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Anthropologists of the old school and civilized but unsophisticated observers of primitive life have frequently told us that savages have no religion. "According to Spitz and Martius, Bates and Wallace, some of the Brazilian Indians were entirely without religion. Burmeister confirms this statement and in the list of the principal tribes of the valley of the Amazons … the Chunchos are stated to have no religion whatever and we are told that the Curetus have no idea of a Supreme Being."1 "The South American Indians of the Gran Chaco are said by the missionaries to have no religious or idolatrous belief or worship whatever, neither do they possess any idea of a God or of a Supreme Being. They make no distinction between right and wrong, and have, therefore, neither fear nor hope of any future punishment or reward, nor any mysterious terror of some supernatural power whom they might seek to assuage by sacrifices or superstitious rites."2
It would be easy but quite unnecessary to pile up quotations of a similar kind.3 Why, indeed, do I mention these things? Has it not been proved often that these old travelers and missionaries simply did not know what they were writing about? We were often told by writers of the nineteenth century that the Australians have no religion, and yet we now have many volumes devoted entirely to descriptions of the totemic ceremonies or animistic beliefs of these people.
Still I can not let the matter rest here. There must be a