Now as to Ahone. It suits my argument to suppose that Strachey's
account is no less genuine than his description of the temples
(illustrated by a picture by John White, who had been in Virginia
in 1589), and the account of the Great Hare of American mythology.[1]
This view of a Virginian Creator, "our chief god" "who takes upon
him this shape of a hare," was got, says Strachey, "last year,
1610," from a brother of the Potomac King, by a boy named Spilman,
who says that Smith "sold" him to Powhattan.[2] In his own brief
narrative Spelman (or Spilman) says nothing about the Cosmogonic
Legend of the Great Hare. The story came up when Captain Argoll was
telling Powhattan's brother the account of creation in Genesis
(1610).


[1] Strachey, p. 98-100.

[2] "Spilman's Narrative," Arber, cx.-cxiv.


Now Strachey's Great Hare is accepted by mythologists, while Ahone
is regarded with suspicion. Ahone does not happen to suit
anthropological ideas, the Hare suits them rather better.
Moreover, and more important, there is abundant corroborative
evidence for Oke and for the Hare, Michabo, who, says Dr. Brinton,
"was originally the highest divinity recognised by them, powerful
and beneficent beyond all others, maker of the heavens and the
world," just like Ahone, in fact. And Dr. Brinton instructs us
that Michabo originally meant not Great Hare, but "the spirit of