REV. M. EELI.S, ON AVORSHIP AND TRADITIONS OF ABORIGINES. 59 



be considered as a contribution to the study of the subject, 

 and I trust that it may at least suggest such trains of 

 thought in others as will make it of value. 



I shall begin on the same principle as I did in the paper of 

 mine referred to, and that is that fewer changes have talcen 

 place in regard to the religion of the natives than with 

 reference to the manncis and customs which relate to their 

 food, clothing, ornaments, architecture, implements, or even 

 social, governmental and educational customs, as they are 

 much more willing to change these latter customs on coming 

 in contact with whites, than they are their religious ideas and 

 customs. Hence, if there are any customs, which (as Foster's 

 Frehistoric Races oj Aonerica expresses it) become " infallible 

 guides in tracing national affinities," they are those which 

 relate to religion. 



True the outside appearance of their religion is as different 

 from that of civilized people as it Avell can be; but having 

 stripped it of this outside shell, it is the inside kernel, the 

 foundation principles which I wish to consider^ 



I shall also follow the same divisions that I did in my 

 former pape]' ; man's belief in regard to the beings of the 

 Spirit World, more powerful than himself ; man as a spiritual 

 being; the relations between man and those beings of the 

 other Avorld; and man's future state. 



My field is, however, different, very different, and hence the 

 argument becomes much stronger, as some of those islands 

 are situated thousands of miles from each other, Asia or 

 other inhabited lands. 



It must be remembered also, that the ancient inhabitants 

 of some of these islands, although comparatively not very 

 distant from parts of Asia, are among the lowest and most 

 degraded pe(.)ple in the world, as the Dyaks of Borneo, 

 celebrated as ferocious cannibals ; the Papuas of New Guinea, 

 who are seldom over five feet high, and who have often beeu 

 treated almost as wild beasts ; and some in Australia, who as 

 some say have little to distinguish them from the brute, except 

 their form, their power of speech, and their ideas of a good 

 and evil spirit. (Fisher's Book of the World, vol. 2, pp. 682, 

 684, 686.) 



I. — The Beings of the Spirit World. 



(o) The Supreme Being. — A belief in a Supreme Being is 

 very wide spread. The inhabitants of Sumatra believe in a 



