unborrowed antiquity of a belief in
a divine being, creative and sometimes moral, in North America, is thus
demonstrated. So far I had written when I accidentally fell in with
Mr. Tylor's essay on "The Limits of Savage Religion".(2) In that essay,
rather to my surprise, Mr. Tylor argues for the borrowing of "The Great
Spirit," "The Great Manitou," from the Jesuits. Now, as to the phrase,
"Great Spirit," the Jesuits doubtless caused its promulgation, and,
where their teaching penetrated, shreds of their doctrine may have
adhered to the Indian conception of that divine being. But Mr. Tylor
in his essay does not allude to the early evidence, his own, for Oki,
Atahocan, Kiehtan, and Torngursak, all undeniably prior to Jesuit
influence, and found where Jesuits, later, did not go. As Mr. Tylor
offers no reason for disregarding evidence in 1892 which he had
republished in a new edition of Primitive Culture in 1891, it is
impossible to argue against him in this place. He went on, in the essay
cited (1892) to contend that the Australian god of the Kamilaroi
of Victoria, Baiame, is, in name and attributes, of missionary
introduction. Happily this hypothesis can be refuted, as we show in the
following chapter on Australian gods.

(1) See Tylor, Prim. Cult., ii. 362, and Making of Religion, p. 318;
also Menzies, History of Religion, pp. 108,109, and Dr. Legge's Chinese
Classics, in Sacred Books of the East, vols. iii., xxvii., xxviii.

(2) Journ. of Anthrop. Inst., vol. xxi., 1892.

It would be easy enough to meet the hypothesis of borrowing in the case
of the many African tribes who possess something approaching to a rude
monotheistic conception. Among these are the Dinkas of the Upper Nile,
with their neighbours, whose creed Russegger compares to that of
modern Deists in Europe. The Dinka god, Dendid, is omnipotent, but
so benevolent that he is not addressed in prayer, nor propitiated by
sacrifice. Compare the supreme being of the Caribs, beneficent, otiose,
unadored.(1) A similar deity, veiled in the instruction of the as yet
unpenetrated Mysteries, exists among the Yao of Central Africa.(2) Of
the negro race, Waitz says, "even if we do not call them monotheists,
we may still think of them as standing on the boundary of monotheism
despite their innumerable rude superstitions".(3) The Tshi speaking
people of the Gold Coast have their unworshipped Nyankupon, a now
otiose unadored being, with a magisterial deputy, worshipped