We sent out a colony in 1607; "they all returned in the yeere 1608," esteeming the country "a cold, barren, mountainous rocky desart". I am apt to believe that they did not plant the fructifying seeds of grace among the natives in 1607-1608. But the missionary efforts of French traders may, of course, have been blessed; nor can I deny that a yellow-haired man, whose corpse was found in 1620 with some objects of iron, may have converted the natives to such beliefs as they possessed. We are told, however, that these tenets were of ancestral antiquity. I cite E. Winslow, as edited by Smith (1623-24):--"Those where is this Plantation say Kiehtan made all the other Gods: also one man and one woman, and with them all mankinde, but how they became so dispersed they know not. They say that at first there was no king but Kiehtan, that dwelleth far westerly above the heavens, whither all good men go when they die, and have plentie of all things. The bad go thither also and knock at the door, but he bids them go wander in endless want and misery, for they shall not stay there. They never saw Kiehtan, but they hold it a great charge and dutie that one race teach another; and to him they make feasts and cry and sing for plenty and victory, or anything that is good.
In 1873 Mr. Tylor regarded Dr. Brinton's etymology of Kiehtan as = Kittanitowit = "Great Living Spirit," as "plausible". In his edition of 1891 he omits this etymology. Personally I entirely distrust the philological theories of the original sense of old divine names as a general rule.
"They never saw Kiehtan." So, about 1854, "The common answer of intelligent black fellows on the Barwon when asked if they know Baiame . . . is this: 'Kamil zaia zummi Baiame, zaia winuzgulda';'I have not seen Baiame, I have heard or perceived him'. If asked who made the sky, the earth, the animals and man, they always answer 'Baiame'." Daramulun, according to the same authority in Lang's Queensland, was the familiar of sorcerers, and appeared as a serpent. This answers, as I show, to Hobamock the subordinate power to Kiehtan in New England and to Okee, the familiar of sorcerers in Virginia. (Ridley, J. A. I., 1872, p. 277.)"They have another Power they call Hobamock, which we conceive the Devill, and upon him they call to cure their wounds and diseases;when they are curable he persuades them he sent them, because they have displeased him; but, if they be mortal, then he saith, 'Kiehtan sent them'; which makes them never call on him in their sickness. They say this Hobamock appears to them sometimes like a man, a deer, or an eagle, but most commonly like a snake; not to all but to their Powahs to cure diseases, and Undeses . . . and these are such as conjure in Virginia, and cause the people to do what they list." Winslow (or rather Smith editing Winslow here), had already said, "They believe, as do the Virginians, of many divine powers, yet of one above all the rest, as the Southern Virginians call their chief god Kewassa , and that we now inhabit Oke. . . . The Massachusetts call their great god Kiehtan."
Arber, pp. 767, 768.
Here, then, in Heriot (1586), Strachey (1611-12) and Winslow (1622), we find fairly harmonious accounts of a polydaemonism with a chief, primal, creative being above and behind it; a being unnamed, and Ahone and Kiehtan.
Is all this invention? Or was all this derived from Europeans before 1586, and, if so, from what Europeans? Mr. Tylor, in 1873, wrote, "After due allowance made for misrendering of savage 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". 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).
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.