The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎655r] (200/239)

AMONG THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES.
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contact with the whites. It has been asked whether they knew at
least the name of God. Their idea of the divinity must have been
very confused, if I may judge by the heathen whom I have asso
ciated with for thirteen years. It is the missionaries, I believe,
who have employed in the singular the name of God, Molimo, ‘ He
who is on high,’ for in the language molimo would mean
‘ ancestor,’ and was not used except in the plural Balimo (‘ the an
cestors ’). However it may be with their vague knowledge of the
name of God, it is certain that they had no worship, no prayer
for the Supreme Being. No ruins of a temple have been found,
no vestige of a sacrifice to God, no word designating a priest dedi
cated to His service. All that was found sixty or seventy years
ago, when the first whites arrived in Basutoland, is to be found
there to-day among the heathen ; that is, the sacrifices to the
ancestors.” 18 Similarly, Dr. G. M'Call Theal, the learned
historian of South Africa, writes of the Bantus in general, of
whom the Basutos are a branch : ” No man of this race, upon
being told of the existence of a single supreme God, ever denies
the assertion, and among many of the tribes there is even a name
for such a being, as, for instance, the word Umkulunkulu, the
Great Great One, used by the Hlubis and others. From this it
has been assumed by some investigators that the Bantu are really
monotheists, and that the spirits of their ancestors are regarded
merely as mediators or intercessors. But such a conclusion is
incorrect. The Great Great One was once a man, they all assert,
and before our conception of a deity became known to them, he
was the most powerful of the ancient chiefs, to whom tradition
assigned supernatural knowledge and skill.” 19
Again, there is reason to believe that the accounts which
savages give of their religious beliefs are often deliberately fabri
cated by them in order to deceive the white man. This source
of error, though it is not limited to the religious sphere, applies
especially to it, since the uncivilised, like the civilised, man is, in
general, loth to reveal his most sacred beliefs to any chance
inquirer. To win his confidence and elicit his inmost thoughts,
it is necessary for the investigator either to have known him inti
mately for a long time, or to give evidence that he himself has
already been initiated into mysteries of the same sort. But the
deception practised by the savage sometimes springs from a
different motive. In his amiable anxiety to oblige a stranger, he
will often tell him whatever he imagines that the inquirer would
(18) Father Porte, “Lea reminiscences d’un missionaire du Basutoland,’
Missions Catholiques, xxviii. (1896), p. 370. Compare E. S. Hartland, in 1< olk-
lore, xii. (1901), pp. 24 sqq.
(19) G. M'Call Theal, Records of South-Eastern Africa, vu. (1901), p. 401.