The Legends of the Iroquois: Told by the Cornplanter (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Legends of the Iroquois: Told by "the Cornplanter"The Indians neither built monuments nor wrote books. The only records they made were those picture writings known in after years as wampum, which were mere symbols, recording feats of arms. Consequently, all that is known of them prior to the coming to America of Europeans is traditional or conjectural. Not a page of their history has ever been written by any save their foes, and the history thus written is so distorted and marred by prejudice that much of it is misleading.In the veins of the red man ran the wild poetry and imagination of the hunt, the chase, the battle, the capture, the dance, the forests, the valleys, the mountains, the streams, lakes and rivers, for a thousand generations; and yet they were without accomplishment in letters or arts. Is it, therefore, strange that they held in great reverence the traditions and legends common in their tribes - revered them as the early Christians revered the first copies of the sacred writings? These legends were told over again and again for unknown years.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.