92 
The Minor Tribes 
Canidia and all her spells. And the very vague¬ 
ness of the modern faith serves to assimilate it 
the more to its most ancient forms, one of which 
we are studying upon the Gaboon River. 
The missionary returning from Africa is often 
asked what is the religion of the people ? If an 
exact man, he will answer, “ I don’t know.” And 
how can he know when the people themselves, 
even the princes and priests, are ignorant of it ? 
A missionary of twenty years’ standing in West 
Africa, an able and conscientious student withal, 
assured me that during the early part of his career 
he had given much time to collecting and collating, 
under intelligent native superintendence, negro 
traditions and religion. He presently found that 
no two men thought alike upon any single subject: 
I need hardly say that he gave up in despair a 
work hopeless, as psychology, the mere study of 
the individual. 
Fetishism, I believe, is held by the orthodox 
to be a degradation of the pure and primitive 
“ Adamical dispensation,” even as the negro has 
been supposed to represent the accursed and 
degraded descendants of Ham and Canaan. I 
cannot but look upon it as the first dawn of a 
faith in things not seen. And it must be studied 
by casting off all our preconceived ideas. For 
instance, Africans believe, not in soul nor in 
spirit, but in ghost; when they called M. du 
