Schoolcraft, as a
timely rescue from oblivion of an important portion of the great world
of mind--important inasmuch as it is a manifestation of two principles
of human nature prominent in an interesting variety of the human race,
the sense of the marvelous and the sense of the beautiful, or the
developments of wonder and ideality. The character of a people cannot be
fully understood without a reference to its tales of fiction and its
poetry. Poetry is the offspring of the beautiful and the wonderful, and
much of it the reader will find embodied in the Indian tales to which
the author of the _Algic Researches_ has given an enduring record.
"Much of this work strongly reminds the reader of the Grecian Mythology
and the _Arabian Nights Entertainments_.
"According to one of the Odjibwa tales, the morning star was once a
beautiful damsel that longed to go to 'the place of the breaking of
daylight." By the following poetic invocation of her brother, she was
raised upon the winds, blowing from 'the four corners of the earth,' to
the heaven of her hopes:--
Blow winds, blow! my sister lingers
From her dwelling in the sky,
Where _the morn with rosy fingers_,
Shall her cheeks with vermil dye.
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