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Totemism, by J.G. Frazer
9 1924 029 870 197
TOTEMISM
A 11 rights reserved.
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TOTEMISM
J. G. FRAZER, M.A.
FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, AND OF THE
MIDDLE TEMPLE, BARRISTER- AT-LAW.
EDINBURGH: ADAM & CHARLES BLACK.
MDCCCLXXXVIT.
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NOTE.
Shcce the late J. F. M'Lennan first pointed out the
importance of Totemism for the early history of society,
various writers have treated of the subject and added to
his materials, but no one, I believe, has tried to collect
and classify all the main facts, so far as they are at
present known. Accordingly, when the Editors of the
new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica did me the
honour of asking me to write the article Totemism, I had
to do the work of collection and classification for my-
self, with very little help from my predecessors. The
materials grew under my hand till it became clear that
only a selection of them could be given within the
limits of an Encyclopaedia article. I venture, however,
to put forth my full collection of facts bearing on savage
Totemism, in the hope that it may help to lighten the
labours of those who are working in the same field.
On the question of the traces of Totemism among the
civilised races of antiquity, I have collected a certain
amount of evidence, but it is still too fragmentary for
publication. I hope at a future time to examine the
evidence fully.
I regret that Mr Andrew Lang's Myth, Ritual, and
Religion did not reach me till after my little work was
passed for the press. A comprehensive work on Tattooing,
by Mr W. Joest, is just announced by Messrs Asher and
Co. of Berlin.
JAMES G. FBAZEE.
Uth October 1887.
Cornell University
Library
The original of this book is in
the Cornell University Library.
There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.
http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029870197
CONTENTS.
Totem defined, p.l; orthography of totem, 1 sq. ; totem distinguished
from fetich, 2 ; kinds of totems — elan totem, sex totem, indi-
vidual totem, 2 ; religious and social sides of totemism, 2 sq.
I. Clan Totems, 2-51 ; 57-82.
Religious side of Totemism. — Descent from the totem,
3-7 ; marks of respect for the totem, 7-11 ; split totems,
10 ; totem taboos, 11-13 ; cross totems, cross-split totems,
13 sq. ; totem animal kept in captivity, 14 ; dead totem
mourned and buried, 14 sq. ; totem not spoken of directly,
15 ; effects of acting disrespectfully to totem, 1 6-18 ;
Samoan mode of appeasing offended totem, 18 ; Australian
food taboos, 18 sq. ; diminished respect for totem, 19 sq. ;
totem respects the clansman, 20 ; totem tests of kinship,
20 sq. ; totem ordeals and oaths, 21 sq. ; totem cures,
22 sq. ; totem omens, 23 sq. ; putting pressure on totem,
24 ; inanimate totems, 24-26 ; assimilation of a man to
his totem by wearing skin, &c. of totem, 26 sq. ; by
dressing hair in imitation of totem, 27 ; by knocking out
or tiling teeth, 27 sq. ; by nose-sticks, 28 ; by tatooing,
28 sq. ; by painting, 30 ; totem carved or painted on
huts, canoes, grave-posts, &c, 30-32 ; birth ceremonies,
32 sq. ; marriage ceremonies, 33-36 ; death ceremonies,
36 sq. ; initiation ceremonies at puberty, 38-47 ; social
side of these ceremonies, 38-40 ; totem dances at initia-
tion, 39 sq. ; other animal dances, 40-42 ; religious side
of initiation ceremonies, 42-47 ; food prohibitions, 42-45 ;
admission to life of clan by blood-smearing, &c, 45 sq. ;
resurrection, 46 sq. ; new birth, 47 ; totem killed as
piacular sacrifice, 48 sq. ; religious associations of North
American Indians, 49 sq.
Till CONTENTS.
II. Sex Totems, 51-53.
III., Individual Totems, 53-56.
Social side of Totemism. — Blood feud, 57 sq. ; exogamy
and endogamy, 58-69 ; phratries in America, 60-64 ;
origin of phratries and of split totems, 62-64 ; fusion of
clans, 64 ; phratries in Australia, 64-67 ; equivalence of
tribal subdivisions throughout Australia, 67-69 ; Aus-
tralian traditions as to origin of tribal subdivisions, 69 ;
rules of descent, 69-79 ; female and male descent iu
Australia, America, Africa, and India, 69-72 ; indirect
female and male descent in Australian subphratries, 72-
74 ; sons take totem from father, daughters from mother,
74 sq. ; transition from female to male descent, transference
of children, or of wife and children, to husband's clan,
76-79 ; cannibalism, 79-81 ; arrangement of totem clans
in camp, village, and graveyard, 81 sq.
IV. SUBPHBATKIC AND PlIEATRIC TOTEMS, 82-84.
V. SUBTOTEMS, 85-87.
Subtotems, clan totems, subphratric and phratric totems,
how related to each other, 87 ; transformation of totems
into anthropomorphic gods with animal attributes, 87-90 ;
transformation of totem clans into local clans, 90 sq.
Geographical diffusion of totemism, 91-95 ; origin of totemism,
95 ; influence of totemism on animals and plants, 95 sq. ;
literature of totemism, 96.
ADDENDUM.
47. The pretence of killing a youth at puberty in order that
he may be born anew from his totem (the wolf), is probably
the meaning of a ceremony described in Adventures and
Sufferings of John M. Jewitt (Edin., 1824), p. 135 sq.; of.
