquisition and comparison of Indian vocabularies, for purposes of speech, instruction, and translation. It is one thing to give oneself to the study of a difficult language for the sake of being able to master the treasures of literature which it may contain. It is quite another thing to catch the words and modulations, the breathings and gruntings of a spoken tongue without alphabet or symbol, to reduce it to written forms, and to make it a vehicle for presenting the literature of other languages. It is curious to note that the earliest Europeans who undertook to put into writing the first Indian words which they heard, seem to have aimed to crowd