Part 24 (2/2)

4. Tutelary deities of individuals.

The second cla.s.s, according to the natives, were appointed by the first cla.s.s, who are 'too distant or indifferent to interfere ordinarily in human affairs.' Thus, the Huron G.o.d, Ahone, punishes n.o.body. He is all sweetness and light, but has a deputy G.o.d, called Okeus. On our hypothesis this indifference of high G.o.ds suggests the crowding out of the great disinterested G.o.d by venal animistic compet.i.tion. All of cla.s.s II. 'appear to have been originally malignant.' Though, in native belief, cla.s.s I.

was prior to, and 'appointed' cla.s.s II., Major Ellis thinks that malignant spirits of cla.s.s II. were raised to cla.s.s I. as if to the peerage, while cla.s.ses III. and IV. 'are clearly the product of priesthood'--therefore late.

Major Ellis then avers that when Europeans reached the Gold Coast, in the fifteenth century, they 'appear to have found' a Northern G.o.d, Tando, and a Southern G.o.d, Bobowissi, still adored. Bobowissi makes thunder and rain, lives on a hill, and receives, or received, human sacrifices. But, 'after an intercourse of some years with Europeans,' the villagers near European forts 'added to their system a new deity, whom they termed Nana Nyankupon.

This was the G.o.d of the Christians, borrowed from them, and adapted under a new designation, meaning 'Lord of the sky.' (This is conjectural.

_Nyank.u.m_ = rain. _Nyansa_ has 'a later meaning, ”craft.”')[28]

Now Major Ellis, later, has to contrast Bosman's account of fetis.h.i.+sm (1700) with his own observations. According to Bosman's native source of information, men then selected their own fetishes. These are _now_ selected by priests. Bosman's authority was wrong--or priesthood has extended its field of business. Major Ellis argues that the revolution from amateur to priestly selection of fetishes could not occur in 190 years, 'over a vast tract of country, amongst peoples living in semi-isolated communities, in the midst of pathless forests, where there is but little opportunity for the exchange of ideas, _and where we know they have been uninfluenced by any higher race_.'

Yet Major Ellis's theory is that this isolated people _were_ influenced by a higher race, to the extent of adopting a totally new Supreme Being, from Europeans, a being whom they in no way sought to propitiate, and who was of no practical use. And this they did, he says, not under priestly influence, but in the face of priestly opposition.[29]

Major Ellis's logic does not appear to be consistent. In any case we ask for evidence how, in the 'impenetrable forests' did a new Supreme Deity become universally known? Are we certain that travellers (unquoted) did not discover a deity with no priests, or ritual, or 'money in the concern,' later than they discovered the blood-stained, conspicuous, lucrative Bobowissi? Why was Nyankupon, the supposed new G.o.d of a new powerful set of strangers, left wholly unpropitiated? The reverse was to be expected.

Major Ellis writes: 'Almost certainly the addition of one more to an already numerous family' of G.o.ds, 'was strenuously resisted by the priesthood,' who, confessedly, are adding now lower G.o.ds every day! Yet Nyankupon is universally known, in spite of priestly resistance.

Nyankupon, I presume = Anzambi, Anyambi, Nyambi, Nzambi, Anzam, Nyam, the Nzam of the Fans, 'and of all Bantu coast races, the creator of man, plants, animals, and the earth; he takes no further interest in the affair.'[30] The crowd of _spirits_ take only too much interest; and, therefore, are the lucrative element in religion.

It is not very easy to believe that Nyam, under all his names, was picked up from the Portuguese, and pa.s.sed apparently from negroes to Bantu all over West Africa, despite the isolation of the groups, and the resistance of the priesthood among tribes 'uninfluenced by any higher race.'

Nyam, like Major Ellis's cla.s.s I., appoints a subordinate G.o.d to do his work: he is truly good, and governs the malevolent spirits.[31]

The spread of Nyankupon, as described by Major Ellis, is the more remarkable, since 'five or six miles from the sea, or even less, the country was a _terra incognita_ to Europeans,'[32] Nyankupon was, it is alleged, adopted, because our superiority proved Europeans to be 'protected by a deity of greater power than any of those to which they themselves' (the Ts.h.i.+ races) 'offered sacrifices.'

Then, of course, Nyankupon would receive the best sacrifices of all, as the most powerful deity? Far from that, Nyankupon received no sacrifice, and had no priests. No priest would have a traditional way of serving him.

