On the threshold of the investigation, there meets us the same critical difficulty which obstructs the study of primitive dualism. Among low tribes who have been in contact with Christianity or Mohammedanism, how are we to tell to what extent, under this foreign influence, dim, uncouth ideas of divine supremacy may have been developed into more cultured forms, or wholly foreign ideas implanted? We know how the Jesuit missionaries led the native Canadians to the conception of the Great Manitu; how they took up the native Brazilian name of the divine Thunder, Tupan, and adapted its meaning to convey in Christian teaching the idea of God. Thus, again, we find most distinctly-marked African ideas of a Supreme Deity in the West, where intercourse with Moslems has actually Islamized or semi-Islamized whole negro nations, and the name of Allah is in all men’s mouths. The ethnographer must be ever on the look-out for traces of such foreign influence in the definition of the Supreme Deity acknowledged by any uncultured race, a divinity whose nature and even whose name may betray his adoption from abroad. Thus the supreme Iroquois deity, Neo or Hawaneu, the pre-existent creator, has been triumphantly adduced to show the monotheism underlying the native creeds of America. But it seems that this divinity was introduced by the French Catholic missionaries, and that Niio is an altered form of Dieu.[[804]] Among the list of supreme deities of the lower races who are also held to be first ancestors of man, we hear of Louquo, the uncreate first Carib, who descended from the eternal heaven, made the flat earth, and produced man from his own body. He lived long on earth among men, died and came to life again after three days, and returned to heaven.[[805]] It would be hardly reasonable to enumerate, among genuine deities of native West Indian religion, a being with characteristics thus on the face of them adopted from the religion of the white men. Yet even in such extreme cases, it does not necessarily follow that the definitions of these deities, vitiated as they are for ethnographical use by foreign influence, have not to some extent a native substratum. In criticising details, moreover, it must not be forgotten how largely the similarities in the religions of different races may be of independent origin, and how closely allied are many ideas in the rude native theologies of savages to ideas holding an immemorial place in the religions of their civilized invaders. For the present purpose, however, it is well to dwell especially on such evidence as by characteristic traits or early date is farthest removed from suspicion of being borrowed from a foreign source.
In surveying the peoples of the world, the ethnographer finds many who are not shown to have any definite conception of a supreme deity; and even where such a conception is placed on record, it is sometimes so vaguely asserted, or on such questionable authority, that he can but take note of it and pass on. In numerous cases, however, illustrated by the following collection from different regions, certain leading ideas, singly or blended, may be traced. There are many savage and barbaric religions which solve their highest problem by the simple process of raising to divine primacy one of the gods of polytheism itself. Even the system of the manes-worshipper has been stretched to reach the limit of supreme deity, in the person of the primæval ancestor. More frequently, it is the nature-worshipper’s principle which has prevailed, giving to one of the great nature-deities the precedence of the rest. Here, by no recondite speculation, but by the plain teaching of nature, the choice has for the most part lain between two mighty visible divinities, the all-animating Sun and the all-encompassing Heaven. In the study of such schemes, we are on intellectual terra firma. There is among the religions of the lower races another notable group of systems, seemingly in close connexion with the first. These display to us a heavenly pantheon arranged on the model of an earthly political constitution, where the commonalty are crowds of human souls and other tribes of world-pervading spirits, the aristocracy are great polytheistic gods, and the King is the supreme Deity. To this comparatively intelligible side of the subject, a more perplexed and obscure side stands contrasted. Among thoughtful men whose theory of the soul animating the body has already led them to suppose a divine spirit animating the huge mass of earth or sky, this idea needs but a last expansion to become a doctrine of the universe as animated by one greatest, all-pervading divinity, the World-Spirit. Moreover, where speculative philosophy grapples with the vast fundamental world-problem, the solution is attained by ascending from the Many to the One, by striving to discern through and beyond the Universe a First Cause. Let the basis of such reasoning be laid in theological ground, then the First Cause is realized as the Supreme Deity. In such ways, the result of carrying to their utmost limits the animistic conceptions which among low races and high pervade the philosophy of religion, is to reach an idea of as it were a soul of the world, a shaper, animator, ruler of the universe. Entering these regions of transcendental theology, we are not to wonder that the comparative distinctness belonging to conceptions of lower spiritual beings here fades away. Human souls, subordinate nature-spirits, and huge polytheistic nature-gods, carry with the defined special functions they perform some defined character and figure, but beyond such limits form and function blend into the infinite and universal in the thought of supreme divinity. To realize this widest idea, two especial ways are open. The first way is to fuse the attributes of the great polytheistic powers into more or less of common personality, thus conceiving that, after all, it is the same Highest Being who holds up the heavens, shines in the sun, smites his foes in the thunder, stands first in the human pedigree as the divine ancestor. The second way is to remove the limit of theologic speculation into the region of the indefinite and the inane. An unshaped divine entity looming vast, shadowy, and calm beyond and over the material world, too benevolent or too exalted to need human worship, too huge, too remote, too indifferent, too supine, too merely existent, to concern himself with the petty race of men,—this is a mystic form of formlessness in which religion has not seldom pictured the Supreme.
