Christianization

Some friends of mine who travel in Africa are of the opinion that the greater part of black Africa is on the way toward becoming uniformly Mohammedan. They explain this by saying that the natives do not understand Christianity, but they do Mohammedanism; that Mohammedanism seems adapted to local needs, and apparently is in Africa the right thing in the right place. 

A few years ago, when I was a student in a divinity school, I remember the professor of church history and allied subjects explaining how in Europe Christianity underwent local changes to suit itself to the environment and understanding of the different peoples as it spread northward during the early centuries of our era. It is, of course, a truism that every one of us must think in the terms of his own experience. “ When I was a child, I thought as a child ” applies also to the races who are really in the childhood stage of intellectual evolution. It ought to be self evident, and really it is when one stops to think, that the Christianity of the cultured, club frequenting, wealthy man of the city can never be quite the same as that of the farmer in the backwoods, for the thoughts of each and their outlook on life are colored by their associations; still it is apparently true that when the clubman writes out his check for foreign missions and the farmer drops his silver coin in the contribution - plate, each seems to think that the money is going to be spent to produce in the minds of distant savages exactly the type of Christianity which the giver himself holds or which he is in the habit of hearing from his own pulpit. 

It has been my fortune at various times and in many lands to see several other religions besides Christianity in actual operation, and to see the operations of Christianity in a large assortment of environments. The religious phenomena among primitive races are in general as fraught with human interest as any of the phases of their lives, and the manifestations of the Christianity which they acquire from missionaries, or from already converted fellow -country men of their own, should be quite as interesting to us as the native religion of these people — more interesting, in fact, through the circumstance that here we see familiar ideas in strange guise, and have before us phenomena which we are better able to understand than the purely native religions of races that differ antipodally from us in their outlook on life. 

One of the races which just now is being converted to Christianity is that of the Eskimo. Those of us interested in missions may have at our fingers' ends the statistics of the work : In such a year the missionary went to this or that district; in so many years he made so many converts; religious services were regularly held; the results of the work are most gratifying. These things we can get out of the missionary reports, and we can hear them from lecture platforms and pulpits when in their sabbatical years the missionaries return to us to tell about their work and its results. I know of no case where there is any reason to doubt the accuracy of the report of these missionaries so far as outward facts are concerned. If they say that twenty - five have been baptized, you may take it for granted that twenty - five have been baptized. There is no reason to undertake an inquiry into these statistics. What we shall undertake thing which the missionary seldom attempts -is to examine the minds of the twenty - five converts and see just how much of a spiritual transformation the baptism has wrought, and under what form the teachings of the missionaries are now being treasured in their simple hearts. 

I have lived with the Eskimo until they have become as my own people. I pass my winters in their houses and my summers in their tents; I dress as they do, eat what they eat, and follow the game across the tundra to get my food exactly as they do, and I have come to feel that I understand them as well as I do my own people. My footing among them is antipodal to that of the missionary —he comes to teach, but I to learn. He tells them, “Don't do this” and “Don't do that,” and the people soon learn what it is he approves of and of what he disapproves; but I merely look and listen, with interest, but without comment. They will show him the characteristics which they know are likely to win his approbation, and they will keep from his knowledge the things he considers reprehensible; with me they take it for granted that I feel as they do in fact, I do in many cases. In dealing with the missionary the Eskimo say “ Aye, aye,” and “ Nay, nay,” and they watch him out of the corners of their eyes to see whether they said “ Aye ” and “ Nay ” at the right time. The footing of the scientific student is also different from that of the whaler or trader who is not interested in their language or their lore. He laughs at their beliefs and calls them silly, exactly as the missionary frowns over them and calls them wicked. His interests are in fur and in whalebone, as the missionaries are in the teaching of doctrine and the enforcement of Sabbath observance, and the habits of the foxes are of greater interest to him than the habits of the people. 

When Christianity came to Rome, the temples of the gods became the churches of God, but there was still the atmosphere of the temple about them. The feasts of the heathen became the feasts of the church. Yule became Christmas, and in German countries the gods Thor and Odin became devils, snarers of souls, and the enemies of the Kingdom. Just so among the Eskimo the missionary becomes in the minds of the people a shaman. His prohibitions become taboos; and as miracles could be wrought under the old system by formulæ and charms, so the Christian religion among them becomes not one of “works,” but of ritual, and prayers are expected to have their immediate and material effect as the charms did formerly.

