Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol 1 | Page 8

Literature, p. 259. It is to be regretted that the
learned professor gives no references. The Greek Mysteries are treated
later in this volume.
[3] See A picture of Australia, 1829, p. 264.
These studies ought to be comparative, otherwise they are worthless.
As Mr. Hartland calls Daramulun "an eternal Creator with a game leg"
who "died," he may call Zeus an "eternal father, who swallowed his
wife, lay with his mother and sister, made love as a swan, and died, nay,
was buried, in Crete". I do not think that Mr. Hartland would call Zeus
"a ghost-god" (my own phrase), or think that he was scoring a point
against me, if I spoke of the sacred and ethical characteristics of the
Zeus adored by Eumaeus in the Odyssey. He would not be so
humorous about Zeus, nor fall into an ignoratio elenchi. For my point
never was that any Australian tribe had a pure theistic conception
unsoiled and unobliterated by myth and buffoonery. My argument was
that AMONG their ideas is that of a superhuman being, unceasing (if I
may not say eternal), a maker (if I may not say a Creator), a guardian of
certain by no means despicable ethics, which I never proclaimed as
supernormally inspired! It is no reply to me to say that, in or out of
Mysteries, low fables about that being are told, and buffooneries are
enacted. For, though I say that certain high ideas are taught in
Mysteries, I do not think I say that in Mysteries no low myths are told.
I take this opportunity, as the earliest, to apologise for an error in my
Making of Religion concerning a passage in the Primitive Culture of
my friend Mr. E. B. Tylor. Mr. Tylor quoted[1] a passage from Captain
John Smith's History of Virginia, as given in Pinkerton, xiii. pp. 13-39,
1632. In this passage no mention occurs of a Virginian deity named
Ahone but "Okee," another and more truculent god, is named. I
observed that, if Mr. Tylor had used Strachey's Historie of Travaile

(1612), he would have found "a slightly varying copy" of Smith's text
of 1632, with Ahone as superior to Okee. I added in a note (p. 253):
"There is a description of Virginia, by W. Strachey, including Smith's
remarks published in 1612. Strachey interwove some of this work with
his own MS. in the British Museum." Here, as presently will be shown,
I erred, in company with Strachey's editor of 1849, and with the writer
on Strachey in the Dictionary of National Biography. What Mr. Tylor
quoted from an edition of Smith in 1632 had already appeared, in 1612,
in a book (Map of Virginia, with a description of the Countrey)
described on the title-page as "written by Captain Smith," though, in
my opinion, Smith may have had a collaborator. There is no evidence
whatever that Strachey had anything to do with this book of 1612, in
which there is no mention of Ahone. Mr. Arber dates Strachey's own
MS. (in which Ahone occurs) as of 1610- 1615.[2] I myself, for reasons
presently to be alleged, date the MS. mainly in 1611-1612. If Mr. Arber
and I are right, Strachey must have had access to Smith's MS. before it
was published in 1612, and we shall see how he used it. My point here
is that Strachey mentioned Ahone (in MS.) before Smith's book of 1612
was published. This could not be gathered from the dedication to Bacon
prefixed to Strachey's MS., for that dedication cannot be earlier that
1618.[3] I now ask leave to discuss the evidence for an early
pre-Christian belief in a primal Creator, held by the Indian tribes from
Plymouth, in New England, to Roanoke Island, off Southern Virginia.
[1] Prim. Cult. ii. p. 342.
[2] Arber's Smith, p. cxxxiii.
[3] Hakluyt Society, Strachey, 1849, pp. xxi., xxii.
THE GOD AHONE.
An insertion by a manifest plagiary into the work of a detected liar is
not, usually, good evidence. Yet this is all the evidence, it may be
urged, which we have for the existence of a belief, in early Virginia, as
to a good Creator, named Ahone. The matter stands thus: In 1607-1609
the famed Captain John Smith endured and achieved in Virginia
sufferings and adventures. In 1608 he sent to the Council at home a MS.

map and description of the colony. In 1609 he returned to England
(October). In May, 1610, William Strachey, gent., arrived in Virginia,
where he was "secretary of state" to Lord De la Warr. In 1612 Strachey
and Smith were both in England. In that year Barnes of Oxford
published A Map of Virginia, with a description, etc., "written by
Captain Smith," according to the title-page. There was annexed a
compilation from various sources, edited by "W.