I recently pointed out, in 'The Making of Religion' (1898), the many difficulties which beset the current theory. I was therefore alarmed on rinding that Mr. Tylor had mined the soil under my own hypothesis. His theory of borrowing (which would blow mine sky-high if it exploded) is expounded by Mr. Tylor in an essay, 'The Limits of Savage Religion,' published in the 'Journal of the Anthropological Institute' (vol. xxi., 1892). I propose to examine Mr. Tylor's work, and to show that his own witnesses demonstrate the unborrowed and original character of the gods in question. Mr. Tylor first opposes the loose popular notion that all over North America the Indians believed in a being named _Kitchi Manitou_, or 'Great Spirit,' a notion which I do not defend. He says: 'The historical evidence is that the Great Spirit belongs, not to the untutored, but to the tutored mind of the savage, and is preserved for us in the records of the tutors themselves, the Jesuit missionaries of Canada.'[3] Now as to the _word_ 'Manitou' spirit, Mr. Tylor quotes Le Jeune (1633): 'By this word "Manitou," I think they understand what we call an angel, or some powerful being.'[4] Again: 'The Montagnets give the name "Manitou" to everything, whether good or bad, superior to man. Therefore, when we speak of God, they sometimes call Him "The Good Manitou," while when we speak of the Devil, they call him "The Bad Manitou."'[5] When then, ninety years later, in 1724, Père Lafitau dilates on 'The Great Spirit,' 'The Great Manitou,' we are to see that in ninety years the term which the Indians used for _our_ God--their translation of _le bon dieu_--has taken root, become acclimatised, and flourished. Lafitau, according to Mr. Tylor, has also raised the Huron word for spirit, _oki_, to Okki, with a capital O, which he calls _Le Grand Esprit_. The elevation is solely due to Lafitau and other Christian teachers. If all this were granted, all this is far indeed from proving that the idea of a beneficent Creator was borrowed by the Indians from the Jesuits between 1633 and 1724. Mr. Tylor's own book, 'Primitive Culture,' enables us to correct that opinion. Here he quotes Captain Smith, from an edition of the 'History of Virginia' of 1632. Smith began to colonise Virginia in 1607. He says (edition of 1632): 'Their chief god they worship is the Devil. Him they call Okee (Okki), and serve him more of fear than love.' Mr. Tylor cites this as a statement by 'a half-educated and whole-prejudiced European' about 'savage deities, which, from his point of view, seem of a wholly diabolic nature.' 'The word oki,' Mr. Tylor goes on, 'apparently means "that which is above," and was, in fact, a general name for spirit or deity.'[6]