Thus, then, it appears that the theology of the lower races already reaches its climax in conceptions of a highest of the gods, and that these conceptions in the savage and barbaric world are no copies stamped from one common type, but outlines widely varying among mankind. The degeneration-theory, in some instances no doubt with justice, may claim such beliefs as mutilated and perverted remnants of higher religions. Yet for the most part, the development-theory is competent to account for them without seeking their origin in grades of culture higher than those in which they are found existing. Looked upon as products of natural religion, such doctrines of divine supremacy seem in no way to transcend the powers of the low-cultured mind to reason out, nor of the low-cultured imagination to deck with mythic fancy. There have existed in times past, and do still exist, savage or barbaric peoples who hold such views of a highest god as they may have attained to of themselves, without the aid of more cultured nations. Among these races, Animism has its distinct and consistent outcome, and Polytheism its distinct and consistent completion, in the doctrine of a Supreme Deity.
The native religions of South America and the West Indies display a well-marked series of types. The primacy of the Sun was long ago well stated by the Moluches when a Jesuit missionary preached to them, and they replied, ‘Till this hour, we never knew nor acknowledged anything greater or better than the Sun.’[[806]] So when a later missionary argued with the chief of the Tobas, ‘My god is good and punishes wicked people,’ the chief replied, ‘My God (the Sun) is good likewise; but he punishes nobody, satisfied to do good to all.’[[807]] In various manifestations, moreover, there reigns among barbarians a supreme being whose characteristics are those of the Heaven-god. It is thus with the Tamoi of the Guaranis, ‘that beneficent deity worshipped in his blended character of ancestor of mankind and ancient of heaven, lord of the celestial paradise.’[[808]] It is so with the highest deity of the Araucanians, Pillan the Thunder or the Thunderer, called also Huenu-Pillan or Heaven-Thunder, and Vuta-gen or Great Being. ‘The universal government of Pillan,’ says Molina, ‘is a prototype of the Araucanian polity. He is the great Toqui (Governor) of the invisible world, and as such has his Apo-Ulmenes, and his Ulmenes, to whom he entrusts the administration of affairs of less importance. These ideas are certainly very rude, but it must be acknowledged that the Araucanians are not the only people who have regulated the things of heaven by those of the earth.’[[809]] A different but not less characteristic type of the Supreme Deity is placed on record among the Caribs, a beneficent power dwelling in the skies, reposing in his own happiness, careless of mankind, and by them not honoured nor adored.[[810]]
The theological history of Peru, in ages before the Spanish conquest, has lately had new light thrown on it by the researches of Mr. Markham. Here the student comes into view of a rivalry full of interest in the history of barbaric religion, the rivalry between the Creator and the divine Sun. In the religion of the Incas, precedence was given to Uiracocha, called Pachacamac, ‘Creator of the World.’ The Sun (with whom was coupled his sister-wife the Moon) was the divine ancestor, the dawn or origin, the totem or lar, of the Inca family. The three great deities were the Creator, Sun, and Thunder; their images were brought out together at great festivals into the square of Cuzco, llamas were sacrificed to all three, and they could be addressed in prayer together, ‘O Creator, and Sun, and Thunder, be for ever young, multiply the people, and let them always be at peace.’ Yet the Thunder and Lightning was held to come by the command of the Creator, and the following prayer shows clearly that even ‘our father the Sun’ was but his creature:—
‘Uiracocha! Thou who gavest being to the Sun, and afterwards said let there be day and night. Raise it and cause it to shine, and preserve that which thou hast created, that it may give light to men. Grant this, Uiracocha!
