n, a deer, or an eagle,
but most commonly like a snake; not to all but to their Powahs to cure
diseases, and Undeses... and these are such as conjure in Virginia, and
cause the people to do what they list." Winslow (or rather Smith editing
Winslow here), had already said, "They believe, as do the Virginians,
of many divine powers, yet of one above all the rest, as the Southern
Virginians call their chief god Kewassa (an error), and that we now
inhabit Oke.... The Massachusetts call their great god Kiehtan."(1)

(1) Arber, pp. 767, 768.

Here, then, in Heriot (1586), Strachey (1611-12) and Winslow (1622), we
find fairly harmonious accounts of a polydaemonism with a chief, primal,
creative being above and behind it; a being unnamed, and Ahone and
Kiehtan.

Is all this invention? Or was all this derived from Europeans before
1586, and, if so, from what Europeans? Mr. Tylor, in 1873, wrote, "After
due allowance made for misrendering of savage answers, and importation
of white men's thoughts, it can hardly be judged that a divine being,
whose characteristics are often so unlike what European intercourse
would have suggested, and who is heard of by such early explorers among
such distant tribes, could be a deity of foreign origin". NOW, he "can
HARDLY be ALTOGETHER a deity of foreign origin".(1) I agree with
Mr. Tylor's earlier statement. In my opinion Ahone--Okeus,
Kiehtan--Hobamock, correspond, the first pair to the usually unseen
Australian Baiame (a crystal or hypnotic vision of Baiame scarcely
counts), while the second pair, Okeus and Hobamock, answer to the
Australian familiars of sorcerers, Koin and Brewin; the American
"Powers" being those of peoples on a higher level of culture. Like
Tharramulun where Baiame is supreme, Hobamock appears as a snake
(Asclepius).

(1) Prim. Cult., ii. 340, 1873, 1892.

For all these reasons I am inclined to accept Strachey's Ahone as a
veritable element in Virginian belief. Without temple or service, such a
being was not conspicuous, like Okee and other gods which had idols and
sacrifices.

As far as I see, Strachey has no theory to serve by inventing Ahone. He
asks how any races "if descended from the people of the first creation,
should maintain so general and gross a defection from the true knowledge
of God". He is reduced to suppose that, as descendants of Ham, they
inherit "the ignorance of true godliness." (p. 45). The children of Shem
and Japheth alone "retained,