To illustrate one of the phases of the native religion of the Eskimo, we may consider the question of food taboos. In the mountains of Alaska, on the upper Kuvuk and Noatak rivers, and on the head waters of the Colville, the prohibitions which applied to the eating of the flesh of the mountain sheep alone were as extensive as the entire dietary section of the Mosaic law. A young girl, for instance, might eat only certain ribs, and when she was a little older she might eat certain other ribs; but when she was full grown she would for a time have to abstain from eating the ribs which had been allowed to her up to then. After a woman had had her first child, she might eat certain other ribs, after her second child still others, and only after having five children might she eat all the ribs; but even then she must not eat the membranes on the inside of the ribs. If her child was sick, she must not eat certain ribs, and if two of her children were sick, she might not eat certain other ribs. If her brother's child was sick, she might not eat certain portions, and if her brother's wife died, there were still different prohibitions. The taboos applying to the ribs of the sheep had relation to the health of her children and of her relatives. They also depended upon what animals her relatives or herself had killed recently, and on whether those animals were male or female. 

When all the compulsory taboos were remembered and complied with, there were still some optional ones. If she wanted her daughter to be a good seamstress, she would observe certain taboos with regard to the mountain sheep, and if her son was to be a good hunter, there was a different set of rules to be followed; when her son had killed his first game, there was still another variation, and so on. When people of different districts met at a meal, some one, perhaps the hostess, would recite all the taboos which she knew which were appropriate to that meal, and then would ask one of her guests whether he knew any in addition. He would then contribute such as his hostess had omitted; then a second guest would be appealed to, and when all the taboos which all those present knew of had been clearly called to mind, the meal would go on. Then the next day, if one of them had a headache, or if the cousin of another broke a leg, they would say to one another, “ What taboo could it have been that we broke? ” Some wise old man's advice would be called upon, and he would be told of all the taboos which were observed, and then he would say, “How did you break your marrow -bone? ” Someone would volunteer, “ I broke mine with a stone.” “ Yes, and which hand did you hold the stone in when you broke it?” “ My right hand.” “ Ah yes, that explains it; you should have held the stone in your left hand. That is why your cousin's leg got broken. You broke the marrow -bone the wrong way.” 

It may be a little difficult for the average white man to enter into the frame of mind of those who live under such a complicated taboo system, but it is also difficult for us to sympathize with some of the beliefs held by our immediate ancestors; and if it is a little difficult for us to understand the frame of mind of these people, may it not be a little difficult for them to understand ours? Is it not likely that an elaborate and ingrained system such as this will affect their conception of our rather abstract teachings? A people brought up in the thought habits of a taboo system such as this are likely to continue thinking in the terms of that system after they have been baptized. They will fit the instruction of their teachers, be they schoolmasters or missionaries, into the molds of their ancestral lore. Among the Eskimo the expression, “ a wise man,” being translated, means “a man who knows a large number of taboos." He is an honored member of the community always who knows more than anyone else about the things that ought not to be done. To know these things is very important, for if they are done — if a taboo be broken — no matter how innocently and unknowingly, the inevitable penalty follows in the form of an epidemic or a famine or an accident or illness affecting some relative of the breaker of the taboo. An Eskimo who is a great admirer of the white people (and some Eskimo are not) said to me once that some Eskimo foolishly maintained that white men were less intelligent than Eskimo are. But he said that he had a crushing reply to those who made this statement. He would say to them : “ Our wise men have taboos on food and drink, they have taboos on clothing and methods of travel, on words and thoughts; but until the white man came, did we ever hear of Sunday? Did the wisest of us ever think of the fact that a day might be taboo? ”

Some of the things concerning which the Eskimo have received new ideas from the missionaries are of a somewhat fundamental nature; other things which Ilavinirk believed the missionaries to have taught his people are rather immaterial and make little difference one way or the other. He told me one day that he had often wondered why it was that the mammoth are all extinct. He knew now, however, for Mr. Whittaker, the missionary at Herschel Island, had explained to them how it was. After God created the earth and made the people and the animals in it, the people gradually became wickeder and wickeder, until God made up His mind to destroy them all by drowning. But one man called Noah was an excellent man. God went to him one day and told him to build a ship, and to take into it all his family, and to invite all the animals of the earth to enter the ship also. Noah did as he was directed and invited the animals to enter, and they all entered except the mammoth. When Noah asked the mammoth why they had not come into the ship also, they said they did not think there would be much of a flood; and anyway, if there were something of a flood, they thought their legs were long enough to keep their heads above water. So God became angry with the mammoth; and although the other animals were saved, He drowned all the mammoth. That is why the caribou and the wolves and foxes are still alive, and why the mammoth are all dead. 

