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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.

The second class, according to the natives, were appointed by the first class, who are 'too distant or indifferent to interfere ordinarily in human affairs. Thus, the Huron god, Ahone, punishes nobody. He is all sweetness and light, but has a deputy god, called Okeus.

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. Mr.

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.

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.

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.

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.