Is it that
hitherto, in the pride of intellectual culture, we have never done
justice to the thinking faculty of those whom we call barbarians? Or
shall we accept the only other alternative, that these are the
unappreciated heirlooms bequeathed a rude race by a period of higher
civilization, long since extinguished by constant wars and ceaseless
fear? We are not yet ready to answer these questions. With almost
unanimous consent the latter has been accepted as the true solution, but
rather from the preconceived theory of a state of primitive
civilization from which man fell, than from ascertained facts.
It would, perhaps, be pushing symbolism too far to explain as an emblem
of the primitive waters the coyote, which, according to the Root-Diggers
of California, brought their ancestors into the world; or the wolf,
which the Lenni Lenape pretended released mankind from the dark bowels
of the earth by scratching away the soil. They should rather be
interpreted by the curious custom of the Toukaways, a wild people in
Texas, of predatory and unruly disposition.
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