Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/129

Rh … Your very question will cause the development and crystallisation of their ideas."

Mr. Lang in his article dwells almost exclusively on the case of the Australians. As regards other low races, I will therefore only refer to the evidence brought forward in my previous books.

He regards "Baiame" as a Supreme Being or All Father devised for themselves by the natives, independently of missionary teaching.

Mr. Tylor, on the other hand, considered that the evidence pointed "to Baiame being the missionary translation of the word Creator, used in Scripture lesson-books for God."

"But," says Mr. Lang, "Mr. Hale (circ. 1840-1842), quoting Mr. Threlkeld, a very early missionary, Baiame was in full force in 1831, while his name appears in no Scripture lesson-book known to be earlier than the Rev. Mr. Ridley's Gurri Kamilaroi, 1856,—(my copy I gave to Mr. Tylor),—the ingenious conjecture of the great anthropologist is erroneous. Lord Avebury writes (p. 163),—"Mr. Lang may challenge (Mr. Tylor's) opinion as that of an anthropologist, however distinguished, whose theories a large part of his book is occupied with controverting." I don't "challenge,"—I prove my case. If Hale's mention of Baiame "in the year 1840" be "the earliest," his mention avers that Baiame was being worshipped when the missionaries arrived at Wellington. Consequently Baiame is not a word coined by a missionary in 1856."

Now what does Mr. Lang claim to have proved? First, that in 1840 the natives had a religion; secondly, that Baiame was worshipped; and thirdly, that this was before the missionaries arrived at Wellington.

But let us see what Mr. Hale actually said. His words are: "The lack of religious feeling in these natives has already been mentioned. The missionaries have found it impossible, after many years' labor, to make the slightest impression upon them. They do not ascribe this to any attachment, on the part of the blacks, to their own creed, if such it may be called, for they appear to care little about it. Some of their ceremonies, which partook of a religious character, have been lately discontinued, but nothing