‘Sun! Thou who art in peace and safety, shine upon us, keep us from sickness, and keep us in health and safety.’
Among the transitions of religion, however, it is not strange that a subordinate God, by virtue of his nearer intercourse and power, should usurp the place of the supreme deity. Among the various traces of this taking place under the Incas, are traditions of the great temple at Cuzco called ‘The Golden Place,’ where Manco Ccapac originally set up a flat oval golden plate to signify the Creator; Mayta Ccapac, it is said, renewed the Creator’s symbol, but Huascar Inca took it down, and set up in its stead in the place of honour a round golden plate like the sun with rays. The famous temple itself, Ccuricancha the ‘Golden Place,’ was known to the Spaniards as the Temple of the Sun; no wonder that the idea has come to be so generally accepted, that the Sun was the chief god of Peru. There is even on record a memorable protest made by one Inca, who dared to deny that the Sun could be the maker of all things, comparing him to a tethered beast that must make ever the same daily round, and to an arrow that must go whither it is sent, not whither it will. But what availed philosophic protest, even from the head of church and state himself, against a state church of which the world has seldom seen the equal for stiff and solid organization? The Sun reigned in Peru till Pizarro overthrew him, and his splendid golden likeness came down from the temple wall to be the booty of a Castilian soldier, who lost it in one night at play.[[811]]
Among rude tribes of the North American continent, evidence of the primacy of the divine Sun is not unknown. Father Hennepin’s account of the Sioux worshipping the Sun as the Creator is explicit enough, and agrees with the argument of the modern Shawnees, that the Sun animates everything, and therefore must be the Master of Life or Great Spirit.[[812]] It is the widespread belief in this Great Spirit which has long and deservedly drawn the attention of European thinkers to the native religions of the North American tribes. The name of the Great Spirit originates with the equivalent term Kitchi Manitu in the language of the Algonquin Indians. Before the European intercourse in the 17th century, these tribes had indeed no deity so called, but as has been already pointed out, the term came first into use by the application of the native word manitu, meaning demon or deity, to the Christian God. During the following centuries, the name of the Great Spirit, with the ideas belonging to the name, travelled far and wide over the continent. It became the ordinary expression of Europeans in their descriptions of Indian religion, and in discourse carried on in English words between Europeans and Indians, and was more or less naturalized among the Indians themselves. On their religions it had on the one hand a transforming influence, while on the other hand, as is usual in the combination of religions, the new divinity incorporated into himself the characteristics of native divinities, so that native ideas remained in part represented in him. A divine being whose characteristics are often so unlike what European intercourse would have suggested, could be hardly altogether of foreign origin.[[813]] Again, among the Greenlanders, Torngarsuk or Great Spirit (his name is an augmentative of ‘torngak’—‘demon’) was known to the early Danish missionary Egede as the oracular deity of the angekoks, to whose under-world souls hope to descend at death. He so far held the place of supreme deity in the native mind, that, as Cranz the missionary relates somewhat afterwards, many Greenlanders hearing of God and his almighty power were apt to fall on the idea that it was their Torngarsuk who was meant; but he was eventually identified with the Devil.[[814]] In like manner, Algonquin Indians, early in the 17th century, hearing of the white man’s Deity, identified him with one known to their own native belief, Atahocan the Creator. When Le Jeune the missionary talked to them of an almighty creator of heaven and earth, they began to say to one another, ‘Atahocan, Atahocan, it is Atahocan!’ The traditional idea of such a being seems indeed to have lain in utter mythic vagueness in their thoughts, for they had made his name into a verb, ‘Nitatahocan,’ meaning, ‘I tell a fable, an old fanciful story.’[[815]]
