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 said about the native oratory, we are in a very inadequate position to judge of it correctly, and this because we have no accurate reports in the original tongues of their speeches. Translations, more or less loose, more or less imaginary, we have in abundance; but, for critical purposes, they are simply worthless.

Yet that even the ruder tribes in both the northern and southern continents, attached great weight to the cultivation of oratory, is amply evident. James Adair, who is competent authority, tells us that the southern Indians studied public speaking assiduously, and that their speeches "abound with bolder tropes and figures than illiterate interpreters can well comprehend or explain."[59] Mr. Howse writes that, among the Crees, those who possess oratorical talent are in demand by the Chiefs, who employ them to deliver the official harangues.[60] Among the Aztecs, the very word for chief, tlatoani, literally means "orator" (from the verb tlatoa, to harangue). In the far south, among the Araucanians of Chili, and their relatives the migratory hordes of the Pampas, no gift is in higher estimation than that of an easy and perspicuous delivery. This alone enables the humblest to rise to the position of chieftain.[61] So it was over the whole continent.

In most of their languages, the oratorical was markedly different from the familiar or colloquial style. The former was given to antithesis, repetition, elaborate figures, unusual metaphors, and more sonorous and lengthened expressions. The Rev. Mr. Byington gives a number of the oratorical affectations in the Choctaw, as akakano for ak, okakocha for ok, etc.[62]

Some genuine specimens of the oratory of the northern tribes are preserved by Mr. Hale, in the Iroquois Book of Rites, to which I have referred on a previous page. The speeches it contains were learned by heart, and transmitted from generation to generation, long before they were committed to writing, and long after some of the words and expressions they contain had become lost to the colloquial language of the tribe.

The ancient Mexicans were much given to this sort of formal speech-making. They had a large number of cut-and-dried orations, which professional rhetoricians delivered on all important occasions in life. The new-born child was harangued at, in good set terms, when it was but a few days old. Betrothals, marriages, festivals, the commencement of puberty and of pregnancy, etc., were all celebrated by the delivery of discourses. Fathers taught their children, teachers their pupils, monarchs their vassals, war chiefs their soldiers, by such declamations. The general name for these speeches was huehuetlatolli, ancient orations.[63]

Many have been preserved, and a tolerably complete collection could be made in the original tongue. To effect this, we should have to have recourse to the original Nahuatl MS. of Sahagun's history, which, I have already said, exists in Madrid; next, to the extremely rare work of the eminent Nahuatl scholar, Father Juan Baptista, Platicas Morales, in which, according to Vetancurt, he gives, in the original, the ancient addresses of fathers to their children, and of rulers to their subjects;[64] and lastly, to the recently published, though very early written, Mexican Grammar, of the Franciscan Andre de Olmos, which contains a number of these discourses, carefully edited and translated by the accomplished scholar, M. Remi Simeon.[65]

The numerous prayers to the heathen gods, preserved by Sahagun, are, doubtless, faithfully recorded, and are accurate examples of the elevated literary style of the ancient Aztecs. They should, by all means, be printed, so that they could be accessible to those who would acquaint themselves with the genius of the language and the psychology of the people.

In the Qquichua of Peru, a few similar prayers to Viracocha have been saved from oblivion, in the pages of Cristobal de Molina. One or more copies of his Relacion are in the United States, but it has only appeared in print through a translation by Mr. Markham, in the Hackluyt Society's publications.[66] Some modern prayers of the Mayas are to be found in the collection of Brasseur,[67] and, doubtless, several of the so-called ancient "prophecies," preserved in the Books of Chilan Balam, are, in fact, specimens of the impassioned and mystic rhapsodies with which the priests of their heathendom entertained their hearers, as Cortes and his followers heard, one day, on the island of Cozumel.[68]