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.