ests are
developed relatively late.

Major Ellis discriminates Tshi gods as--

1. General, worshipped by an entire tribe or more tribes.
2. Local deities of river, hill, forest, or sea.
3. Deities of families or corporations.
4. Tutelary deities of individuals.

The second class, according to the natives, were appointed by the first
class, who are 'too distant or indifferent to interfere ordinarily in
human affairs.' Thus, the Huron god, Ahone, punishes nobody. He is all
sweetness and light, but has a deputy god, called Okeus. On our hypothesis
this indifference of high gods suggests the crowding out of the great
disinterested God by venal animistic competition. All of class II. 'appear
to have been originally malignant.' Though, in native belief, class I.
was prior to, and 'appointed' class II., Major Ellis thinks that malignant
spirits of class II. were raised to class I. as if to the peerage, while
classes 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 God, Tando, and
a Southern God, 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 God of the Christians, borrowed from them, and adapted under
a new designation, meaning 'Lord of the sky.' (This is conjectural.
_Nyankum_ = rain. _Nyansa_ has 'a later meaning, "craft."')[28]

Now Major Ellis, later, has to contrast Bosman's account of fetishism
(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 tot