UNTIL a few years ago it was popularly believed that the negro nations of West Africa were in the unique position of never having produced anything worth recording. They were supposed to have no history, no traditions, and no folklore, and even their religion was said to be something infinitely lower than was found anywhere else, a worship of sticks, stones, or shells, picked up at haphazard, and deified without rhyme or reason. This groveling religion, which was alleged to be significant of the degraded condition in which the West African negro was believed to be, was called fetichism, a word which, while really a corruption of the Portuguese feitico, "amulet" or "charm," was supposed to be a negro word; and several treatises were written to show that, as it was impossible to conceive a lower form of religion, fetichism might therefore be assumed to be the beginning of all religion."