Magic and Religion. Andrew Lang
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some of the evidence is excellent, and, at its best, does not repose on missionary testimony. (3) The high gods of the low races are borrowed from missionary teaching. This is the line adopted by Mr. Tylor.
I recently pointed out, in 'The Making of Religion' (1898), the many difficulties which beset the current theory. I was therefore alarmed on rinding that Mr. Tylor had mined the soil under my own hypothesis. His theory of borrowing (which would blow mine sky-high if it exploded) is expounded by Mr. Tylor in an essay, 'The Limits of Savage Religion,' published in the 'Journal of the Anthropological Institute' (vol. xxi., 1892). I propose to examine Mr. Tylor's work, and to show that his own witnesses demonstrate the unborrowed and original character of the gods in question.
Mr. Tylor first opposes the loose popular notion that all over North America the Indians believed in a being named Kitchi Manitou, or 'Great Spirit,' a notion which I do not defend. He says: 'The historical evidence is that the Great Spirit belongs, not to the untutored, but to the tutored mind of the savage, and is preserved for us in the records of the tutors themselves, the Jesuit missionaries of Canada.'[3] Now as to the word 'Manitou' spirit, Mr. Tylor quotes Le Jeune (1633): 'By this word "Manitou," I think they understand what we call an angel, or some powerful being.'[4] Again: 'The Montagnets give the name "Manitou" to everything, whether good or bad, superior to man. Therefore, when we speak of God, they sometimes call Him "The Good Manitou," while when we speak of the Devil, they call him "The Bad Manitou."'[5] When then, ninety years later, in 1724, Père Lafitau dilates on 'The Great Spirit,' 'The Great Manitou,' we are to see that in ninety years the term which the Indians used for our God—their translation of le bon dieu—has taken root, become acclimatised, and flourished. Lafitau, according to Mr. Tylor, has also raised the Huron word for spirit, oki, to Okki, with a capital O, which he calls Le Grand Esprit. The elevation is solely due to Lafitau and other Christian teachers. If all this were granted, all this is far indeed from proving that the idea of a beneficent Creator was borrowed by the Indians from the Jesuits between 1633 and 1724. Mr. Tylor's own book, 'Primitive Culture,' enables us to correct that opinion. Here he quotes Captain Smith, from an edition of the 'History of Virginia' of 1632. Smith began to colonise Virginia in 1607. He says (edition of 1632): 'Their chief god they worship is the Devil. Him they call Okee (Okki), and serve him more of fear than love.' Mr. Tylor cites this as a statement by 'a half-educated and whole-prejudiced European' about 'savage deities, which, from his point of view, seem of a wholly diabolic nature.' 'The word oki,' Mr. Tylor goes on, 'apparently means "that which is above," and was, in fact, a general name for spirit or deity.'[6]
The chief deity of the Virginians then (in 1607, before missionaries came), with his temples and images, was a being whose name apparently meant 'that which is above.' Moreover, Father Brebeuf (1636) describes an oki in the heavens who rules the seasons, is dreaded, and sanctions treaties.
Consequently Lafitau did not, in 1724, first make oki, a spirit, into Okki, a god. That had been done in Virginia before any missionaries arrived, by the natives themselves, long before 1607. For this we have, and Mr. Tylor has cited, the evidence of Smith, before Jesuits arrived. What is yet more to the purpose, William Strachey, a successor of Smith, writing in 1611-12, tells us that Okeus (as he spells the word) was only a magisterial deputy of 'the great God (the priests tell them) who governs all the world, and makes the sun to shine, creatyng the sun and moone his companions,... [him] they call Ahone. The good and peaceable God requires no such duties [as are paid to Okeus], nor needs to be sacrificed to, for he intendeth all good unto them.' He has no image.[7] Strachey remarks that the native priests vigorously resisted Christianity. They certainly borrowed neither Okeus nor Ahone, the beneficent Creator who is without sacrifice, from Jesuits who had not yet arrived.
