From Primitive to Indigenous

The Academic Study of Indigenous Religions

James L. Cox

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317131885
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The academic study of Indigenous Religions developed historically from missiological and anthropological sources, but little analysis has been devoted to this classification within departments of religious studies. Evaluating this assumption in the light of case studies drawn from Zimbabwe, Alaska and shamanic traditions, and in view of current debates over 'primitivism', James Cox mounts a defence for the scholarly use of the category 'Indigenous Religions'.

Chapter 1
The Academic Study of Indigenous Religions: Underlying Assumptions and Historical Developments

The nineteenth-century preoccupation with the origin of religion led to a view that was widely accepted throughout the first part of the twentieth century that contemporary ‘primitives’ living in Africa, Australia, the Americas and other ‘non-literate’ societies provided significant insight into how religion was practised at the dawn of human history. It was from this attempt to understand how religion had come to its present phase in Western culture that the motive for much early academic interest in the religions of primitive societies was derived. The reasons for seeking such an understanding varied according to whether scholars studied primitive religions to demonstrate the value and superiority of Christianity by locating it at the apex of religious development or whether they traced the roots of Christianity to primitive thinking and thus to superstition. Nonetheless, both Christian and anti-Christian approaches within early studies of indigenous societies were conducted broadly under the same assumptions, which in turn became embedded as cardinal principles in later academic programmes in Indigenous Religions.

In this chapter, I demonstrate how these assumptions were translated into university courses, beginning with the teaching of African Traditional Religion in the first Religious Studies department of its kind at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria to the full course in Indigenous Religions currently operating in the University of Edinburgh. I will also draw attention briefly to recent developments in teaching and research that lend support to my contention that the term ‘indigenous’ has now become widely accepted amongst scholars of religion as a preferred term to ‘primal’, which was used commonly amongst scholars of religion well into the 1990s. In the process of describing this history, I will set the stage for my discussion of problems associated with the term ‘indigenous’ that I address in Chapters 2, 3 and 4, such as the hegemonic power of the world religions paradigm, difficulties in defining and distinguishing the indigenous from the non-indigenous, the persistent dominance of Western interests in the academic study of indigenous peoples and the critical issue of relating what we mean by ‘indigenous’ to the equally contentious term ‘religion’. I begin by examining two quite divergent case studies, one based on a ‘pro-religion’ missionary interpretation and the other on an ‘anti-religion’ scientific platform. The first is found in a virtually unknown article appearing in a mid-nineteenth-century journal of the Church Missionary Society, and the other in the writings of James G. Frazer, who was a seminal figure not only in the development of contemporary anthropology but also in the related fields of mythology and religious studies.

The ‘Natural History of Man’ in Africa

The Church Missionary Society (CMS) was founded in 1799 as The Society for Missions to Africa and the East to enable the Church of England to expand its evangelistic mission in lands which had not yet been christianized. Its intention was to work within the Anglican tradition, but with a distinct emphasis on lay participation in the mission enterprise (Ward, 2000: 1). It followed the creation of the Baptist Missionary Society in 1792 and the London Missionary Society in 1795 and thus formed part of the rapid growth of Protestant missionary societies that occurred during the first half of the nineteenth century when missionaries were sent from Europe to remote locations throughout Africa, Oceania and the Americas. This phase of the missionary movement coincided with nineteenth-century attitudes prevalent in Europe that regarded indigenous societies as the least developed form of human civilization. By engaging in efforts to convert those living as ‘savages’ within ‘primitive’ societies, missionaries affirmed, oftentimes against prevailing opinion, that the native populations were capable of being uplifted from their depraved social and moral conditions.

