American name for the supreme deity is Oki. Captain John Smith, the hero of the colonization of Virginia in 1607, he who was befriended by Pocahontas, 'La Belle Sauvage,' thus describes the religion of the country, and especially of her tribe, the Powhatans: 'There is yet in Virginia no place discovered to be so Savage in which they haue not a Religion, Deer, and Bow and Arrowes. All things that are able to doe them hurt beyond their prevention, they adore with their kinde of divine worship; as the fire, water, lightning, thunder, our Ordnance peeces, horses, &c. But their chief e god they worship is the Devill. Him they call Okee, and serue him more of feare than loue. They say they haue conference with him, and fashion themselves as neare to his shape as they can imagine. In their Temples they haue his image evill favouredly carved, and then painted and adorned with chaines of copper, and beads, and covered with a skin in such manner as the deformities may well suit with such a God.'[1] This quaint account deserves to be quoted at length as an example of the judgment which a half-educated and whole-prejudiced European is apt to pass on savage deities, which from his point of view seem of simply diabolic nature. It is known from other sources that Oki, a word belonging not to the Powhatan but to the Huron language, was in fact a general name for spirit or deity. We may judge the real belief of these Indians better from Father Brebeuf's description of the Heaven God, cited here in a former chapter: they imagine in the heavens an Oki, that is, a Demon or power ruling the seasons of the year, and controlling the winds and waves, a being whose anger they fear, and whom they call on in making solemn treaties.[2]
- ↑ Smith, 'Hist. of Virginia,' London, 1632, in Pinkerton, 'Voyages,' vol. xiii. pp. 13, 18, 244. (New Eng.); see Arber's edition. Priority has been claimed for E. Strachey (see Lang, 'Making of Religion,' p. 254), but this copyist seems only to have copied Capt. Smith's 'Map of Virginia' (1608). Brinton, p. 58; Waitz, vol. iii. p. 177, &c. J. G. Müller, pp. 99, &c.; Loskiel, part i. pp. 33, 43.
- ↑ Brebeuf in 'Rel. des Jés.' 1636, p. 107; see above, p. 255. Sagard, p. 494; Cuoq, p. 176; J. G. Müller, p. 103. For other mention of a Supreme Deity among North American tribes see Joutel, 'Journal du Voyage,' &c., Paris, 1713, p. 224 (Louisiana); Sproat in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. v. p. 253 (Vancouver's I.).
