stock), is thus stated by Miss Kingsley:
'I have no hesitation in saying I fully believe Nzambi Mpungu to be a
purely native god, and that he is a great god over all things, but the
study of him is even more difficult than the study of Nzambi, because the
Jesuit missionaries who gained so great an influence over the Fiorts in
the sixteenth century identified him with Jehovah, and worked on the
native mind from that stand-point. Consequently semi-mythical traces
of Jesuit teaching linger, even now, in the religious ideas of the
Fiorts.'[36]
Nzambi Mpungu lives 'behind the firmament.' 'He takes next to no interest
in human affairs;' which is not a Jesuit idea of God.
In all missionary accounts of savage religion, we have to guard against
two kinds of bias. One is the bias which makes the observer deny any
religion to the native race, except devil-worship. The other is the bias
which lends him to look for traces of a pure primitive religious
tradition. Yet we cannot but observe this reciprocal phenomenon:
missionaries often find a native name and idea which answer so nearly to
their conception of God that they adopt the idea and the name, in
teaching. Again, on the other side, the savages, when first they hear the
missionaries' account of God, recognise it, as do the Hurons and Bakwain,
for what has always been familiar to them. This is recorded in very early
pre-missionary travels, as in the book of William Strachey on Virginia
(1612), to which we now turn. The God found by Strachey in Virginia
cannot, by any latitude of conjecture, be regarded as the result of
contact with Europeans. Yet he almost exactly answers to the African
Nyankupon, who is explained away as a 'loan-god.' For the belief in
relatively pure creative beings, whether they are morally adored, without
sacrifice, or merely neglected, is so widely diffused, that Anthropology
must ignore them, or account for them as 'loan-gods'--or give up her
theory!
[Footnote 1: Lejean, _Rev. des Deux Mondes_, April 1862, p. 760. Citing
for the chant, Beltrame, _Dictionario della lingua denka_, MS.]
[Footnote 2: Waitz, ii. 74.]
[Footnote 3: 1882.]
[Footnote 4: _Ecclesiastical Institutions_, 681.]
[Footnote 5: _Africana_, i. 66.]
[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 Trümmer ähnlicher 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-WÁ. NÀ-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 Pawnees 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 Pawnees 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 analogy 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 God.
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
bloody 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
God (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 God 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 hell, the
offences of men against God!
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
class 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 analogy, 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. God (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 godly 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 Gods. How the god 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 illustrations 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 Pawnees, who, thirty years ago, were dwelling on the Loup
Fork in Nebraska. The buffaloes have since been destroyed, the lands
seized, and the Pawnees 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
Pawnees. 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 Pawnees, 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 Pawnees.
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 god,
_Ti-ra-wá_, '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 Pawnees 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 Pawnees
were created by Ti-ra-wá. 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-wá!' An evil earlier race, which knew not Ti-ra-wá, 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.
As is common, the future life is attested, not only by dreams, but in the
experience of men who 'have died' and come back to life, like Secret Pipe
Chief, who told the story to Mr. Grinnell. These visions in a state of
apparent death are not peculiar to savages, and, no doubt, have had much
effect on beliefs about the next world.[7] Ghosts are rarely seen, but
auditory hallucinations, as of a voice giving good advice in time of
peril, are regarded as the speech of ghosts. The beasts are also friendly,
as fellow children with men of Ti-ra-wá. To the Morning Star the Skidi or
Wolf Pawnees offered on rare occasions a captive man. The ceremony was not
unlike that of the Aztecs, though less cruel. Curiously enough, the slayer
of the captive had instantly to make a mock flight, as in the Attic
_Bouphonia_. This, however, was a rite paid to the Morning Star, not to
Ti-ra-wá, 'the power above that moves the universe and controls all
things.' Sacrifice to Ti-ra-wá was made on rare and solemn occasions out
of his two chief gifts, deer and buffalo. 'Through corn, deer, buffalo,
and the sacred bundles, we worship _Ti-ra-wá_.'
The flesh was burned in the fire, while prayers were made with great
earnestness. In the old Skidi rite the women told the fattened captive
what they desired to gain from the Ruler. It is occasionally said that
the human sacrifice was made to _Ti-ra-wá_ himself. The sacrificer not
only fled, but fasted and mourned. It is possible that, as among the
Aztecs, the victim was regarded as also an embodiment of the God, but this
is not certain, the rite having long been disused. Mr. Grinnell got the
description from a very old Skidi. There was also a festival of thanks to
Ti-ra-wá for corn. During a sacred dance and hymn the corn is held up to
the Ruler by a woman. Corn is ritually called 'The Mother,' as in Peru.[8]
'We are like seed, and we worship through the Corn.'