A journal affiliated to the Church Missionary Society, called the Church Missionary Intelligencer, was begun in 1849 and was published regularly until 1906. The first issue of the new journal states that it had been launched to fill a need within the Society for a publication on the missionary cause that would commend itself ‘to the attention of intelligent and thinking minds’ (Yale University, Missionary Periodicals Base).¹ Clearly, this was intended to supplement the more popular Missionary Gleaner, which began in 1839, and the Quarterly Paper, which provided a record of the Society’s proceedings (Keen, 2005). The 1869 issue of the Church Missionary Intelligencer contains an article entitled ‘The Natural History of Man – Africa’, written by William Henry Ridgeway, Rector of Sternfield, Suffolk and author of a popular fourteen page booklet entitled Striving Together for the Faith of the Gospel (1868).² Ridgeway’s article provides rich insight into the attitudes towards indigenous peoples and their religions that were held widely during the middle part of the nineteenth century. It also contains a summary of the main beliefs of the Zulu and Xhosa speaking peoples of South Africa, derived from a book written by the Rev. J.G. Wood entitled The Natural History of Man: Africa, first published as a separate volume in 1868 in London by Routledge and Sons and later as a two volume study of the ‘natural history of man’ around the world.³

The first issue addressed by Ridgeway sounds remarkable to the modern reader: Is the African a human or an ape? It soon becomes clear that the author has raised this question in order to place the missionary point of view squarely in opposition to a widely promulgated academic argument maintained at the time that the African shares much more in common with primates than with human beings. Ridgeway begins his article by asserting that Africans must be regarded as fully human despite the fact that the continent in which they live is immersed in ‘the blackness of her moral degradation’ (1869: 53). If the African were not human, no missionary effort could be justified, since intellectually Africans would be ‘incapable of receiving Christian education’. Ridgeway notes that Europe also at one time was ‘steeped in barbarism’, just like much of Africa is today (1869: 53). In fact, the barbarism of many European ‘aborigines’ was far greater than that of ‘many African tribes’ (1869: 53). The author queries why ‘the African should have been thus singled out for the outpourings of prejudice and detraction’ (1869: 53). For those who have lived among them, just the contrary opinion is merited. Consider, for example, the industrious behaviour displayed by ‘the liberated Africans at Sierra Leone’. Under the power of ‘civilizing influences’, it is not unusual to see a ‘negro’ transformed into ‘a prosperous merchant, taking part in the government of the colony of which he is a citizen and supporting, nay, often originating schemes for the benefit of his degraded countrymen’ (1869: 53).

Ridgeway then considers in detail the position maintained by many anthropologists and philosophers that the African bears a closer resemblance in physical structure, mental capacity and moral aptitude to ‘the anthropoid ape’ than to human beings. He cites an ‘eminent’ anthropologist of his day, Carl Vogt, who describes the ‘negro’ as reminding us ‘“irresistibly of the ape; the short neck, the long, lean limbs, the projecting, pendulous belly”’, characteristics which led Vogt to conclude that the negro ‘“affords a glimmer of the ape beneath the human envelope”’ (Ridgeway, 1869: 54).⁴ Ridgeway argues against this by suggesting that there is far more similarity in physical structure between negroes and ‘the white man’ than between negroes and the ape. The author admits that the negro’s features, large hands, broad feet, thick lips and distended nostrils, are not ‘consonant with our European ideas of beauty’, but after all these are mere conventions (1869: 54). A closer look at the negro leads to a far different conclusion than that drawn by Vogt: ‘His arms may be ungracefully long, his neck short, and his shoulders narrow, yet may these peculiarities, which the negro shares with the gorilla, be met with in exceptional cases, though in a less degree, by any white man in the circle of his own acquaintances’ (1869: 54). Further studies show convincingly that the brain of the negro ‘is as large as an European’, that ‘his skull is not generally smaller than that of other races’ and that its internal material ‘is composed of the same substance’ (1869: 55). Indeed, Ridgeway concludes, the negro has the power to walk in an erect position, is ‘bimanous and biped’ and possesses the ‘faculty of articulate speech’ (1869: 55). No other explanation, he asserts, can be found for the prevailing ‘negrophobia’ amongst contemporary academics than skin colour. ‘It is the hue of the negro’s skin which, in the eyes of modern anthropologists, forms an insuperable obstacle to his admission within the pale of our species’ (1869: 55). In other words, simple prejudice has replaced scientific evidence for many scholars: ‘A black skin is to these philosophers as a red rag to a savage bull’ (1869: 55).

