New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1892-09-25
.vrRTCANS WHO ANTEDATE AMERICA.

AMERICANS WHO ANTEDATE AMERICA.
There is a story, now become classic, of
. traveller who, for his first and only time visit
"A tho Hub of the Universe, and climbed to
the ton of the Bunker Hill Monument and who
met. on his descent from the summit, native
Bost~nian. who had spent all his life within
sight of the famous shaft and never yet bad
entered its precincts. Real or invented, the
story conveys an obvious moral, OF well-nigh
universal application. 1t is the far-of, the
seldom seen, the hardly attained, that man
most prizes to the neglect of that which lies
at his door though oftentimes the latter be OF
greater worth. If only Mrs. Jellyby cared as
much for home as for Borrioboola Cha Ii
only our schoolchildren devoted as much at
tention to their mother tongue as to some smat-
tering of foreign languages! And so through
the whole catalogue. "Do the next thing" is
hard command, when one is hankerlng to do
the twenty seventh thing beyond.
All this is a trusm but it is truism OF
which we need to be reminded, and Of which
now and then we are forcibly, sometimes pa
thctically reminded. One gallant adventurer
with his comrades has just returned from eX-
ploration of the Polar wilderness. Other dis
coverers have been fixing intensest gaze and
thought upon distant planet A goodly COM
pany of Swans has been discussing and study
ing the lore of the ancient and distant ORIENT.
And we read of their dongs, and declare them
to be well as indeed they are. But what OF
the planet on which we live, and the wilder
nesscs that lie at our very doors, and the untold
wealth of lore and legend and scientific fact
here in our own land and now in our own time,
too much neglected and forgot? Macaulays
schoolboy would be shamed to own his igno-
rance of England's pecrage. But what does his
American classmate know of our native peer
age. that was tme-h onored when the paint
was new on the cscutcheon of the Towards?
The schoolboys of the world have heard of the
prowess of Achilles and the wanderings of
Aeneas. and the small-talk of society is now
seasoned with the Heldenbuch's version of the
Niblung Lay. But how many, even Of our So
called sages have explored the treasure-cham-
hers of the 1roQuois Book of Rites?
The fact is that we have been guilty both
Of great injustice to tho American aborigine
and of deplorabe neglect TO CLEAN the harvest
of chronological knowledge-aye, and literary
and artistic knowledge, too-which he has
offered us. Some men have studied him and
written Of him. But too often they have done
so only in q poetic or romantic vein or else
their work has passed along UNDECIDED. "The
only good Indian is the dead Indian p has been
too much the popular idea his body, his tradi-
tons, his folklore his religion, alike dead.
OF serious, systematic. intelligent study of him
and acquaintance with him, there has been far
too little, either for his good or for our knowl
edge of a race by no means the least important
and interesting in the world.
The letters which we have published from
an accomplished correspondent in the Six Ma
tons Reservc-the first on Sunday last, the
second to-day-give some fascinating and most
instructive glmpses of Iroquois life and lore.
They show lis tho existence for centuries past
Of an elaborate social and political organism
with features that may well command the at
tcnton of the student OF sociology and state
craft They show us manners and customs Of
surprising picturesqueness. They show us a
literature containing works worthy, as our
writcr well says, to rank among the greatest
efforts Of human genius. They show us a re-
ligious faith which may be pagan but is
sublime, declaring that, however many and
diverse be the modes of worship, there is but
ono NrOu, tnt uIHcr Oh us '7uIciy, utio II
a field for sympathetic study now; not TO be
left for future ages hampered by the decay OF
time. Surely, it is comparable in interest with
the ruins Of Susa, or Pompeii, or the cities of
tho Pharaohs. And surely the time to study
it. as our correspondent has done, is now while
vet the Six Nations exist and while yet
Skanawati survives and before il shall truly
be said in the words of the lroquois hymn
Ye are in your graves who established It, le
have taken it with you, and have placed it
under YOU and there is nothing left but
desert"
There could be no time moro appropriate for
such study than this. in which all thoughts arc
dwelling upon the august event OF four centuries
ago. Spain and Italy claim great share OF
interest in tho Columbian quadri- centenary.
Choicest Of all is tho share OF new America
But what Of old America the yet unnamed
America, that had its nations and its social
and political systems, and its literature and
art and religion, ages before our ancestors
learned that the earth was round? Amid the
honors paid to the discoverer, what of the man
he discoyeredP At Chicago next year, and in
every thoughtful mind to-day, room for the
Red Man Room