Do we need more evidence? If so, here it is. Speaking of New England in 1622, Winslow writes about the god Kiehtan as a being of ancient credit among the natives. He 'made all the other gods; he dwells far westerly above the heavens, whither all good men go when they die.' Thus Mr. Tylor himself (loc. cit.) summarises Winslow, and quotes: 'They never saw Kiehtan, but they hold it a great charge and dutie that one age teach another. And to him they make feasts, and cry and sing for plentie, and victorie, or anything that is good.'
Thus Kiehtan, in 1622, was not only a relatively supreme god, but also a god of ancient standing. Borrowing from missionaries was therefore impossible.
Mr. Tylor then added, in 1871: 'Brinton's etymology is plausible, that this Kiehtan is simply the Great Spirit (Kittanitowit, Great Living Spirit, an Algonquin word compounded of Kitta = great, manitou = spirit, termination, wit, indicating life).'
But all this etymology Mr. Tylor omitted in his edition of 1891, probably no longer thinking it plausible.
He did, however, say in 1891 (ii. 342): 'Another famous native American name for the Supreme Deity is Oki.'
Not content with Okeus, capital O and all, before the arrival of missionaries; not content with Kiehtan, whose etymology (in 1871) 'apparently' means 'Great Spirit,' before the arrival of Jesuits in New England, Mr. Tylor, in 'Primitive Culture,' adds to these deities 'the Greenlanders' Torngarsuk, or Great Spirit (his name is an augmentative of "torngak," "spirit" [in 1891 "demon"]),' before the arrival of missionaries! For, says Mr. Tylor, 'he seems no figure derived from the religion of Scandinavian colonists, ancient or modern.... He so clearly held his place as supreme deity in the native mind that, as Cranz the missionary alleges, many Greenlanders, hearing of God and His Almighty power, were apt to fall on the idea that it was their Torngarsuk who was meant.'[8]
Now, in 1891, Mr. Tylor dropped out 'he seems no figure derived from the religion of Scandinavian colonists, ancient or modern;' and he added that Torngarsuk was later identified, not with our God, but with our Devil: a foible characteristic, I may say—as Mr. Tylor said concerning Captain Smith and Oki—of 'a half-educated and whole-prejudiced European.' For the Algonquin Indians Mr. Tylor cited Father Le Jeune (1633): 'When the missionary talked to them of an almighty creator of heaven and earth, they began to say to one another Atahocan, Atahocan.' But his name had fallen into contempt and a verb, Nitatahocan, meant 'I tell an old fanciful story.' In 1558 Thevet credits the Canadian Indians with belief in 'a creator' Andouagni, not approached with prayers. None of these beings can have been borrowed from Europeans. It will presently be seen that between 1871 and 1892 Mr. Tylor became sceptical as to the records of a Great Spirit in America. But he retained Oki in the sense of Supreme Deity.
Here, then, from Virginia to Greenland, Mr. Tylor presented in 1871 evidence for a being of supreme power, called bynames which, perhaps, mean 'Great Spirit.' In his essay of 1892 he does not refer to his earlier work and his evidence there for a Great Spirit, nor tell us why he has changed his mind. He now attributes the Great Spirit to missionary influence. We naturally ask in what respect he has found the early evidence on which he previously relied lacking in value. Mr. Tylor, in 'Primitive Culture,'[9] gives a yet earlier reference than the others for a Virginian Creator. He cites Heriot (an author of 1586). Again: 'They believe in one who made all things, but pay him no honour,' writes Père L'Allemant in 1626, in a region where 'il n'y ait point eu de religieux.'
In 1871 Mr. Tylor said: 'It has even been thought that the whole doctrine of the Great Spirit was borrowed by the savages from missionaries and colonists. But this view will not bear examination. After due allowance made for mis-rendering of savage answers and importation of white men's thoughts, it can hardly be judged that a divine being, whose characteristics are so unlike what European intercourse would have suggested, and who is heard of by such early explorers among such distant tribes, could be a deity of foreign origin.'[10]