answers, and importation of white men's thoughts, it can hardly be
judged that a divine being, whose characteristics are often so
unlike what European intercourse would have suggested, and who is
heard of by such early explorers among such distant tribes, could
be a deity of foreign origin". NOW, he "can HARDLY be ALTOGETHER a
deity of foreign origin".[1] I agree with Mr. Tylor's earlier
statement. In my opinion Ahone--Okeus, Kiehtan--Hobamock,
correspond, the first pair to the usually unseen Australian Baiame
(a crystal or hypnotic vision of Baiame scarcely counts), while the
second pair, Okeus and Hobamock, answer to the Australian familiars
of sorcerers, Koin and Brewin; the American "Powers" being those of
peoples on a higher level of culture. Like Tharramulun where
Baiame is supreme, Hobamock appears as a snake (Asclepius).


[1] Prim. Cult., ii. 340, 1873, 1892.


For all these reasons I am inclined to accept Strachey's Ahone as a
veritable element in Virginian belief. Without temple or service,
such a being was not conspicuous, like Okee and other gods which
had idols and sacrifices.

As far as I see, Strachey has no theory to serve by inventing
Ahone. He asks how any races "if descended from the people of the
first creation, should maintain so general and gross a defection
from the true knowledge of God". He is reduced to suppose that, as
descendants of Ham, they inherit "the ignorance of true godliness."
(p. 45). The children of Shem and Japheth alone "retained, until
the coming of the Messias, the only knowledge of the eternal and