Disease is caused by evil spirits, and many American soldiers were healed
by Pawnee doctors, though their hurts had refused to yield to the
treatment of the United States Army Surgeons.[9]
The miracles wrought by Pawnee medicine men, under the eyes of Major
North, far surpass what is told of Indian jugglery. But this was forty
years ago, and it is probably too late to learn anything of these
astounding performances of naked men on the hard floor of a lodge.
'Major North told me' (Mr. Grinnell) 'that he saw with his own eyes the
doctors make the corn grow,' the doctor not manipulating the plant, as in
the Mango trick, but standing apart and singing. Mr. Grinnell says: 'I
have never found any one who could even suggest an explanation.'
This art places great power in the hands of the doctors, who exhibit many
other prodigies. It is notable that in this religion we hear nothing of
ancestor-worship; all that is stated as to ghosts has been reported. We
find the cult of an all-powerful being, in whose ritual sacrifice is the
only feature that suggests ghost-worship. The popular tales and historical
reminiscences of the last generation entirely bear out by their allusions
Mr. Grinnell's account of the Pawnee faith, in which the ethical element
chiefly consists in a sense of dependence on and touching gratitude to
Ti-ra-wá, as shown in fervent prayer. Theft he abhors, he applauds valour,
he punishes the wicked by annihilation, the good dwell with him in his
heavenly home. He is addressed as A-ti-us ta-kaw-a, 'Our father in all
places.'
It is not so easy to see how this Being was developed out of
ancestor-worship, of which we find no traces among Pawnees. For
ancestor-worship among the Sioux, it is usual to quote a remark of one
Prescott, an interpreter: 'Sometimes an Indian will say, "Wah negh on she
wan da," which means, "Spirits of the dead have mercy on me." Then they
will add what they want. That is about the amount of an Indian's
prayer.'[10] Obviously, when we compare Mr. Grinnell's account of Pawnee
religion, based on his own observations, and those of Major North, and
Mr. Dunbar, who has written on the language of the tribe, we are on much
safer ground, than when we follow a contemptuous, half-educated European.
The religion of the Blackfoot Indians appears to be a ruder form of the
Pawnee faith. Whether the differences arise from tribal character, or from
decadence, or because the Blackfoot belief is in an earlier and more
backward condition than that of the Pawnees, it is not easy to be certain.
As in China, there exists a difficulty in deciding whether the Supreme
Being is identical with the great nature-god; in China the Heaven, among
the Blackfeet the Sun; or is prior to him in conception, or has been,
later, substituted for him, or placed beside him. The Blackfoot mythology
is low, crude, and, except in tales of Creation, is derisive. As in
Australia, there is a specific difference of tone between mythology and
religion.
The Blackfoot country runs east from the summit of the Rocky Mountains, to
the mouth of the Yellowstone river on the Missouri, then west to the
Yellowstone sources, across the Rocky Mountains to the Beaverhead, thence
to their summit.
As to spirits, the Blackfeet believe in, or at least tell stories of,
ghosts, which conduct themselves much as in our old-fashioned ghost
stories. They haunt people in a rather sportive and irresponsible way. The
souls or shadows of respectable persons go to the bleak country called the
Sand Hills, where they live in a dull, monotonous kind of Sheol. The
shades of the wicked are 'earth-bound' and mischievous, especially ghosts
of men slain in battle. They cause paralysis and madness, but dread
interiors of lodges; they only 'tap on the lodge-skins.' Like many Indian
tribes, the Blackfeet have the Eurydice legend. A man grieving for his
dead wife finds his way to Hades, is pitied by the dead, and allowed to
carry the woman back with him, under certain ritual prohibitions, one of
which he unhappily infringes. The range of this deeply touching story
among the Red Men, and its close resemblance to the tale of Orpheus, is
one of the most curious facts in mythology. Mr. Grinnell's friend Young
Bear, when lost with his wife in a fog, heard a Voice, 'It is well. Go on,
you are going right.' 'The top of my head seemed to lift up. It seemed as
if a lot of needles were running into it.... This must have been a ghost.'
As the wife also heard the Voice it was probably human, not hallucinatory.
Animals receive the usual amount of friendly respect from the Blackfeet.
They have also an inchoate polytheism, 'Above Persons, Ground Persons, and
Under Water Persons.' Of the first, Thunder is most important, and is
worshipped. There is the Cold Maker, a white figure on a white horse, the
Wind, and so on.
