It is impossible to overestimate the ethnologic importance of the
materials thus obtained. They are invaluable as the genuine production
of the Indian mind, setting forth in the clearest light the state of
the aboriginal religion before its contamination by contact with the
whites. To the psychologist and the student of myths they are equally
precious. In regard to their linguistic value we may quote the
language of Brinton, speaking of the sacred books of the Mayas,
already referred to:
Another value they have,... and it is one which will be
properly appreciated by any student of languages. They are,
by common consent of all competent authorities, the genuine
productions of native minds, cast in the idiomatic forms of
the native tongue by those born to its use. No matter how
fluent a foreigner becomes in a language not his own, he can
never use it as does one who has been familiar with it from
childhood. This general maxim is tenfold true when we apply
it to a European learning an American language. The flow of
thought, as exhibited in these two linguistic families, is
in such different directions that no amount of practice can
render one equally accurate in both. Hence the importance of
studying a tongue as it is employed by natives; and hence the
very high estimate I place on these “Books of Chilan Balam” as
linguistic material--an estimate much increased by the great
rarity of independent compositions in their own tongues by
members of the native races of this continent.[2]
[Footnote 2: Brinton, D. G.: The books of Chilan Balam 10,
Philadelphia, n.d., (1882).]
The same author, in speaking of the internal evidences of authenticity
contained in the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Kichés, uses the
following words, which apply equally well to these Cherokee formulas:
To one familiar with native American myths, this one bears
undeniable marks of its aboriginal origin. Its frequent
puerilities and inanities, its generally low and coarse range
of thought and expression, its occasional loftiness of both,
its strange metaphors and the prominence of strictly heathen
names and potencies, bring it into unmistakable relationship
to the true native myth.[3]
[Footnote 3: Brinton, D. G.: Names of the Gods in the Kiché Myths,
in Proc. Am. Philos. Soc., Philadelphia, 1881, vol. 19, p. 613.]
These formulas furnish a complete refutation of the assertion so
frequently made by ignorant and prejudiced writers that the Indian had
no religion excepting what they are pleased to call the meaning less
mummeries of the medicine man. This is the very reverse of the truth.
The Indian is essentially religious and contemplative, and it might
almost be said that every act of his life is regulated and determined
by his religious belief. It matters not that some may call this
superstition. The difference is only relative. The religion of
to-day has developed from the cruder superstitions of yesterday, and
Christianity itself is but an outgrowth and enlargement of the beliefs
and ceremonies which have been preserved by the Indian in their more
ancient form. When we are willing to admit that the Indian has a
religion which he holds sacred, even though it be different from
our own, we can then admire the consistency of the theory, the
particularity of the ceremonial and the beauty of the expression.
So far from being a jumble of crudities, there is a wonderful
completeness about the whole system which is not surpassed even by the
ceremonial religions of the East. It is evident from a study of these
formulas that the Cherokee Indian was a polytheist and that the spirit
world was to him only a shadowy counterpart of this. All his prayers
were for temporal and tangible blessings--for health, for long life,
for success in the chase, in fishing, in war and in love, for good
crops, for protection and for revenge. He had no Great Spirit, no
happy hunting ground, no heaven, no hell, and consequently death had
for him no terrors and he awaited the inevitable end with no anxiety
as to the future. He was careful not to violate the rights of his
tribesman or to do injury to his feelings, but there is nothing to
show that he had any idea whatever of what is called morality in the
abstract.
As the medical formulas are first in number and importance it may be
well, for the better understanding of the theory involved, to give the
Cherokee account of