he question. Virginia was first permanently colonised by
Englishmen in 1607, and the 'Historie of Travaile into Virginia,' by
William Strachey, Gent., first Secretary of the Colony, dates from the
earliest years (1612-1616). It will hardly be suggested, then, that the
natives had already adopted _our_ Supreme Being, especially as Strachey
says that the native priests strenuously opposed the Christian God.
Strachey found a house-inhabiting, agricultural, and settled population,
under chiefs, one of whom, Powhattan, was a kind of Bretwalda. The temples
contained the dried bodies of the _weroances_, or aristocracy, beside
which was their Okeus, or Oki, an image 'ill favouredly carved,' all
black dressed, 'who doth them all the harm they suffer. He is propitiated
by sacrifices of their own children' (probably an error) 'and of
strangers.'

Mr. Tylor quotes a description of this Oki, or Okeus, with his idol and
bloody rites, from Smith's 'History of Virginia' (1632)[1]. The two books,
Strachey's and Smith's, are here slightly varying copies of one original.
But, after censuring Smith's (and Strachey's) hasty theory that Okeus is
'no other than a devil,' Mr. Tylor did not find in Smith what follows in
Strachey. Okeus has human sacrifices, like Bobowissi, 'whilst the great
God (the priests tell them) who governes all the world, and makes
the son to shine, creatyng the moone and starrs his companyons ... they
calling (_sic_) Ahone. The good and peaceable God requires no such dutyes,
nor needs to be sacrificed unto, for he intendeth all good unto them,'
Okeus, on the contrary, 'looking into all men's accions, and examining the
same according to the severe scheme of justice, punisheth them.... Such is
the misery and thraldome under which Sathan hath bound these wretched
miscreants.'

As if, in Mr. Strachey's own creed, Satan does not punish, in hell, the
offences of men against God!

Here, then, in addition to a devil (or rather a divine police magistrate),
and general fetishism and nature worship, we find that the untutored
Virginian is equipped with a merciful Creator, without idol, temple, or
sacrifice, as needing nought of ours. It is by the merest accident, the
use of Smith's book (1632) instead of Strachey's book (1612), that Mr.
Tylor is unaware of these essential facts[2].

Dr. Brinton, like Mr. Tylor, cites Smith for the nefarious or severe
Okeus, and omits any mention of Ahone, the benevolent Creator.[3]
Now, Strach