Aboriginal American Authors and their Productions

ive Peruvian writers who made use of the language of their conquerors; as Don Joan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui, whose Relacion de Antiguedades de Piru is a precious document, though composed in very uncritical Spanish; as Don Luis Inca, whose Relacion, prepared in Spanish, seems now to be lost, but is referred to, with praise, by some of the older writers; and, above all others, Inca Garcillasso de la Vega, whose vivid and attractive style, and numerous historical writings place him easily in the first rank of Spanish historians of America.

From the above it would seem evident enough that the American aborigines were endowed, as a race, with a turn for literary composition, and a faculty for it. They were generally, however, an unlettered race. What they composed was for oral use only. This might be carefully arranged, committed to heart, and handed down from generation to generation; but as for recording it in forms which would convey it to the mind through the eye, that was a discove