Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/455

 ToteniisM, a7td Religion. 419

when Lord Avebury, confronted with the higher and, (as I think), religions aspects of Australian beHef, tries to escape by way of the old theory of borrowing from Christian sources, he overlooks Mr. Howitt's evidence, which is quite destructive of that theory in Mr. Howitt's region, and among the Arunta of Central Australia.

Lord Avebury quotes Mr. Tylor, who, in Primitive Cultiire^'^ declared that the theory of the borrowing of belief in "The Great Spirit" from missionaries "will not bear examination."

I am not disposed to go so far ; I do not doubt that there are places in which European has contaminated savage belief. Again, it is an old error, — as Mr. Howitt followed me in saying, — to think that the Australian All Father is conceived of as a "spirit." But, in 1892, Mr. Tylor ^^ argued, contrary to his previous opinion, that certain North American and other tribes borrowed " The Great Manitou," " The Great Spirit," from the Jesuits, and so on in certain other cases. Thus argued Mr. Tylor in 1892, but, in an edition of his Pri^nitive Culture of the previous year (189 1 ), he published, as in previous editions, the evidence for American All Fathers, (if I may not say gods), discovered and reported on before the arrival of a7iy missionaries^ and of such beings found in situ by the Jesuits on their arrival in America. There is Heriot's chief and creative being in 1586; there is Strachey's Ahone in 1612. According to Winslow (1622) the belief in an All Father, Kiehtan, maker of all other gods, and of man, was in New England an article of faith from unknown antiquity; Kiehtan was worshipped with feasts and songs and prayers. In 1633, Pere Le Jeune, S.J., being asked by an Indian, " What is God .-* " answered " He made all things, heaven and earth." They then began to cry out to each other, " Atahocan ! Atahocan ! it is Atahocan."

"Vol. ii., pp. 339-40 (1873); Avebury, pp. i6i, 162.

^ The Jour tial of the Anthropological Institute etc., vol xxL, pp. 284-5.