Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/672

654 all, whites, mulattoes, and slaves, and the latter, no doubt, Drought into Louisiana the word võdu and the snake-worship.

That the Ardra and Whydah slaves should have clung more tenaciously to the worship of their snake-god than to that of the other deities of their native country is explained by the fact that the python-god was the national god. According to existing tradition, the people of Whydah advanced the python to the dignity of their chief tutelary deity on account of the signal services it rendered when they were attacked by some powerful foe. Overwhelmed by superior numbers, they were giving way in every direction, when all at once the python-god appeared in the broken ranks, caressed the warriors with his head and tail, and inspired them with new courage; so that, when the chief priest raised the god on high at arms' length, and showed him as a guarantee of victory, the Whydahs rushed forward in a frenzy of enthusiasm, swept back the foe and utterly routed him. It was on account of this service, says the tradition, that the Whydahs built at Savi an elaborate temple, in which the priests professed to keep the very snake who had brought them victory. So confident were the Whydahs in the power of their god that, on the approach of the invading Dahomi army in 1727, instead of concentrating their forces at the lagoon to the north of Savi, which was only fordable at one point and on a narrow front, and so might easily have been held against superior numbers, they remained quietly at home and confided the defense to a python, which they placed on the southern bank. The Dahomis soon discovered this, crossed the lagoon without opposition, killed the python, and captured Savi.

The Dahomis treated the snake-gods with contempt, and destroyed the temple at Savi, but they did not prohibit the worship; and the remnant of the Whydahs who escaped the slaughter of the conquest continued it, with the result that after a quarter of a century or so the more southern Dahomis adopted the worship themselves. Some fugitives from Ardra, who fled to the eastward and founded the kingdom of Porto rTovo, a new Ardra as it was then called, established the worship there; and these places, with Agweh and Little Popo to the west, to which the cult has within the last half-century spread from Whydah, are the only ones in which python-worship prevails.

The name of the python-god is Dañh-gbi (dañh, snake, and agbi, life). He is the god of wisdom, to whom all things are known, and, as he opened the eyes of the first man and the first woman, who were blind, he is the benefactor of mankind. He must not be confounded with the Great Snake of the Heavens, Anyiewo, sometimes called simply Dañh, who is the Rainbowgod. Dañh-gbi has his own order of priests, and, like all the