ey's evidence is early (1612), is that of a well-educated
man, fond of airing his Greek, and not prejudiced in favour of these
worshippers of 'Sathan.' In Virginia he found the unpropitiated loving
Supreme Being, beside a subordinate, like Nyankupon beside Bobowissi in
Africa.

Each highest deity, in Virginia or on the Gold Coast, is more or less
eclipsed in popular esteem by nascent polytheism and nature worship. This
is precisely what we should expect to find, if Ahone, the Creator, were
earlier in evolution, while Okeus and the rest were of the usual greedy
class of animistic corruptible deities, useful to priests. This could not
be understood while Ahone was left out of the statement.[4]

Probably Mr. Strachey's narrative justifies, by analogy, our suspicion of
Major Ellis's theory that the African Supreme Being is of European origin.
The purpose in the Ahone-Okeus creed is clear. God (Ahone) is omnipotent
and good, yet calamities beset mankind. How are these to be explained?
Clearly as penalties for men's sins, inflicted, not by Ahone, but by his
lieutenant, Okeus. But that magistrate can be, and is, appeased by
sacrifices, which it would be impious, or, at all events, useless, to
offer to the Supreme Being, Ahone. It is a logical creed, but how was the
Supreme Being evolved out of the ghost of a 'people-devouring king' like
Powhattan? The facts, very fairly attested, do not fit the anthropological
theory. It is to be remarked that Strachey's Ahone is a much less
mythological conception than that which, on very good evidence, he
attributes to the Indians of the Patowemeck River. Their Creator is spoken
of as 'a godly Hare,' who receives their souls into Paradise, whence they
are reborn on earth again, as in Plato's myth. They also regard the four
winds as four Gods. How the god took the mythological form of a hare is
diversely explained.[5]

Meanwhile the Ahone-Okeus creed corresponds to the Nyankupon-Bobowissi
creed. The American faith is certainly not borrowed from Europe, so it is
less likely that the African creed is borrowed.

As illustrations of the general theory here presented, we may now take two
tribal religions among the North American Indians. The first is that of
the equestrian Pawnees, who, thirty years ago, were dwelling on the Loup
Fork in Nebraska. The buffaloes have since been destroyed, the lands
seized, and the Pawnees driven into a 'Reservation,' where they are, or
lately were, cheated and o