Religion of the Tshi-speaking Races.

     *** Macdonald, Africana, vol. i. p. 67.

     ****J. A. I., xii. p. 158.

It is for science to determine how far this startling idea of the Son is a natural result of a desire to preserve the remote and somewhat inaccessible and otiose dignity of the Supreme Being from the exertion of activity; and how far it is a savage refraction of missionary teaching, even where it seems to be anterior to missionary influences, which, with these races, have been almost a complete failure. The subject abounds in difficulty, but the sceptic must account for the marvellously rapid acceptance of the European ideas by the most conservative savage class, the doctors or sorcerers; for the admission of the ideas into the most conservative of savage institutions, the Mysteries; for the extreme reticence about the ideas in presence of the very Europeans from whom they are said to have been derived; and in some cases for the concealment of the ideas from the women, who, one presumes, are as open as the men to missionary teaching. It is very easy to talk of "borrowing," not so easy to explain these points on the borrowing theory, above all, when evidence is frequent that the ideas preceded the arrival of Christian teachers.

On this crucial point, the question of borrowing, I may cite Mr. Mann as to the Andamanese beliefs. Mr. Mann was for eleven years in the islands, and for four years superintended our efforts to "reclaim" some natives. He is well acquainted with the South Andaman dialect, and has made studies of the other forms of the language. This excellent witness writes: "It is extremely improbable that their legends were the result of the teaching of missionaries or others". They have no tradition of any foreign arrivals, and their reputation (undeserved) as cannibals, with their ferocity to invaders, "precludes the belief" that any one ever settled there to convert or instruct them. "Moreover, to regard with suspicion, as some have done, the genuineness of such legends argues ignorance of the fact that numerous other tribes, in equally remote or isolated localities, have, when first discovered, been found to possess similar traditions on the subject under consideration," Further, "I have taken special care not only to obtain my information on each point from those who are considered by their fellow tribesmen as authorities, but [also from those] who, from having had little or no intercourse with other races, were in entire ignorance regarding any save their own legends," which, "they all agree in stating, were handed down to them by their first parent, To-mo, and his immediate descendants".* What Mr. Mann says concerning the unborrowed character of Andaman beliefs applies, of course, to the yet more remote and inaccessible natives of Australia.

In what has been, and in what remains to be said, it must be remembered that the higher religious ideas attributed to the Australians are not their only ideas in this matter. Examples of their wild myths have already been offered, they are totemists, too, and fear, though they do not propitiate, ghosts. Vague spirits unattached are also held in dread, and inspire sorcerers and poets,** as also does the god Bunjil.***

Turning from early accounts of Australian religion, say from 1835 to 1845, we look at the more recent reports. The best evidence is that of Mr. Howitt, who, with Mr. Fison, laid the foundations of serious Australian anthropology in Kamilaroi and Kurnai (1881). In 1881, Mr. Howitt, though long and intimately familiar with the tribes of Gippsland, the Yarra, the Upper Murray, the Murumbidgee, and other districts, had found no trace of belief in a moral Supreme Being. He was afterwards, however, initiated, or less formally let into the secret, by two members of Brajerak (wild) black fellows, not of the same tribe as the Kurnai. The rites of these former aborigines are called Kuringal. Their supreme being is Daramulun "believed in from the sea-coast across to the northern boundary claimed by the Wolgal, about Yass and Gundagai, and from Omeo to at least as far as the Shoalhaven River.... He was not, as it seems to me, everywhere thought to be a malevolent being, but he was dreaded as one who could severely punish the trespasses committed against these tribal ordinances and customs, whose first institution is ascribed to him.... It was taught also that Daramulun himself watched the youths from the sky, prompt to punish by sickness or death the breach of his ordinances." These are often mere taboos; an old man said: "I could not eat Emu's eggs. He would be very angry, and perhaps I should die." It will hardly be argued that the savages have recently borrowed from missionaries this conception of Daramulun, as the originator and guardian of tribal taboos. Opponents must admit him as of native evolution in that character at least. The creed of Daramulun is not communicated to women and children. "It is said that the women among the Ngarego and Wolgal knew only that a great being lived beyond the sky, and that he was spoken of by them as Papang (Father). This seemed to me when I first heard it to bear so suspicious a resemblance to a belief derived from the white men, that I thought it necessary to make careful and repeated inquiries. My Ngarego and Wolgal informants, two of them old men, strenuously maintained that it was so before the white men came." They themselves only learned the doctrine when initiated, as boys, by the old men of that distant day. The name Daramulun, was almost whispered to Mr. Howitt, and phrases were used such as "He," "the man," "the name I told you of". The same secrecy was preserved by a Woi-worung man about Bunjil, or Pund-jel, "though he did not show so much reluctance when repeating to me the 'folk-lore' in which the 'Great Spirit' of the Kulin plays a part". "He" was used, or gesture signs were employed by this witness, who told how his grandfather had warned him that Bunjil watched his conduct from a star, "he can see you and all you do down here,"—"before the white men came to Melbourne." (1835).*

Are we to believe that this mystic secrecy is kept up, as regards white men, about a Being first heard of from white men? And is it credible that the "old men," the holders of tribal traditions, and the most conservative of mortals, would borrow a new divinity from "the white devils," conceal the doctrine from the women (as accessible to missionary teaching as themselves), adopt the new Being as the founder of the antique mysteries, and introduce him into the central rite? And can the natives have done so steadily, ever since about 1840 at least? To believe all this is to illustrate the credulity of scepticism.

Mr. Howitt adds facts about tribes "from Twofold Bay to Sydney, and as far west, at least, as Hay". Here, too, Daramulun instituted the rites; his voice is heard in the noise of the whirling mudji (bull-roarer). "The muttering of thunder is said to be his voice 'calling to the rain to fall, and make the grass grow up green'." Such are "the very words of Umbara, the minstrel of the tribe".*

At the rites, respect for age, for truth, for unprotected women and married women, and other details of sexual morality, is inculcated partly in obscene dances. A