in is not so much the cause of all things as the maker of some things, because seemingly the first father of men needed the wherewithal to exercise his energies. The savage's soul is simply his breath or ghost, which indeed will survive his body, but which may lose its identity in the body of an animal or thing, destined like himself to live again. He conceives of himself generally as not mortal, but not therefore as immortal. His future is but a repetition of his present, with the same base wants and pursuits, only with a greater possibility of indulgence, and not necessarily indefinite in duration. It is, perhaps, some compensation for this, that, if it does not hold out great hopes, its prospect serves to deprive death of its terror, and brightens the sufferings of the passing day. To the native American death is said to be rather an event of gladness than of terror, bringing him rest or enjoyment after his period of toil; nor does he fear to go to a land 'which all his life long he has heard abounds in rewards without punishments.' No thought of possibly flying from present evils to find immeasurably greater ones awaiting him after death would ever occur to a savage, and he will even kill himself or cheerfully submit to be killed by his friends, in order to realise the sooner the difference imagined between earth and heaven. The Schoolcraft, I. T., v. 91, 403; ii. 68. powers of evil which vex him here will be absent hereafter, and the Spirit he recognises as supreme in his hierarchy of invisible powers is either conceived as too beneficent to punish, or, if he punishes at all, as likely to punish at once and for ever. 41 II. SAVAGE MODES OF PRAYER. IN the same way as a child is insensibly educated by the very efforts of an adult to place himself on its level, so any tribe of savages is to some extent modified by the time that a stranger has fitted himself, by long residence among them and the acquisition of their language, to tell us anything about them. This primary difficulty, amounting theoretically to insuperability, might alone suffice to invalidate most of the received evidence which asserts or denies concerning savages anything whatsoever in broad general terms. But when the evidence concerns religious ideas another difficulty is superadded, and one which appertains to the subject of religion alone -the reserve, that is, (attested by too many travellers to need specific references,) with which savages guard their stock of fundamental beliefs. The delicacy manifested by the most skilled of the Iowa Indian tribe as to communicating fully or freely on religious subjects, lest they should bring on themselves or their nation some great calamity,' indicates the feeling that probably underlies such religious reticence. If a savage dare not pronounce his own name, much less the names of his dead, it is a fair matter of wonder that he should ever have become so free with the names and attributes of his divinities as to have rendered it possible for such systematic representations of his theology as are current to appear before the world. The evidence afforded by ethnology as to the nature of prayer among savages is slighter than on most subjects relating to them, partly from the natural disregard paid to such matters by most Christian missionaries, partly from the secret and hidden character of prayer, which alone would make its study impossible; but there is abundant evidence to show that religious supplication of a certain kind enters more deeply than might be supposed into the daily lives of the lower races of mankind. Says Ellis of the Society Islanders: Religious rites were connected with almost every act of their lives. An ubu or prayer was offered before they ate their food, planted their gardens, built their houses, launched their canoes, cast their nets, and commenced or concluded a journey.' In the Fijian Islands business transactions were commonly terminated by a short wish or prayer; 2 Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, iii. 268. 2 Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 350. and in the Sandwich Islands the priest would pray before a battle that the gods he addressed would prove themselves stronger than the gods of his foes, promising them hecatombs of victims in the event of victory. But the mere fact of such prayers is of less interest than the actual formulas used; these, however, have more rarely been thought worth recording. 1 According to a recent African traveller it is a daily prayer in some parts of Guinea: 'O God, I know thee not, but thou knowest me: thy aid is necessary to me.' Or again: 'O God, help us; we do not know whether we shall live to-morrow: we are in thy hand.' A Bushman, being asked how he prayed to Cagn (recognised by his tribe as the first being and creator of all things), answered, in a low, imploring tone: 'O Cagn, O Cagn, are we not your children? do you not see our hunger? Give us food;' 'and,' he added, 'he gives us both hands full.' 2 It further appears that the Bushmen address petitions to the sun, to the moon, and to the stars;3 and the Kamchadals, who have been made to dispute with them the lowest rank of humanity, had a rude form of prayer to the Storm-god, which was uttered by a small child, sent naked round the ostrog with a shell 1 Reade, Savage Africa, p. 536. 2 Cape Monthly Magazine, July 1874. |