The ‘Faculty of Faith’: Evangelical missionaries, social anthropologists, and the claim for human unity in the 19th century

Abstract

In his influential Account of the English Colony in New South Wales (1804:354), the deputy judge-advocate David Collins (1756-1810) dismissed claims by an 'eminent divine, that no country has yet been discovered where some trace of religion was not to be found' and pronounced the Aborigines of Port Jackson free of any trace of a religious state or knowledge: 'It is certain, that they do not worship either sun, moon, or star; … neither have they respect for any particular beast, bird, or fish'.The question of Aboriginal belief engaged the minds of those eighteenth-century Britons who were eager for details on the new colony.Captain Watkin Tench (c.1759-1833), whose lively Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson was published in 1793, was frequently asked on his return: "'Have these people any religion: any knowledge of, or believe [sic] in a deity?-any conception of the immortality of the soul?"' (1793:183-4).In complete opposition to Collins, Tench (1793:186) responded with a close description of Aboriginal belief

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