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, Strachey’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]