In the remainder of the article, Ridgeway reviews the contents of the book by the Rev. J.G. Wood, from which he obtained the title for his article. The major part of Wood’s volume, which extends to nearly 800 pages, deals with African groups living south of the equator and nearly a third is devoted to a discussion of what Wood calls the Kaffirs ‘which inhabit the extreme south of the continent’ (Ridgeway, 1869: 58), what now would constitute Zulu and Xhosa groups living in South Africa.⁵ Ridgeway indicates that these are not the aboriginal people of the land, since most likely ‘they descended from the northern parts of the continent upon Southern Africa, and dispossessed the Hottentots, who had, in their turn, thrust out the true aborigines of the soil’ (1869: 58). The term ‘Hottentots’ refers to a classification, now deemed derogatory, used by the white settlers to designate the Khoikhoi people, a division of the Khoisan ethnic group, closely related to the San or bushmen, a group which, as I noted in the Introduction to this book, is regarded by the contemporary anthropologists Alan Barnard and Justin Kenrick (2001: vii–xv) as having the most legitimate claim to being ‘indigenous’ within southwest Africa. Although this is not the main point of Ridgeway’s article, it is worth noting that we find addressed in a missionary journal at a quite early stage the persistent problem of defining which group of pre-colonial peoples can be identified as genuinely indigenous and which are better regarded as invaders.

Ridgeway then proceeds in the remainder of the article to describe the customs attributed by Wood to the ‘Kaffirs’. Childbirth, both male and female, he notes, is celebrated, and only in the case of twins, is an infant sacrificed, ‘as the existence of both is considered to bring ill luck to the parents’ (Ridgeway, 1869: 59). A baby girl is welcomed because when the child eventually marries, the family of the man must pay the girl’s family ‘at least eight cows’ (1869: 59). At puberty, boys undergo the rite of circumcision. Ridgeway notes that until he reaches manhood, a boy does not wear clothes, but simply paints himself and wears a belt from which a number of thongs hang. As an adult, the male puts on an ‘apron’ that falls behind him and sometimes adds a ‘small cloak’ (1869: 59). The ‘Kaffir’ also is fond of wearing ornaments, such as beads, buttons and strings that are highly colourful. The male adult accumulates ox tails, with rank noted by the number of tails he obtains. The principal architectural style employed in the villages is circular, and huts are built up in groups ‘like an exaggerated bee-hive’ (1869: 59). The ‘Kaffir’s’ fences are also circular in a style similar to the organization of his huts. The primary unit of exchange is the cow, which is used to procure a wife. Polygamy is practised widely, since to have many wives makes work easier. This is because ‘all manual work falls upon the women’, who even cultivate the soil ‘while their husbands sit at home’ (1869: 59). The primary activities of men are warfare and hunting. The fundamental food consumed is maize, which is made into porridge (1869: 60).

Ridgeway concludes his article by considering the religion of the ‘Kaffirs’. He agrees with Wood’s judgement that the ‘Kaffirs’ do not ‘have any religion at all, so far as the word conveys any idea of moral responsibility’ (1869: 60).⁶ They possess a vague notion of a Creator who is the originator of things, ‘but they neither worship nor pray to Him’. They recite a myth about the creation of man, ‘whom they suppose to have been made by splitting a reed, from which our first parents proceeded’ (1869: 60). They also tell the story that death came to the world when ‘the Great-great’ sent two messengers to earth. The first, a chameleon, proclaimed: ‘Let not the people die’. The second was a salamander who conveyed just the opposite instruction. Unfortunately, the salamander arrived first amongst humans ‘and since then men have been subject to death’ (1869: 60). There is a general belief in ‘the immortality of the soul’ amongst the ‘Kaffirs’, since the spirits of the dead ‘revisit the earth’. Ridgeway indicates that ‘prophets’ define the ‘chief part of his religious system’ acting as mediums for communication with the spirits of the dead and for uncovering witchcraft. The most important function of the prophet, however, is to make rain (1869: 60).