As the unlucky man in Voltaire says to his guardian angel, 'It is well worth while to have a presiding genius,' so the Ts.h.i.+s and Bantu might ironically remark, 'A useful thing, a new Supreme Being!' A quarter of a continent or so adopts a new foreign G.o.d, and leaves him _plante la_; unserved, unhonoured, and unsung. He therefore came to be thought too remote, or too indifferent, 'to interfere directly in the affairs of the world.' 'This idea was probably caused by the fact that the natives had not experienced any material improvement in their condition ... although they also had become followers of the G.o.d of the whites.'[33]

But that was just what they had not done! Even at Magellan's Straits, the Fuegians picked up from a casual Spanish sea-captain and adored an image of Cristo. Name and effigy they accepted. The Ts.h.i.+ people took neither effigy nor name of a deity from the Portuguese settled among them. They neither imitated Catholic rites nor adapted their own; they prayed not, nor sacrificed to the 'new' Nyankupon. Only his name and the idea of his nature are universally diffused in West African belief. He lives in no definite home, or hill, but 'in Nyankupon's country.' Nyankupon, at the present day, is 'ignored rather than wors.h.i.+pped,' while Bobowissi has priests and offerings.

It is clear that Major Ellis is endeavouring to explain, by a singular solution (namely, the borrowing of a G.o.d from Europeans), and that a solution improbable and inadequate, a phenomenon of very wide distribution. Nyankupon cannot be explained apart from Taaroa, Puluga, Ahone, Ndengei, Dendid, and Ta-li-y-Tochoo, G.o.ds to be later described, who cannot, by any stretch of probabilities, be regarded as of European origin. All of these represent the primeval Supreme Being, more or less or altogether stripped, under advancing conditions of culture, of his ethical influence, and crowded out by the horde of useful greedy ghosts or ghost G.o.ds, whose business is lucrative. Nyankupon has no pretensions to be, or to have been a 'spirit.'[34]

Major Ellis's theory is a natural result of his belief in a tangle of polytheism as 'the original state of religion.' If so, there was not much room for the natural development of Nyankupon, in whom 'the missionaries find a parallel to the Jahveh of the Jews.'[35] On our theory Nyankupon takes his place in the regular process of the corruption of theism by animism.

The parallel case of Nzambi Mpungu, the Creator among the Fiorts (a Bantu stock), is thus stated by Miss Kingsley:

'I have no hesitation in saying I fully believe Nzambi Mpungu to be a purely native G.o.d, and that he is a great G.o.d over all things, but the study of him is even more difficult than the study of Nzambi, because the Jesuit missionaries who gained so great an influence over the Fiorts in the sixteenth century identified him with Jehovah, and worked on the native mind from that stand-point. Consequently semi-mythical traces of Jesuit teaching linger, even now, in the religious ideas of the Fiorts.'[36]

Nzambi Mpungu lives 'behind the firmament.' 'He takes next to no interest in human affairs;' which is not a Jesuit idea of G.o.d.

In all missionary accounts of savage religion, we have to guard against two kinds of bias. One is the bias which makes the observer deny any religion to the native race, except devil-wors.h.i.+p. The other is the bias which lends him to look for traces of a pure primitive religious tradition. Yet we cannot but observe this reciprocal phenomenon: missionaries often find a native name and idea which answer so nearly to their conception of G.o.d that they adopt the idea and the name, in teaching. Again, on the other side, the savages, when first they hear the missionaries' account of G.o.d, recognise it, as do the Hurons and Bakwain, for what has always been familiar to them. This is recorded in very early pre-missionary travels, as in the book of William Strachey on Virginia (1612), to which we now turn. The G.o.d found by Strachey in Virginia cannot, by any lat.i.tude of conjecture, be regarded as the result of contact with Europeans. Yet he almost exactly answers to the African Nyankupon, who is explained away as a 'loan-G.o.d.' For the belief in relatively pure creative beings, whether they are morally adored, without sacrifice, or merely neglected, is so widely diffused, that Anthropology must ignore them, or account for them as 'loan-G.o.ds'--or give up her theory!

[Footnote 1: Lejean, _Rev. des Deux Mondes_, April 1862, p. 760. Citing for the chant, Beltrame, _Dictionario della lingua denka_, MS.]

[Footnote 2: Waitz, ii. 74.]

[Footnote 3: 1882.]

[Footnote 4: _Ecclesiastical Inst.i.tutions_, 681.]

[Footnote 5: _Africana_, i. 66.]

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