. The poets' New England. ic through the person of Tituba, the Indianwitch woman; and I am not so sure that the greatCotton Mather himself was not a shining exampleof a superior conqueror who had absorbed some of thereligious ideas of the barbarians he had conquered. Strictly speaking, the whole body of Indian legendis just as much ours to use artistically, as nature inthe New World is ours to use artistically. The onlypity is that so much of it has been lost. To these two sources of romance, the adventuresof the explorers, and the coming into possession ofthe mythological lore of the conquere
. The poets' New England. ic through the person of Tituba, the Indianwitch woman; and I am not so sure that the greatCotton Mather himself was not a shining exampleof a superior conqueror who had absorbed some of thereligious ideas of the barbarians he had conquered. Strictly speaking, the whole body of Indian legendis just as much ours to use artistically, as nature inthe New World is ours to use artistically. The onlypity is that so much of it has been lost. To these two sources of romance, the adventuresof the explorers, and the coming into possession ofthe mythological lore of the conquered race, are to beadded the experiences of new colonies struggling tomake firm their foothold in the new land. They are,for the most part, not merely colonists seeking forwealth, they are men of ideals, whose settled determi-nation to realize them brings about a wholly newphase in the history of political and social develop-ment. The play and interplay of the forces of con-quest, the forces of revolt, the forces that reach. Cotton Mather THE POETS NEW ENGLAND 77 forward toward high results or that drag backwardsthrough the survival in human nature of dying super-stitions, makes an exquisite turmoU of New Englandhistory in particular, in which the romantic elementsare almost beyond calculation. No doubt there areimtold mines of romance stUl waiting to be imearthedamong the dusty archives of New England Histori-cal Societies, or in the libraries of private famiUes. Whittier and Longfellow alone of these early NewEngland poets have made effective use of the wealthof Indian lore. Holmes and Emerson have nottouched it. Bryant and Lowell have drawn upon itin a few minor poems. Whittiers drafts upon aboriginal tradition andmythology for subject matter were not extensive, andseem to have been more a matter of accident than ofexpress intention. He did not have Longfellows am-bition to make of Indian myth and custom a sourceof indigenous epic material. Consequently we haveonly four short
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