Whether they prove a poverty of mental energy, a feebleness of
imagination, a want of invention, or the reverse, cannot affect the
value of these volumes in the opinion of those who look into them for
evidences of the true character of the Indians. Mr. Schoolcraft, or any
other gentleman of taste and skill, might have formed out of these
materials a series of Tales, highly finished in their unity and design,
strikingly colored by fancy, such as would have caught the popular whim.
But this was not his object. He has been honest in his renderings of the
aboriginal sense, whether pointed or mystical, of the Indian's
mythology, whether intelligible or obscure; of their shadowy glimpses of
the past and the future; of the beginning and end of things, without
alteration or embellishment. Such a work was wanted, and such a work was
expected from Mr. Schoolcraft.
"If we have room, we will quote one or two of the shorter tales, such as
'Mon-daw-min, or the origin of Indian corn,' and the 'Celestial
Sisters,' both of which are very characteristic, and show, under the
garb of much figurative beauty, how Indians appreciate the blessings of
a kind Providence, and, how his domestic affections may glow and endure.
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