“The dances to which the natives seemed so immoderately addicted, and which had been at first considered by the Spaniards mere idle pastimes, were found to be often ceremonials of a serious and mystic character.” Again—“Peter Martyn observes that they performed these dances to the chant of certain metres and ballads handed down from generation to generation, in which were rehearsed the deeds of their ancestors. Some of these ballads were of a sacred character, containing their traditional notions of theology, and the superstitions and fables which comprised their religious creeds.”
Pritchard, “Researches into Phys. Hist. of Man” (i. p. 205), quoting Oldendorp, and speaking of the African negroes, says:—“At the annual harvest feast, which nearly all the nations of Guinea solemnise, thank-offerings are brought to the Deity. These festivals are days of rejoicing, which the negroes pass with feasting and dancing.” Vide also “Hist. of Indian Tribes of North America, 120 portraits from the Ind. Gal. in Depart. of War at Washington, by T. M’Kenney (late Ind. Dep. Wash.) and J. Hall of Cincinnati” (Philadelphia, 1837).
“Dancing is among the most prominent of the aboriginal ceremonies; there is no tribe in which it is not practised. The Indians have their war dance and their peace dance, their dance of mourning for the dead, their begging dance, their pipe dance, their green-corn dance, and their Wabana (an offering to the devil). Each of these is distinguished by some peculiarity ... though to a stranger they appear much alike, except the last.... It is a ceremony and not a recreation, and is conducted with a seriousness belonging to an important public duty.”
At p. 437 (Lubbock) it is said, “Admiral Fitzroy never witnessed or heard of any act of a decidedly religious character among the Fuegians.” Still, as Sir John admits, “some of the natives suppose that there is a great black man in the woods who knows everything, and cannot be escaped.” If this is not the devil, it looks very like him. Again, p. 469, Mr Mathews says, speaking of the Fuegians, “he sometimes heard a great howling or lamentation about sunrise in the morning; and upon asking Jemmy Button what occasioned the outcry, he could obtain no satisfactory answer; the boy only saying, ‘people very sad, cry very much.’” Upon which Sir John remarks, “This appears so natural and sufficient an explanation, that why the outcry should be ‘supposed to be devotional’ I must confess myself unable to see” (469).
Now, if this was not their traditional notion and mode of prayer, degraded according to the measure of their degeneracy, the degeneracy is at least proved in another way, for, being still reasonable beings, they had, according to the account, congregated together to send up a lamentation, which, if it was not prayer, could be likened only to the moonlight howling of wolves. This mode of prayer resembles what Father Loyer and the missionary Oldendorp (Pritchard, i. 197) tells us of the negroes. Father Loyer “declares that they have a belief in a universally powerful Being, and to him they address prayers. Every morning after they rise they go to the river side to wash, and throwing a handful of water on their head, or pouring sand with it to express their humility, they join their hands and then open them, whisper softly the word ‘exsuvais.’” Oldendorp says (p. 202): “The negroes profess their dependence on the Deity, ... they pray at the rising and setting of the sun,[254] on eating and drinking, and when they go to war.” Compare also Helps’ “Spanish Conquest in America,” i. 285:—
“The worship of the Peruvians was not the mere worship of the sun alone as of the most beautiful and powerful thing which they beheld; but they had also a worship of a far more elevated and refined nature, addressed to Pachacamac, the soul of the universe, whom they hardly dared to name; and when they were obliged to name this Being, they did so inclining the head and the whole body, now lifting up the eyes to heaven, now lowering them to the ground, and giving kisses in the air. To Pachacamac they made no temple and offered no sacrifices, but they adored him in their hearts.”[255]
At p. 468 Sir John somewhat too roundly asserts that “Dr Hooker tells us that the Lepchas of Northern India have no religion.”
Turning to Dr Hooker’s “Himalayan Journal,” I find (i. 135), “The Lepchas profess no religion, though acknowledging the existence of good and bad spirits.... Both Lepchas and Limboos had, before the introduction of Lama Boodhism from Tibet, many features in common with the natives of Arracan, especially in their creed, sacrifices, faith in omens, worship of many spirits, absence of idols, and of the doctrine of metempsychosis” (p. 140). We have already seen (supra, [p. 224]) that they had a very distinct tradition of the Deluge; indeed there is much in the account of them which reminds us of the primitive monotheism.
So, too, Sir John asserts, p. 469, “Once more Dr Hooker states that the Khasias, an Indian tribe, had no religion. Col. Yule, on the contrary, says that they have, but he admits that breaking hens’ eggs is the principal part of their religious practice.”
It is true that Dr Hooker says (ii. 276), “The Khasias are superstitious, but have no religion;” he adds, however, “like the Lepchas, they believe in a Supreme Being, and in deities of the grove, cave, and stream.” It seems, however, that the only outward manifestation of their religion is in “breaking hens’ eggs”! What can be more ludicrous! yet here, too, would seem to be a vestige of primitive tradition. We know (vide Wilkinson, “Ancient Egyptians,” second series) how primitive truth was concealed under material symbols. Gainet (i. 127) also says, “Even upon the hypothesis that these fragments of the Egyptian cosmogony were lost, one of the hieroglyphics which this people has left us would suffice to convince us of their belief in a Creator. It is the image of the god Kneph, whom they represent with an egg in his mouth; this egg being the natural image of the world taking its birth from this divinity.” Again, p. 115, “In the mysteries of Bacchus[256] the dogma of the Creation was proposed under the emblem of that celebrated egg, of which the poets have so often spoken, which contained the germ of all things.” “The egg,” says Plutarch, “is consecrated to the sacred ceremonies of Bacchus, as a representation of the Author of nature who produces and comprehends all things in himself.” There is a passage in Athenagoras to the same effect.