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The work of "The Deer-Star" is an anthology we edited from the poems, songs and legends which Mary Austin collected and translated into English and published in various media. The contents of "The American Rhythm", which was published in 1923 takes a leading role in our anthology.
Studies and Re-expression of Amerindian Songs
(Second, Enlarged Edition/Originally Published 1930)
written by Mary Austin.
#0 My Thoughts About The American Indians
What are the roots of the American Indians? Are they Americans? The answer will depend on what America refers to, but I would like to say "yes" first of all. I think they are Navajo, Paiute and American.
Twenty thousand years ago Mongoloid people who lived on the Eurasian Continent arrived in North America via the Bering Strait(36 miles between two continents). They are ancestors of the present American Indians, who were the first inhabitants of the American Continent. Some of them went south to Central America, and farther to South America. They were called Indios there.
Mongoloid refers to my people, the Japanese, too. They are people who have a bluish birthmark on their hips when they are born. People who had the same roots as the Japanese settled on the other side of the Pacific Ocean in a place named America, after a long, long trip, a long time ago.
The Pacific Ocean is the biggest sea in the world. Though a huge empty blue space spreads on the map, if you look at it carefully, you will find many islands scattered within it. Hawaii, Western Samoa, Tonga, and Easter Island in Polynesia, Fiji, Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea in Melanesia, Saipan, Guam, Belau, and Kribati in Micronesia, and the Japanese Islands at the western edge, then toward the south on the East China Sea there are Ryukyu(Okinawa), Taiwan, Philippine Islands, Borneo, and Bali. This area, which also includes the west coast of America, is called the Pan Pacific rim.
I was moved by the word of the Pan Pacific rim when I encountered it several years ago while studying about the Hawaiian language and culture. Though the inhabitants of the islands seem to be isolated by the sea, they actually moved about from island to island with their canoes. The people of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia began to move ahead slowly three or four thousand years ago, and they reached Hawaii in the seventh century. Hawaiian people travelled in their canoes a great distance to Tahiti and New Zealand. They had advanced sailing knowledge and skill. They composed songs as they travelled . Each song drew a Star Compass (star chart) of the whole Pacific Ocean for their voyage.
I may have gone a long way from the main subject. I would like to say these things: Though we are used to live as members of our nations, we know that these nations are very young when we look at the long history of human beings. They moved on the continent and the sea on foot or by canoes, undisturbed by borders and territorial waters. Even though high mountains, great rivers and stormy seas prevented them from going forward, no border laid by humans ever disturbed them.
The subject of how a nation will develop (or disappear) in the future, is a very interesting and serious matter for us, because the limits of borders have hurt us and violated our peace for hundreds of years. American Indians are people who would never have had a nation by themselves. They lived in a world where no borders were laid between human beings and human beings, human beings and other creatures, human beings and nature, and creatures and sprits. They can communicate with each other freely and interchange their identities as they wished. That is their world. We call it a mythological world.
In his work "Kuma kara Ou e"(From a bear to a king), Shin-ichi Nakazawa, a Japanese philosopher and religious scholar, wrote that prejudice, the judging of tribes as savages, had not occurred until human beings had nations. In the book he explained that a mythological thought was a useful function to help us to avoid having prejudice as a "philosophy". A mythological thought may help in our time, which is very difficult. Or we can re-experience the no-border and non narrow-minded world which we had before, by reading one or two Indian poems. That is what we dream.
A mythological thought or Indian songs, poems and legends may be our Star Compass which illuminates our hard lives in our chaotic world, from the outside. We would be very happy if the work of American Indian's poetry can illuminate your daily life now or in the future, like the Deer-Star at dawn which was the guide for the Paiute's deer hunter.
Kazue Daikoku, editor of The Deer-Star, 7 October 2002
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