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This could not be understood while Ahone was left out of the statement. Probably Mr. Strachey's narrative justifies, by analogy, our suspicion of Major Ellis's theory that the African Supreme Being is of European origin. The purpose in the Ahone-Okeus creed is clear. How are these to be explained? Clearly as penalties for men's sins, inflicted, not by Ahone, but by his lieutenant, Okeus.
Tylor quotes a description of this Oki, or Okeus, with his idol and bloody rites, from Smith's 'History of Virginia' . The two books, Strachey's and Smith's, are here slightly varying copies of one original. Tylor did not find in Smith what follows in Strachey.
Now, Strachey's evidence is early , 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.
We are now in a position to consider Strachey's allusions to Pocahontas. We have seene some use mantells made both of Turkey feathers, and other fowle, so prettily wrought and woven with threeds, that nothing could be discerned but the feathers, which were exceedingly warme and very handsome." Strachey did not see Pocahontas.
Smith's "True Relation", George Percy's "Discourse", Strachey's "True Repertory of the Wracke and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates", and his "Historie of Travaile into Virginia Brittannia", Hamor's "True Discourse", Whitaker's "Good News" other letters and reports had already flowered, all with something of the strength and fragrance of Elizabethan and early Jacobean work.
One of these gives a very delightful example of the English and American habit of applying a "get- civilisation-quick" system for the native inhabitants of any country into which they penetrate. Strachey's book, which was reprinted by the Hakluyt Society, was entitled "Articles, Lawes and Orders, Divine, Politique, and Martiall, for the Colony of Virginia," and was printed in 1610.
Purchas acknowledges that he had unpublished manuscripts of Smith when he compiled his narrative. Did Smith see Strachey's manuscript before he published his Oxford tract, or did Strachey enlarge his own notes from Smith's description? It has been usually assumed that Strachey cribbed from Smith without acknowledgment.
There is evidence enough in Jacques Cartier's "Voyages to the Rivers of Canada;" and evidence more than enough in Strachey's "Travaile in Virginia" to quote only two authorities out of many to prove that the Red Indians, when the white man first met with them, were, in North and South alike, a diseased, decaying, and, as all their traditions confess, decreasing race.
A brilliant "depreciation" of Arnold and his school has recently appeared in Mr. Lytton Strachey's "Eminent Victorians." "Teachers though they are, Mr. Gollancz and Mr. Somervell do not seem quite to realise ... what obstacles have to be overcome before the advice given in their little book is generally taken." The Westminster Gazette.
Strachey's own creed, Satan does not punish, in hell, the offences of men against God! It is by the merest accident, the use of Smith's book instead of Strachey's book , that Mr. Tylor is unaware of these essential facts . Dr. Brinton, like Mr. Tylor, cites Smith for the nefarious or severe Okeus, and omits any mention of Ahone, the benevolent Creator.
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