In late times, Schoolcraft represents the Great Spirit as a Soul of the Universe, inhabiting and animating all things, recognized in rocks and trees, in cataracts and clouds, in thunder and lightning, in tempest and zephyr, becoming incarnate in birds and beasts as titular deities, existing in the world under every possible form, animate and inanimate.[[816]] Whether the Red Indian mind even in modern times really entertained this extreme pantheistic scheme, we may well doubt. In early times of American discovery, the records show a quite different and more usual conception of a supreme deity. Among the more noteworthy of these older documents are the following. Jacques Cartier, in his second Canadian voyage (1535), speaks of the people having no valid belief in God, for they believe in one whom they call Cudouagni, and say that he often speaks with them, and tells them what the weather will be; they say that when he is angry with them he casts earth in their eyes. Thevet’s statement somewhat later is as follows: ‘As to their religion, they have no worship or prayer to God, except that they contemplate the new moon, called in their language Osannaha, saying that Andouagni calls it thus, sending it little by little to advance or retard the waters. For the rest, they fully believe that there is a Creator, greater than the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars, and who holds all in his power. He it is whom they call Andouagni, without however having any form or method of prayer to him.’[[817]] In Virginia about 1586, we learn from Heriot that the natives believed in many gods, which they call ‘mantoac,’ but of different sorts and degrees, also that there is one chief god who first made other principal gods, and afterwards the sun, moon, and stars as petty gods. In New England, in 1622, Winslow says that they believe, as do the Virginians, in many divine powers, yet of one above all the rest; the Massachusetts call their great god Kiehtan, who made all the other gods; he dwells far westerly above the heavens, whither all good men go when they die; ‘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 is good.’ Another famous native American name for the supreme deity is Oki. Captain John Smith, the hero of the colonization of Virginia in 1607, he who was befriended by Pocahontas, ‘La Belle Sauvage,’ thus describes the religion of the country, and especially of her tribe, the Powhatans: ‘There is yet in Virginia no place discovered to be so Savage in which they haue not a Religion, Deer, and Bow and Arrowes. All things that are able to doe them hurt beyond their prevention, they adore with their kinde of divine worship; as the fire, water, lightning, thunder, our Ordnance peeces, horses, &c. But their chiefe god they worship is the Devill. Him they call Okee, and serue him more of feare than loue. They say they haue conference with him, and fashion themselves as neare to his shape as they can imagine. In their Temples they haue his image evill favouredly carved, and then painted and adorned with chaines of copper, and beads, and covered with a skin in such manner as the deformities may well suit with such a God.’[[818]] This quaint account deserves to be quoted at length as an example of the judgment which a half-educated and whole-prejudiced European is apt to pass on savage deities, which from his point of view seem of simply diabolic nature. It is known from other sources that Oki, a word belonging not to the Powhatan but to the Huron language, was in fact a general name for spirit or deity. We may judge the real belief of these Indians better from Father Brebeuf’s description of the Heaven God, cited here in a former chapter: they imagine in the heavens an Oki, that is, a Demon or power ruling the seasons of the year, and controlling the winds and waves, a being whose anger they fear, and whom they call on in making solemn treaties.[[819]] About a century later, Father Lafitau wrote passages which illustrate well the transformation of native animistic conceptions under missionary influence into analogues of Christian theology. Such general terms for spiritual beings as ‘oki’ or ‘manitu’ had become to him individual names of one supreme being. ‘This great Spirit, known among the Caribs under the name of Chemiin, under that of Manitou among the Algonquin nations, and under that of Okki among those who speak the Huron tongue ...’ &c. All American tribes, he says, use expressions which can only denote God: ‘they call him the great Spirit, sometimes the Master and Author of Life ...’ &c.[[820]] The longer rude tribes of America have been in contact with European belief, the less confidently can we ascribe to purely native sources the theologic scheme their religions have settled into. Yet the Creeks towards the end of the 18th century preserved some elements of native faith. They believed in the Great Spirit, the Master of Breath (a being whom Bartram represents as a soul and governor of the universe): to him they would address their frequent prayers and ejaculations, at the same time paying a kind of homage to the sun, moon, and stars, as the mediators or ministers of the Great Spirit, in dispensing his attributes for their comfort and well-being in this life.[[821]] In our own day, among the wild Comanches of the prairies, the Great Spirit, their creator and supreme deity, is above Sun and Moon and Earth; towards him is sent the first puff of tobacco-smoke before the Sun receives the second, and to him is offered the first morsel of the feast.[[822]]