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This very interesting Supreme Being, in a middle barbaric race, is the Polynesian Taa-roa, as described by Ellis in that fascinating book 'Polynesian Researches. 'Several of their taata-paari, or wise men, pretend that, according to other traditions, Taa-roa was only a man who was deified after death. Euhemerism, in fact, is a natural theory of men acquainted with ancestor-worship, but a Euhemeristic hypothesis by a Polynesian thinker is not a statement of national belief.
We shall range from Hurons to Pawnees and Blackfeet, and end with Pachacamac, the supreme being of the old Inca civilisation, with Tui Laga and Taa-roa. It will be seen that the Hurons have been accidentally deprived of their benevolent Creator by a bibliographical accident, while that Creator corresponds very well with the Peruvian Pachucamac, often regarded as a mere philosophical abstraction.
Thus, if it contains nothing more august, the Chinese religion is, so far, beneath that of the Zuñis, or the creed in Taa-roa, in Beings who are eternal, who were before earth was or sky was. 'Dr. Legge charges Confucius, says Mr.
Taa-roa was 'uncreated, existing from the beginning, or from the time he emerges from the po, or world of darkness. In the Leeward Isles Taa-roa was Toivi, fatherless and motherless from all eternity. In the highest heavens he dwells alone. He created the gods of polytheism, the gods of war, of peace, and so on. Says a native hymn, 'He was: he abode in the void. No earth, no sky, no men!
Whence came the idea of Taa-roa? The Euhemeristic theory that he was a ghost of a dead man is absurd. But as we are now among polytheists it may be argued that, given a crowd of gods on the animistic model, an origin had to be found for them, and that origin was Taa-roa. This would be more plausible if we did not find Supreme Beings where there is no departmental polytheism to develop them out of.
Thus, on looking at relatively advanced races, we find them worshipping polytheistic deities and ghosts of the kings just dead, who are often propitiated by terrible massacres of human victims, while, as in the case of Taa-roa, the blood spurts back even on the uncreated Creator, who was before earth was, or sea, sun, or sky.
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