(M157) When the missionaries inquired into the religious ideas of the Herero, a Bantu tribe of German South-West Africa, they heard much of a certain Mukuru, whom at first they took to be the great god of heaven and earth. Accordingly they adopted Mukuru as the native name for the Christian God, and set out on their mission to preach the glad tidings of Mukuru and his divine Son to the poor benighted heathen. But their first experiences were disconcerting. Again and again when they arrived in a village and announced their intention to the chief, they were brought up very short by that great man, who told them with an air of astonishment that he himself was Mukuru. For example, Messrs. Büttner and Irle paid a visit to an old chief named Tjenda and remonstrated with him on the impropriety of which he had been guilty in giving a baptized girl in marriage to a native gentleman whose domestic arrangements were framed on the polygamous patriarchal pattern. “Mukuru will punish you for that,” said Mr. Büttner. “What?” roared the chief. “Who’s Mukuru? Why, I am Mukuru in my own tribe,” and he bundled the two missionaries out of the village. A repetition of these painful incidents at last impressed on the minds of the missionaries the conviction that Mukuru was not God at all but merely the head of a family, an ancestor, whether alive or dead.(477) They ascertained at the same time that the Herero recognize a good god who dwells in heaven and bears the name of Ndjambi Karunga. But they do not worship him nor bring him offerings, because he is so kind that he hurts nobody, and therefore they need not fear him. “Rather they share the opinion of the other Bantu tribes that Ndjambi, the good Creator, has withdrawn to heaven and left the government on earth to the demons.”(478) “It is true that the Herero are acquainted with punishment for what is bad. But that punishment they ascribe to Mukuru or their ancestors. It is their ancestors (_Ovakuru_(479)) whom they must fear; it is they who are angry and can bring danger and misfortune on a man. So it is intelligible that the whole of their worship turns, not on Ndjambi Karunga, but on their ancestors. It is in order to win and keep their favour, to avert their displeasure and wrath, in short to propitiate them, that the Herero bring their many offerings; they do so not out of gratitude, but out of fear, not out of love, but out of terror. Their religion is a worship of ancestors with here and there touches of fetishism.”(480) “Thus among the Herero, as among all Bantu tribes, there exists a religious dualism: they know the highest, the true God, but they worship their ancestors.”(481) And among the worshipful ancestors “the old dead chiefs of every tribe take the first place. The son of a great dead chief and the whole tribe worship that old father as their god. But the remote ancestors of that chief they do not worship, indeed they hardly know them by name and can no