This article is highly significant because in the first instance it demonstrates that the sympathetic attitude maintained by missionaries towards Africans stands in sharp contrast to the debate amongst scholars of the day about the postulated human or animal nature of peoples indigenous to Africa. The conviction that the African was human, of course, was necessary for missionary work to proceed, but it was also based on the principle that human beings everywhere were the same and could be civilized and christianized. The second important characteristic of this article is its attempt to summarize the main traditions, beliefs and practices of the Zulu people into a coherent picture to aid understanding of the pre-Christian ‘religious system’. Such an understanding provided the rudimentary knowledge necessary for Christian missionaries who sought to replace traditional African practices with adherence to Christian beliefs and moral attitudes. That Ridgeway underscored the lack of a moral basis to this system confirmed the idea that the African was living in darkness, but it also affirmed that this was true of all pre-Christian systems that had operated throughout history, including those of Europe. If this assertion is true, then people in every society, no matter how basic or simple, are capable of receiving, understanding and accepting Christian faith and of experiencing the social and moral benefits which follow in its wake. This could not occur unless, in some elementary sense, all humans are the same, sharing fundamentally similar religious impulses. We thus find in the case of Ridgeway’s article on ‘The Natural History of Man – Africa’ clearly articulated two fundamental principles that we will see reformulated into later academic studies of Indigenous Religions: (1) Africans have been marginalized by scholarly opinion due to an inherent racial prejudice; and (2) humanity, including the downtrodden peoples of Africa, share in common with the rest of humanity an innate ability to respond to a higher standard of moral teaching than they had known previously and to organize their societies in conformity with the values of the Christian religion.

The Anti-Religionist Study of Religion by James G. Frazer

The idea that the nature of humanity is everywhere the same, voiced so clearly by Ridgeway, became a central tenet amongst anthropological studies of primitive peoples towards the end of the nineteenth century under the influence of E.B. Tylor, and was developed into an anti-religionist theory by James G. Frazer (1854–1951). As I indicated in my Introduction to this book, many scholars have noted the vast significance Frazer holds for numerous disciplines, but he is chiefly known for his anthropological work outlining primitive customs and beliefs published in his multi-volumed study The Golden Bough, which underwent numerous editing processes between 1890 and 1915. Frazer trained in Classics and Law at Cambridge, but, as Daniel Pals (2006: 31) notes, when by chance he read E.B. Tylor’s Primitive Culture (1871), he ‘found his eyes suddenly opened to the possibilities created by anthropological research and the use of the comparative method’. Still as a young man, Frazer met William Robertson Smith, the controversial biblical scholar from Aberdeen and author of Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (1889), who became his adviser and close colleague. It was Smith’s theories of clans, kinship groups and totems that most influenced Frazer’s thinking and stimulated, at least in part, the writing of the first edition of The Golden Bough. In 1907, Frazer was appointed to the chair in the new field of anthropology at the University of Liverpool, which Alan Barnard contends he regarded largely as an honorary post. Eric Sharpe (1986: 87–8) corroborates this point, adding that Frazer ‘worked in the area of anthropology simply because he was intrigued by the problems presented by primitive religion and mythology, magic and religion’. Sharpe (1986: 90) explains that Frazer’s main contributions in The Golden Bough were to have provided a working theory of magic, to have analysed the significance of the widely held belief in divine kingship and to have drawn links between deities of vegetation and myths of death and resurrection. Barnard (2000: 37) underscores the immense significance The Golden Bough held for later scholarship, calling it ‘one of the great books of anthropology’ and noting that ‘it was widely read by generations of intellectuals of all kind’.

