The Making of Religion Part 25

[Footnote 6: _Africana_, i. 67.]

[Footnote 7: _Africana_, i. 71, 72_]

[Footnote 8: i 88.]

[Footnote 9: i. 68.]

[Footnote 10: i. 130.]

[Footnote 11: Ibid.]

[Footnote 12: _Africana_, i 279-301.]

[Footnote 13: Edinburgh, 1892.]

[Footnote 14: Incidentally Mr. Macdonald shows that, contrary to Mr.

Spencer's opinion, these savages have words for dreams and dreaming. They interpret dreams by a system of symbols, 'a canoe is ill luck,' and 'dreams go by contraries.']

[Footnote 15: Waitz, _Anthropologie_, ii. 167.]

[Footnote 16: Waitz and Gerland, _Anthropologie_, vi. 796-799 and 809. In 1874 Mr. Howitt's evidence on the moral element in the mysteries was not published. Waitz scouts the idea that the higher Australian beliefs are of European origin. 'Wir schen vielmehr uralte Trummer ahnlicher Mythologenie in ihnen,' (vi. 798) flotsam from ideas of immemorial antiquity.]

[Footnote 17: Wilson, p. 209.]

[Footnote 18: Wilson, p. 392.]

[Footnote 19: Park's _Journey_, i. 274, 275, 1815.]

[Footnote 20: P. 245.]

[Footnote 21: London, 1887.]

[Footnote 22: Ellis, pp. 20, 21.]

[Footnote 23: P. 4.]

[Footnote 24: Ellis, p. 10.]

[Footnote 25: P. 120.]

[Footnote 26: P. 15.]

[Footnote 27: P. 125.]

[Footnote 28: Ellis, pp. 24, 25.]

[Footnote 29: Ellis, p. 189.]

[Footnote 30: Miss Kingsley, p. 442.]

[Footnote 31: Ellis, p. 229.]

[Footnote 32: Ibid. p. 25.]

[Footnote 33: Op. cit. p. 27.]

[Footnote 34: Ellis, p. 29.]

[Footnote 35: Op. cit. p. 28.]

[Footnote 36: 'African Religion and Law,' _National Review_, September 1897, p. 132.]

XIV

AHONE. TI-RA-Wa. Na-PI. PACHACAMAC. TUI LAGA. TAA-ROA

In this chapter it is my object to set certain American Creators beside the African beings whom we have been examining. We shall range from Hurons to p.a.w.nees and Blackfeet, and end with Pachacamac, the supreme being of the old Inca civilisation, with Tui Laga and Taa-roa. It will be seen that the Hurons have been accidentally deprived of their benevolent Creator by a bibliographical accident, while that Creator corresponds very well with the Peruvian Pachucamac, often regarded as a mere philosophical abstraction. The p.a.w.nees will show us a Creator involved in a sacrificial ritual, which is not common, while the Blackfeet present a Creator who is not envisaged as a spirit at all, and, on our theory, represents a very early stage of the theistic conception.

To continue the argument from a.n.a.logy against Major Ellis's theory of the European origin of Nyankupon, it seems desirable first to produce a parallel to his case, and to that of his blood-stained subordinate deity, Bobowissi, from a quarter where European influence is absolutely out of the question. Virginia was first permanently colonised by Englishmen in 1607, and the 'Historie of Travaile into Virginia,' by William Strachey, Gent., first Secretary of the Colony, dates from the earliest years (1612-1616). It will hardly be suggested, then, that the natives had already adopted _our_ Supreme Being, especially as Strachey says that the native priests strenuously opposed the Christian G.o.d.

Strachey found a house-inhabiting, agricultural, and settled population, under chiefs, one of whom, Powhattan, was a kind of Bretwalda. The temples contained the dried bodies of the _weroances_, or aristocracy, beside which was their Okeus, or Oki, an image 'ill favouredly carved,' all black dressed, 'who doth them all the harm they suffer. He is propitiated by sacrifices of their own children' (probably an error) 'and of strangers.'

Mr. Tylor quotes a description of this Oki, or Okeus, with his idol and b.l.o.o.d.y rites, from Smith's 'History of Virginia' (1632)[1]. The two books, Strachey's and Smith's, are here slightly varying copies of one original.

But, after censuring Smith's (and Strachey's) hasty theory that Okeus is 'no other than a devil,' Mr. Tylor did not find in Smith what follows in Strachey. Okeus has human sacrifices, like Bobowissi, 'whilst the great G.o.d (the priests tell them) who governes all the world, and makes the son to shine, creatyng the moone and starrs his companyons ... they calling (_sic_) Ahone. The good and peaceable G.o.d requires no such dutyes, nor needs to be sacrificed unto, for he intendeth all good unto them,'

Okeus, on the contrary, 'looking into all men's accions, and examining the same according to the severe scheme of justice, punisheth them.... Such is the misery and thraldome under which Sathan hath bound these wretched miscreants.'

