American Indian Culture and Research Journal

So multiplied are the co nnexions existing between nation and nation in modem times, that intellectual originality may justly be regarded as one of the greatest phenomena in nature. Lond. Quart. Review, Oct. 1814

The remark which stands at the head of this article, comes with peculiar force from the work which contains it. It has, with the writer of the following pages, unqualified belief. He has only regretted that the authors of that work have not always written under the influence of so liberal a sentiment. They might have found in its truth, some good reasons for the barrenness of American Literature.

The American nation found itself wrapped up in a major contradiction in 1876. Celebrating its own one-hundredth year of independence from Britain, the country was ruthlessly extinguishing the independence of the Native American people. Despite the Sioux victory over General Custer that summer, 1876 proved to be no year of celebration for the Indian. The end of his freedom was at hand. Yet, ironically, while wars still continued on the plains, the United States government decided to include the American Indian in its exposition. The role the Indian played in the Centennial is illustrative of the contemporary public image of Indian America and of the utter incapacity of the nation to see more than curiosity value in native culture. It also may serve to suggest that history should not be repeated one hundred years later.

An Eskimo poet told Knud Rasmussen, "Songs (poems) are thoughts sung out with the breath when people are moved by great forces and ordinary speech no longer suffices .... And then it will happen that we, who always think we are smalL will feel still smaller. And we will fear to use words. But it will happen that the words we need will come of themselves. When the words we want to use shoot up of themselves-we get a new song." -Paul Radin, in Diogenes (1955)

A Papago woman told Ruth Underhill, "The song is very short because we understand so much." - Margot Astrov. The Winged Serpent

Once, over a time of 70,000 years, there were some 400 Native American tribes in North America. For the most part they lived as independent cultures. They spoke at least 200 languages representing the world's major Ianguage families. Except for the Mayan and the Aztec, these peoples evolved without written languages. They lived as oral cultures, tribal life passing mouth to mouth, generation to generation, alive only as the people lived. This oral tradition bound the people tribally, as it poeticized the "common" speech. The art of language was a daily, shared activity, and the word was tribal bond. The names of 27 different tribes mean, in various forms, "the people." Winnebago means "people of the real speech."

Long-distance contact throughout prehistoric times and the period of European exploration in North America had a pronounced impact on native cultures. Distance and geography did not limit far-flung social relations, travel, and trade among tribal peoples. The convergence of cultures ill many regions, and, at times, a virtual homogenization of societies across wide areas, was not usually the result of random diffusion. instead, archaeological evidence and ethnographic accounts imply extensive long - term relations among selected groups for specific social, economic, or political benefits. To many of the colonizing Europeans, the New World was both an attraction and a repulsion. A variety of social. economic, military, and religious motives impelled settlers to the American shores. The largest proportion of these numbers settled on the coastal margins, and the residents largely confined their activities within a small radius around the village clusters. Toward the sea was an exception, for intercourse along the coast and across the sea was anxiously maintained. In early colonial history, penetration of the interior took place with almost surprising deliberation. Contrary to popular belief, westward expansion resulted from something other than a burning desire to observe what layover the mountain, or to confront the Indians. Land pressure resulting from depleted soils, along with economic and political compulsions, literally shoved certain segments of the population into the great beyond. Latecomers to America (i.e., those after 1700), marginal farmers, squatters, and ne'er-do-wells served as the not altogether willing vanguard of civilization in the wake of missionaries and traders. At the beginning, America's landscape offered as great a psychological and physical deterrent to the white settlers as did the tribes who already dwelt there. The terms "forest primeval," "dismal wilderness," and "trackless wasteland" are legacies that recall the hesitant conquest of the American continent. These terms survive, even though the notion they convey is, at best, semilegendary. The natural American setting had immense forests, but they were laced by streams, pocked by glades, and dissected by the trails of animals. Signs of human activity greeted the reluctant tenderfoot even in pioneer times. Paths and trade routes were active in most areas, affording proof that this seemingly formidable environment was not totally confining to its native inhabitants, the American Indians. Thus, in view of the significant archaeological evidence for wide-area connections well before European colonization, the time-honored, cherished concept of a primeval forest deserves reinterpretation.