The
scene is changing with each year, and the past, with respect to the
Savages, does not recur. They fall back with no hope to recover lost
ground; they diminish with no hope to increase again; they degenerate
with no hope to revive in physical or moral strength. Those who have
seen them most during the last few years, have seen them best. After
observers will find mere fragments, or a heterogeneous mass, in which
all original identity is distorted or gone.
"The Tales now published must not be estimated for their intrinsic merit
alone. They may have less variety of construction, less beauty of
imagination, less singularity of incident, than belong to oriental
tales, the productions of more refined times, or more excitable people.
But the estimate must not be comparative. They are to be regarded as
the type of aboriginal mind, as the measure of intellectual power of our
Sons of the Forest; as speaking their sentiments, their hopes and their
fears, whatever they were or are, whether elevated or depressed, whether
raising the race or sinking it in the scale of untutored nations.
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