As if, in Mr. Strachey's own creed, Satan does not punish, in h.e.l.l, the offences of men against G.o.d!

Here, then, in addition to a devil (or rather a divine police magistrate), and general fetishism and nature worship, we find that the untutored Virginian is equipped with a merciful Creator, without idol, temple, or sacrifice, as needing nought of ours. It is by the merest accident, the use of Smith's book (1632) instead of Strachey's book (1612), that Mr.

Tylor is unaware of these essential facts[2].

Dr. Brinton, like Mr. Tylor, cites Smith for the nefarious or severe Okeus, and omits any mention of Ahone, the benevolent Creator.[3]

Now, Strachey's evidence is early (1612), is that of a well-educated man, fond of airing his Greek, and not prejudiced in favour of these worshippers of 'Sathan.' In Virginia he found the unpropitiated loving Supreme Being, beside a subordinate, like Nyankupon beside Bobowissi in Africa.

Each highest deity, in Virginia or on the Gold Coast, is more or less eclipsed in popular esteem by nascent polytheism and nature worship. This is precisely what we should expect to find, if Ahone, the Creator, were earlier in evolution, while Okeus and the rest were of the usual greedy cla.s.s of animistic corruptible deities, useful to priests. This could not be understood while Ahone was left out of the statement.[4]

Probably Mr. Strachey's narrative justifies, by a.n.a.logy, our suspicion of Major Ellis's theory that the African Supreme Being is of European origin.

The purpose in the Ahone-Okeus creed is clear. G.o.d (Ahone) is omnipotent and good, yet calamities beset mankind. How are these to be explained?

Clearly as penalties for men's sins, inflicted, not by Ahone, but by his lieutenant, Okeus. But that magistrate can be, and is, appeased by sacrifices, which it would be impious, or, at all events, useless, to offer to the Supreme Being, Ahone. It is a logical creed, but how was the Supreme Being evolved out of the ghost of a 'people-devouring king' like Powhattan? The facts, very fairly attested, do not fit the anthropological theory. It is to be remarked that Strachey's Ahone is a much less mythological conception than that which, on very good evidence, he attributes to the Indians of the Patowemeck River. Their Creator is spoken of as 'a G.o.dly Hare,' who receives their souls into Paradise, whence they are reborn on earth again, as in Plato's myth. They also regard the four winds as four G.o.ds. How the G.o.d took the mythological form of a hare is diversely explained.[5]

Meanwhile the Ahone-Okeus creed corresponds to the Nyankupon-Bobowissi creed. The American faith is certainly not borrowed from Europe, so it is less likely that the African creed is borrowed.

As ill.u.s.trations of the general theory here presented, we may now take two tribal religions among the North American Indians. The first is that of the equestrian p.a.w.nees, who, thirty years ago, were dwelling on the Loup Fork in Nebraska. The buffaloes have since been destroyed, the lands seized, and the p.a.w.nees driven into a 'Reservation,' where they are, or lately were, cheated and oppressed in the usual way. They were originally known to Europeans in four hordes, the fourth being the Skidi or Wolf p.a.w.nees. They seem to have come into Kansas and Nebraska, at a date relatively remote, from Mexico, and are allied with the Lipans and Tonkaways of that region. The Tonkaways are a tribe who, in a sacred mystery, are admonished to 'live like the wolves,' in exactly the same way as were the Hirpi (wolf tribe), of Mount Soracte, who practised the feat of walking unhurt through fire.[6] The Tonkaways regard the p.a.w.nees, who also have a wolf tribe, as a long-separated branch of their race. If, then, they are of Mexican origin, we might expect to find traces of Aztec ritual among the p.a.w.nees.

Long after they obtained better weapons they used flint-headed arrows for slaying the only two beasts which it was lawful to sacrifice, the deer and the buffalo. They have long been a hunting and also an agricultural people. The corn was given to them originally by the Ruler: their G.o.d, _Ti-ra-wa_, 'the Spirit Father.' They offer the sacrifice of a deer with peculiar solemnity, and are a very prayerful people. The priest 'held a relation to the p.a.w.nees and their deity not unlike that occupied by Moses to Jehovah and the Israelites.' A feature in ritual is the sacred bundles of unknown contents, brought from the original home in Mexico. The p.a.w.nees were created by Ti-ra-wa. They believe in a happy future life, while the wicked die, and there is an end of them. They cite their dreams of the dead as an argument for a life beyond the tomb. 'We see ourselves living with Ti-ra-wa!' An evil earlier race, which knew not Ti-ra-wa, was destroyed by him in the Deluge; evidence is found in large fossil bones, and it would be an interesting inquiry whether such fossils are always found where the story of a 'sin-flood' occurs. If so, fossils must be universally diffused.