My interest in Frazer in this context focuses on his conviction that humanity possesses a cognitive unity, a point which recently has been emphasized in an article written by the scholar of classical religions, Ulrich Berner (2004: 141–9). Berner refers to Frazer’s inaugural lecture at Liverpool in 1908 in which Frazer reminded his audience that superstitions still prevail in many parts of Europe as ‘survivals’ of a past era. The study of myth, magic and folklore in primitive societies thus bears direct relevance for understanding contemporary practices and beliefs, since it confirms that many people living in so-called civilized societies ‘though they are drilled by their betters into an appearance of civilization, remain barbarians or savages at heart’ (cited by Berner, 142). Berner points out that this observation was based on Frazer’s understanding of the comparative method, since he assumed ‘that the human mind works similarly in all races of men’ (Berner, 2004: 142). This idea resonates closely with Ridgeway’s conclusion that ‘the pristine barbarism of the aborigines of Europe was far greater’ than the savagery of African tribes (1869: 53).

The Golden Bough carries the subtitle, ‘A Study in Magic and Religion’, but it does not begin with accounts of exotic practices performed by far-off African tribes. Rather, it opens by recounting stories circulated in pre-Christian Rome about the bizarre practices of the priest of Diana of the Wood, who in the grove of Aricia lived a life of fear. (This is now the modern Italian city of Ariccia, near Lake Nemi in the Albani hills, approximately 25 kilometres south of Rome.) Frazer describes how, according to the legend, one became a priest by murdering the incumbent, but then awaited his own successor who would in turn slay him. Frazer (1963: 1) writes: ‘He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead.’ The priest was also a king, but it was a highly precarious rule: ‘The least relaxation of his vigilance, the smallest abatement of his strength of limb or skill of fence, put him in jeopardy’ (1963: 2). Frazer notes that this ‘strange rule … has no parallel in classical antiquity’, but he sets it into a comprehensible context by relating other stories that shed light on it (1963: 2). After recounting a number of these, he concludes that ‘it needs no elaborate demonstration to convince us that the stories told to account for Diana’s worship at Nemi are unhistorical’ and that ‘they belong to that large class of myths which are made up to explain the origin of a religious ritual’ (1963: 6). Historical legends, of course, can be connected to the Nemi myths, and archaeological evidence traces the sanctuary of Diana at Aricia to a period sometime around the fourth century BCE. Despite these ancient historical connections to the story of the priest of Aricia, Frazer argues, ‘we cannot suppose that so barbarous a rule as that of the Arician priesthood was deliberately instituted by a league of civilized communities’, which he contends the communities by the fourth century BCE certainly were. Rather, the story ‘must have been handed down from a time beyond the memory of man, when Italy was still in a far ruder state than any known to us in the historical period’ (1963: 6). It is only after reviewing the ancient barbarism in times preceding civilized Rome that Frazer moves in The Golden Bough to consider aspects of magic and religion as they are found in contemporary contexts amongst primitive societies. The point to be underscored here is that by beginning with the legend of the priest of Aricia, Frazer has connected the almost unspeakable savagery of ancient times to the legends and rituals of Roman civilization and through them directly to Christianity.

Frazer did not undertake this analysis to support a theory of cultural evolution, conceived as the inevitable advance of huma...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Maps
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Problems, Research Context and Overview
• 1 The Academic Study of Indigenous Religions: Underlying Assumptions and Historical Developments
• 2 Essentialism and the World Religions Paradigm
• 3 Defining ‘Indigenous’ Scientifically
• 4 Towards a Socio-cultural, Non-essentialist Interpretation of Religion
• 5 The Yupiit of Alaska: The ‘Real People’
• 6 The Adaptive Nature of Indigenous Religions in Zimbabwe
• 7 Indigenous Religions and the Debate over Primitivism
• Afterword: A Practical Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index