The Creator is Nà-pi, Old Man; Dr. Brinton thinks he is a personification
of Light, but Mr. Grinnell reckons it absurd to attribute so abstract a
conception to the Blackfeet. Nà-pi is simply a primal Being, an Immortal
Man,[11] who was before Death came into the world, concerning which one of
the usual tales of the Origin of Death is told. 'All things that he had
made understood him when he spoke to them--birds, animals, and people,' as
in the first chapters of Genesis. With Nà-pi, Creation worked on the lines
of adaptation to environment. He put the bighorn on the prairie. There it
was awkward, so he set it on rocky places, where it skipped about with
ease. The antelope fell on the rocks, so he removed it to the level
prairie. Nà-pi created man and woman, out of clay, but the folly of the
woman introduced Death. Nà-pi, as a Prometheus, gave fire, and taught the
forest arts. He inculcated the duty of prayer; his will should be done by
emissaries in the shape of animals. Then he went to other peoples. The
misfortunes of the Indians arise from disobedience to his laws.
Chiefs were elective, for conduct, courage, and charity.
Though weapons and utensils were buried with the dead, or exposed on
platforms, and though great men were left to sleep in their lodges,
henceforth never to be entered by the living, there is no trace known to
me of continued ancestor-worship. As many Blackfeet change their names
yearly, ancestral names are not likely to become those of gods.
The Sun is by many believed to have taken the previous place of Nà-pi in
religion; or perhaps Nà-pi _is_ the Sun. However, he is still separately
addressed in prayer. The Sun receives presents of furs and so forth; a
finger, when the prayer is for life, has been offered to him. Fetishism
probably shows itself in gifts to a great rock. There is daily prayer,
both to the Sun and to Nà-pi. Women institute Medicine Lodges, praying,
'Pity me, Sun. You have seen my life. You know that I am pure.' 'We look
on the Medicine Lodge woman as you white people do on the Roman Catholic
Sisters.' Being 'virtuous in deed, serious, and clean-minded,' the Medical
Lodge woman is in spiritual _rapport_ with Nà-pi and the Sun. To this
extent, at least, Blackfoot religion is an ethical influence.
The creed seems to be a nascent polytheism, subordinate to Nà-pi as
supreme Maker, and to the personified Sun. As Blackfoot ghosts are
'vaporous, ineffectual' for good, there seems to be nothing like ancestor
worship.
These two cults and beliefs, Pawnee and Blackfoot, may be regarded as
fairly well authenticated examples of un-Christianised American religion
among races on the borderland of agriculture and the chase. It would be
difficult to maintain that ghost-worship or ancestor-worship is a potent
factor in the evolution of the deathless Ti-ra-wá or the immortal Creator
Nà-pi, who has nothing of the spirit about him, especially as ghosts are
not worshipped.[12]
Let us now look at the Supreme Being of a civilised American people. There
are few more interesting accounts of religion than Garcilasso de la Vega's
description of faith in Peru. Garcilasso was of Inca parentage on the
spindle side; he was born in 1540, and his book, taken from the traditions
of an uncle, and aided by the fragmentary collections of Father Blas
Valera, was published in 1609. In Garcilasso's theory the original people
of Peru, Totemists and worshippers of hills and streams, Earth and Sea,
were converted to Sun worship by the first Inca, a child of the Sun. Even
the new religion included ancestor-worship and other superstitions. But
behind Sun worship was the faith in a Being who 'advanced the Sun so far
above all the stars of heaven.'[13] This Being was Pachacamac, 'the
sustainer of the world.' The question then arises, Is Pachacamac a form of
the same creative being whom we find among the lowest savages; or is he
the result of philosophical reflection? The latter was the opinion
of Garcilasso. 'The Incas and their Amautas' (learned class) 'were
philosophers.'[14]
'Pacha,' he says, = universe, and 'cama' = soul. Pachacamac, then, is
_Anima Mundi_. 'They did not even take the name of Pachacamac into their
mouths,' or but seldom and reverently, as the Australians will not, in
religious matters, mention Darumulun. Pachacamac had no temple, 'but they
worshipped him in their hearts.' That he was the Creator appears in an
earlier writer, cited by Garcilasso, Agustin de Zarate (ii. ch. 5).
Garcilasso, after denying the existence of temples to Pachacamac, mentions
one, but only one. He insists, at length, and with much logic, that He
whom, as a Christian, he worships, is in Quichua styled Pachacamac.
Moreover, the one temple to Pachacamac was not built by an Inca, but by
a race which, having heard of the Inca god, borrowed his name, without
understanding his nature, that of a Being who dwells not in temples made
with hands (ii. 186). In the temple this people, the Yuncas, offered even
human sacrifices. By the Incas to Pachacamac no sacrifice was offered
(ii. 189). This negative custom they also imposed upon the Yuncas, and
they removed idols from the Yunca temple of Pachacamac (ii. 190). Yunca
superstitions, however, infested the temple, and a Voice gave oracles
therein.[15] The Yuncas also had a talking idol, which the Inca, in
accordance with a religious treaty, occasionally consulted.