With reference to this story and others, I used to argue with our Eskimo, telling them that they must have misunderstood the missionary, and that he could not have said any such thing; but my arguing was without avail. While they considered that I was fairly reliable in every-day affairs, they had my own word for it that in spiritual matters I had no special knowledge. And anyway, they said, in the old days one man knew taboos and doctrines which another did not know, even though both were shamans, and so they thought it was perfectly possible that Mr. Whittaker might know things about God and His works of which I had never heard. Then, too, they said, “ He tells us these things when he is preaching ” ( which being interpreted means that when he was preaching, Mr.' Whittaker was the spokesman of God in the same sense that the shamans had been the spokesmen of the spirits under the old system. In other words, when they listen to a missionary preaching they hear the voice of Jehovah speaking through the mouth of a man). 

I had many talks with Ilavinirk on religion, for he was communicative, and his mental processes, typical as they are of those of his people, were of the greatest interest to me. It was Dr. Anderson, however, who told me the following : It was when he and Ilavinirk and some other Eskimo in February, 1912, were hunting caribou east of Langton Bay. They had been sitting in the house for some time, and no one had been talking, when Ilavinirk all of a sudden remarked to Dr. Anderson that it was a pity they had killed Christ so young. Dr. Anderson made some non - committal answer, and Ilavinirk continued : “Yes, it is a great pity; for the missionary has told us Christ came to all the people of the earth, and He never came to the Eskimo. I suppose that must have been because He visited the other countries first, and had not yet found time to visit the Eskimo before He was killed. ” This shows pretty clearly what Ilavinirk’s idea was of Christ's having come as a messenger not only to the Jews, but to the Gentiles also.

If you ask the missionaries working among the Alaskan or the Mackenzie River Eskimo whether they have been Christianized, they will say yes; if you ask the Eskimo themselves whether they are Christians, they also will answer in the affirmative; and if you ask me, too, then so will I. But to supplement my answer I would like the privilege of explaining what kind of Christians they are, to explain which fact has been the purpose of this article. 

I am so great an admirer of the Eskimo before civilization changed them that it is not easy to get me to say that civilization has improved them in any material way, leaving aside, of course, the question of whether it profiteth a man that he gain the whole earth if he lose his own soul. But although it is not easy to get me to admit that the present-day Eskimo are far better men than their forefathers, it is easy to get them themselves to admit it. In fact, they are of late years rather prone to assert that they are better men than their ancestors. To quote my man Ilavinirk again, he said to me one day : 

“The people of Kotzebue Sound were formerly very bad, but they are all good now. In my father's time and when I was young they used to lie and to steal and to work on Sunday.” 

“ But," I asked him, “don't they, as a matter of fact, tell lies now occasionally ? ” 

“ Oh, yes, they sometimes do. ” 

“ Well, don't they really, as a matter of fact, tell about as many lies now as they ever did ?” 

“ Well, yes, perhaps they do. ” 

“ And don't they, as a matter of fact, steal about as frequently as ever ?” 

“ Well, possibly. But they don't work on Sunday.”

Guninana was not only well informed, but was also, fortunately for me, not such a good Christian as the rest of her countrymen. She had not yet learned that the native lore of her people was essentially wicked and needed to be forgotten, and she told me of how diseases were controlled, how famines were averted, how people were killed or cured by magic, how the future could be foretold and the secrets of the past uncovered, how people could see through hills and fly to the moon, and various things of that sort of which the Christian Eskimo pretend an ignorance and of which they will either tell you nothing or else half truths and untruths. Personally I have always been unable to see why the creations of the Eskimo's imagination should be any more wicked than our “blue-beards," or why the knowledge of the Eskimo method of reading the future should be any more likely to lead to damnation than our palmistry or the reading of the grounds in the bottom of a teacup ; but so it seems to be. And if there are only some of the missionaries who think the native lore wicked , that minority have impressed their views so completely on the Eskimo that no Eskimo who values his immortal soul (and most of them value their immortal souls extravagantly) will defile himself or endanger his eternal welfare by telling the things which they still believe quite as much as they ever did, but which they now consider to be wicked, and which they have abjured on the principle of its not profiting a man to gain the whole earth if he lose his own soul. Most of the Eskimo are a bit regretful over having surrendered the familiar spirits which formerly served them and did their every bidding: changed for them the winds, cured their children when they were ill , and brought caribou to be killed at the very front doors of the houses. Many of them express freely their regret that the use of such useful magic should be incompatible with salvation.