I feel so nervous about differing from Mr. Tylor as to the borrowing
of the idea of a superior and creative being from the Jesuits by the
Red Indians that I have reconsidered his essay.[1] He is arguing that
'the Great Spirit belongs not to the untutored but to the tutored minds
of the savages.' I am not contending for the use of the words 'Great
Spirit' as of native origin, and as employed to designate what I call a
superior being. That the natives had an untaught belief in such a being
is my opinion, not that they styled him 'Great Spirit.'
Mr. Tylor refers us to 'Relations des Jésuites,' 1611, p. 20, in the
Quebec edition of 1858. Here (to translate the passage) I read: 'They
believe in a god, so they say, but can only name him by the name of the
sun, _Niscaminou_, and know no prayers, nor manner of adoring him.'
When hungry they put on sacred robes, turn to the east, and say, 'Our
Sun, or our God, give us to eat.' Here, then, are prayer, vestments,
and turning to the east. The Jesuits, then, did not introduce these for
the first time; nor did they introduce the conception of the superior
being thus implored.
A similar relation of the sun to the being addressed in prayer exists
now among the Blackfoot Indians of America. With them the word _Natos_
is 'equivalent to holy or divine,' and is also the name of the sun.
To Natos prayer and sacrifice are offered, and the cruel rites of the
Natos-dance are performed. Tongues of cattle are served out to the
virtuous: 'this rite partakes of the nature of a sacrament.' Youths
sacrifice a finger, in recognition of prayers answered by Natos.
'Prayer is made to Natos only, and everything in Okán' (the ceremony)
'is sacred to him alone.'[2]
These are advanced, elaborate, and thoroughly native observances, of
which the germ may be found in the religions described in the Jesuit
'Relations' of 1611.
Mr. Tylor says 'especially through missionary influence, since 1500,
ideas of ... retribution after death for deeds done in life have been
implanted on native polytheism in various parts of the world.' But his
Jesuit authority of 1611, in the passage cited by him, writes: 'They
believe in the immortality of the soul, and in recompenses for good men
and bad, confusedly, and in a general way, but they seek and care no
further as to the manner of such things' (_comment cela doibt estre_).
Mr. Tylor's authority does not, I confess, appear to me to support his
opinion. The natives believed in future 'retribution.'
His other texts[3] show us savages consulting each his Manitou, 'a
powerful being' (_quelque nature puissante_), or _diable_. A Manitou is
'any superior being, good or bad:' the God of the Jesuits is _le bon
Manitou_, Satan is _le mauvais Manitou_.
I am not arguing that these phrases are more than the pigeon-French
of the savage flock, or that the ideas expressed did not later become
implanted in their minds. But Mr. Tylor, in his essay of 1892, omits
what he quotes in his 'Primitive Culture,' the Jesuit evidence of
1633 (p. 16) to 'one Atahocan who made everything. Speaking of God
in a hut one day, they asked me, "What is God?" I replied, "The All
Powerful One, who made heaven and earth." They then began to say to
each other, "Atahocan, Atahocan, he is Atahocan."' 'They have no
worship which they are used to pay to him whom they hold for their
god.' (This is the religious condition of the Kaffirs described by Dos
Santos in Pinkerton, xvi. 687.) Now it is Atahocan who interests me, as
pre-missionary: no doubt he was not called _le bon Manitou_--but there
he was! In 1634 Father Le Jeune consulted a very hostile sorcerer,
who minimised Atahocan. 'They do not know,' said the sorcerer, 'who
was the author of the world, perhaps Atahocan: it was uncertain. They
only spoke of Atahocan as one speaks of something so remote as to be
dubious. In fact the word _Nitatahocan_ means in their language, "I
tell a story, an old tale."'[4] The 'sorcerer,' a servant of familiar
spirits, had no interest in Atahocan, though the tribesmen recognised
in him the God and Creator of Father Le Jeune. There was but a waning
tradition of a primal maker; interesting and important just because it
was waning, and therefore could not be of fresh European introduction.
The beings in receipt of sacrifice were _Khichikouai_, to whom they
threw fat on the fire, with prayer.'[5] It appears to me that these
affable familiar ghosts, practically serviceable, had cast the otiose
Atahocan into the background. But he, like Andouagni, Kiehtan, and
others, was certainly there before the Jesuits, and these beings are
elsewhere cited by Mr. Tylor. The question is one of the existence of
belief in such a being, not (for me at least) of the origin, which may
well be post-European, of the words 'Kitchi Manitu, or Great Spirit.'
If the Mandans believed, as Mr. Tylor does not deny in 'Omahank
Numakchi, the Creator, whose name appears to mean Lord of Earth,' it is
quite unimportant that 'there is no Mandan deity whose name answers to
that of Great Spirit.'[6]
I mentioned, in the first essay of this book, Mr. Max Müller's version
of Bishop Salvado's account of Motagon, a dead creator in Western
Australia. Mr. Tylor recognises him as Sir George Grey's Mettagong, 'an
insignificant demon identified with the phosphoric fungus.' But did
that demon 'die in decrepit old age long ago,' like Bishop Salvado's
Motagon? There seems to be no hope of making anything clear out of
Motagon. Mr. Oldfield, cited by Mr. Tylor for Australia, I have never
quoted: his account cannot be uncontaminated. Yet the natives may
have believed in an evil spirit before they adorned him with horns,
as Mr. Oldfield states, which no indigenous beast possesses. 'Their
doctrine of a _horned_ devil' must be modern, though not necessarily
their belief in a bad spirit. With Mr. Tylor's theory of Baiame as 'a
missionary translation of the word for creator,' as early as 1850, I
have already dealt in my second essay, showing that Baiame is a native
pre-missionary word, whatever may be its etymology. Mrs. Langloh Parker
renders it, not 'maker' (from _baia_, to cut, or fashion), but 'big
man.'
[1] _J.A.I_. Feb. 1892.
[2] _The Blackfoot Sun-dance_, Rev. J. MacLean, Toronto. 1889.
[3] _Rel. des Jésuites_, 1633, p. 16; 1637, p. 49.
[4] _Rel. des Jésuites_, 1634, p. 13.
[5] _Ibid._ pp. 32, 33.
[6] _J. A. I_. Feb. 1892, p. 287.