[15] Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, i. 181 sq.
[16] Klemm, Cultur-Geschichte der Menschheit, ii. 318 sq. Steller, Beschreibung von Kamtschatka, p. 264.
According to the beliefs of the Koksoagmyut, or Hudson Bay Eskimo, all the minor spirits are under the control of the great spirit whose name is Tung ak, and this being “is nothing more or less than death, which ever seeks to torment and harass the lives of people that their spirits may go to dwell with him.”[17] Nay, even the special guardian spirit by which each person is supposed to be attended is malignant in character and ever ready to seize upon the least occasion to work harm upon the individual whom it accompanies; its good offices can be obtained by propitiation only.[18] Among the Nenenot, or Indians of Hudson Bay, “the rule seems to be that all spirits are by nature bad, and must be propitiated to secure their favour.”[19] Of various Brazilian tribes we are likewise told that they do not believe in the existence of any benevolent spirits. Thus the Coroado Indian acknowledges only an evil principle, which sometimes meets him in the form of a lizard or a crocodile or an ounce or a man with the feet of a stag, sometimes transforms itself into a swamp, and leads him astray, vexes him, brings him into difficulty and danger, and even kills him.[20] The Mundrucus of the Cuparí have no notion of a good supreme being, but believe in an evil spirit, regarded merely as a kind of hobgoblin, who is at the bottom of all their little failures and gives them troubles in fishing, hunting, and so forth.[21] The Uaupés, says Mr. Wallace, “appear to have no definite idea of a God…. They have much more definite ideas of a bad spirit, ‘Juruparí,’ or Devil, whom they fear and endeavour through their pagés [or medicine men] to propitiate. When it thunders, they say the ‘Juruparí’ is angry, and their idea of natural death is that the ‘Juruparí’ kills them.”[22]
[17] Turner, ‘Ethnology of the Ungava District,’ in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 272.
[18] Ibid. p. 194.
[19] Ibid. p. 193 sq.
[20] von Spix and von Martius, Travels in Brazil, ii. 243.
[21] Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazons, ii. 137.
[22] Wallace, Travels on the Amazon, p. 500.
In Eastern Africa, according to Burton, “the sentiment generally elicited by a discourse upon the subject of the existence of a Deity is a desire to see him, in order to revenge upon him the deaths of relatives, friends, and cattle.”[23] The only quality of a moral character which the Wanika are said to ascribe to the supreme being, Mulungu, is that of vindictiveness and cruelty.[24] To the Matabele the idea of a benevolent deity is utterly foreign, but they have a vague notion of a number of evil spirits always ready to do harm, and the chief among these are the spirits of their ancestors.[25] All the good the Bechuanas enjoy they ascribe to rainmakers, but “all the evil that comes they attribute to a supernatural being”;[26] of their principal god, Morimo, Mr. Moffat never once, in the course of twenty-five years spent in missionary labour, heard that he did good or was capable of doing so.[27] Among various other African peoples, travellers assure us, supernatural beings are supposed to exercise a potent influence for evil rather than for good, or beneficent spirits are, at any rate, almost unknown.[28] On the Gold Coast, according to Major Ellis, the majority of spirits are malignant, and every misfortune is ascribed to their action. “I believe,” he adds, “that originally all were conceived as malignant, and that the indifference, or the beneficence (when propitiated by sacrifice and flattery), which are now believed to be characteristics of some of these beings, are later modifications of the original idea.”[29]