Aboriginal American Authors and their Productions, page 29 by Daniel G. Brinton
<< Return to Title Details & Download30
xemplos em lengua Guarani, by Nicolas Japuguay, cura of the Parish of San Francisco in 1727.[56] But when it is edited, let us hope that it will be a more favorable example of critical care than the Crestomathia da Lingua Brasilica, edited by Dr. Ernesto Ferreira França (Leipzig, 1859), which, according to Professor Hartt, is "badly arranged, carelessly edited, and disfigured by innumerable typographical errors."[57]
A curious variety of religious literature is what are called the Passions, Las Pasiones, which are found among the natives of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. These prose chants took their rise at an early period among the sodalities (cofradias), organized under the name of some particular saint. Each of these societies possessed a volume, called its Regulations (Ordenanzas), containing, among other matters, a series of invocations, founded on the history of the Passion of Christ. During Holy Week, certain members of the fraternity, called fiscales, gather in the church, around one of their number, who reads a sentence in a loud voice. The fiscales repeat it in a chanting tone, with a uniform and monotonous cadence. It is probable that these chants are the compositions of the Indians themselves. Dr. Berendt obtained several copies of these, some in the Chapaneca of Chiapas, and others in the Zoque of the Isthmus, which are now in my hands.
Section 5. Oratorical Literature.
The love of the American Indian for oratorical display has been commented on by almost all writers who have studied his disposition. Specimens of native eloquence have been introduced into school books, and declaimed by many an aspiring young Cicero. Most of them are, doubtless, as fictitious as Logan's celebrated speech, which was exalted by the great Jefferson almost to a level with the outbursts of Demosthenes, to be reduced again to very small proportions by the criticisms of Brantz Mayer.[58]
In fact, in spite of all that has been sai