Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/223
Dr. Frobenius in his publication is figuring many samples of African masks made of wood, bark, leaves, parts of skulls, and other substances. None of them shows any noteworthy artistic development, or other spark of natural genius, but they all typify the coarse and brutish naturalism which we are accustomed to find with the populations living within the tropics.[1]
The Deities of the Early New England Indians.—These are better known to us than the so-called "gods" of most of the present North American tribes. We owe this interesting information to Capt. John Smith, Strachey, Roger Williams, and a few other authors. In these parts, the teachers of Christianity called God and Jehovah manit, mundtu, "he is God;" manittw, which properly stands for spirit, ghost; for the plural number gods, they used manittówok, spirits. When manit serves to form compounds, the prefix m-, which is impersonal and indefinite, is retrenched, and what remains is -anit, -ant, -and. Roger Williams, who had settled in Rhode Island, states that Indians around him "have given me the names of thirty-seven, which I have, all which, in their solemn worships, they invocate." (Chapt. 21st.) From J. H. Trumbull's lexical manuscript, "On Eliot's Bible," I copy a list of them, accompanied by his own comments:—
"Kautántowwit, the great southwest god, to whose house all souls go, and from whom came their corn and beans, as they say. This name is found again in Keih-tannit (the 'great God,' kehte-ánit,) and thus they called Jehovah. Capt. J. Smith says the Massachusetts call their great god Kiehtan; the Penobscots, Tantum. Lechford states that they worship Kitan, their good God, or Hobbamoco, their evil God. Tantum is a contraction of Keihtanit-om, my (or our) great God. Winslow, 1624, is of opinion that Kiehtan is their principal God, and the maker of all the rest [of the gods], and to be made by none; … who dwelleth above in the heavens far … westward, whither all good men go when they die. About Squantam Josselyn says that 'they acknowledge a god whom they call Squantam, but worship him they do not.' This name explains itself by the verb musquantam (he is angry,) and by Roger Williams's remark, 'They (the Narraganset Indians) will say, when an ordinary accident, as a fall, has occurred to somebody: musquantam mánit (God was angry and did it).'"
The Devil, or evil spirit of Indian mythology, was called Hobbamoco, Habamouk, Abbamocho or Chēpie by the Massachusetts Indians. Josselyn also says that this spirit "many times smites them with incurable diseases, scares them with his apparitions and panic terrors, by reason of which they live in a wretched consternation,
- ↑ Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas. Halle, 1898, illustr.