37, 47. On initiation as a new birth, see also A. Bastian,
Zut naturwissenschaftlichen Behandlungsweise der Psychologie,
p. 128 sq.
TOTEMISM.
A totem is a class of material objects which a savage re- ■
gards with superstitious respect, believing that there exists '
between him and every member of the class an intimate
and altogether special relation. The name is derived j
from an Ojibway (Chippeway) word totem, the correct
spelling of which is somewhat uncertain. It was first
introduced into literature, so far as appears, by J. Long,
an Indian interpreter of last century, who spelt it totam. 1
The form toodaim is given by the Eev. Peter Jones, him-
self an Ojibway; 2 dodaim by Warren 3 and (as an alterna-
tive pronunciation to totem) by Morgan; 4 and ododam by
Francis Assikinack, an Ottawa Indian. 6 According to the
abbe Thavenet 6 the word is properly ote, in the sense of
"family or tribe,'' possessive otem, and with the personal
pronoun nind otem "my tribe,'' kit otem "thy tribe." In
1 Voyages and Travels of an Indian Interpreter, p. 86, London,
1791.
2 History of the Ojebway Indians, London, 1861, p. 138.
3 "History of the Ojibways," in Collections of the Minnesota
Historical Society, vol. v. (St Paul, Minn., 1885) p. 34.
4 Ancient Society, p. 165.
6 See Academy, 27th Sept. 1884, p. 203.
6 In J. A. Cuoq's Lexique de la. langue Algonquine (Montreal,
1886), p. 312. Thavenet admits that the Indians use ote in the sense
of " mark " (limited apparently to a family mark), hut argues that the
word must mean family or tribe.
2 TOTEMISM.
English the spelling totem (Keating, James, Schoolcraft, 1
<&c.) has become established by custom. (The connexion
between a man and his totem is mutually beneficent ; the
Uotem protects the man, and the man shows his respect
for the totem in various ways, by not killing it if it be
an animal, and not cutting or gathering it if it be a plant.
j As dis ting uished from a fetich, a totem is never an iso-
' lated individual, but always a class of objects, generally
a species of animals or of plants, more rarely a class of
inanimate natural objects, very rarely a class of artificial
objects. 1
Considered in relation to men, totems are of at least
three kinds : — (1) the clan totem, common to a whole clan,
and passing by inheritance from generation to generation ;
(2) the sex totem, common either to all the males, or to all
the females of a tribe, to the exclusion in either case of
' the other sex; (3) the individual totem, belonging to a
single individual and not passing to his descendants.
Other kinds of totems exist and will be noticed, but they
may perhaps be regarded as varieties of the clan totem.
The latter is by far the most important of all ; and where
we speak of totems or totemism without qualification, the
reference is always to the clan totem.
The Clan Totem. — The clan totem is reverenced by a
' body of men and women who call themselves by the name
of the totem, believe themselves to be of one blood, de-
scendants of a common ancestor, and are bound together
by common obligations to each other and by a common
1 Expedition to Itasca Lake, New York, 1834, p. 146, &c. Petitot
spells it todem in his Monographic des Deni-DindjiS, p. 40; but he
writes oUmisme in his Traditions Indiennes du Canada Nord-ouest,
p. 446.
TOTEMISM. 3
faith in the totem. Totemism is thus both a religious and
a social system. In its religious aspect it consists of the
relations of mutual respect and protection between a man
and his totem ; in its social aspect it consists of the rela-
tions of the clansmen to each other and to men of other
clans. In the later history of totemism these two sides,
the religious and the social, tend to part company ; the
social system sometimes survives the religious ; and, on
the other hand, religion sometimes bears traces of totemism
in countries where the social system based on totemism
has disappeared. How in the origin of totemism these
two sides were related to each other it is, in our ignorance
of that origin, impossible to say with certainty. But on
the whole the evidence points strongly to the conclusion
that the two sides were originally inseparable ; that, in
other words, the farther we go back, the more we should
find that the clansman regards himself and his totem as
beings of the same species, and the less he distinguishes
between conduct towards his totem and towards his fellow-
clansmen. For the sake of exposition, however, it is con-
venient to separate the two. We begin with the reli-
gious side.
Totemism as a Religion, or the Relation between a Man
and his Totem.- — -The members of a totem clan call them-
selves by the name of their totem, and commonly believe
themselves to be actually descended from it.
Thus the Turtle elan of the Iroquois are descended from a fat
turtle, which, burdened by the weight of its shell in walking, con-
trived by great exertions to throw it off, and thereafter gradually
developed into a man. 1 The Bear and "Wolf clans of the Iroquois
1 Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington,
1883, p. 77.
4 TOTEMISM.
are descended from bears and wolves respectively. 1 The Cray-
Fish elan of the Choetaws were originally eray fish and lived
underground, coming up occasionally through the mud to the
surface. /Once a party of Choetaws smoked them out, and, treat-
ing them kindly, taught them the Choctaw language, taught them
to walk on two legs, made them cut off their toe nails and pluck
the hair from their bodies, after which they adopted them into
the tribe. But the rest of their kindred, the cray fish, are still
living underground. 2 ^ The Carp clan of the Outaouaks are de-
scended from the eggs of a carp which had been deposited by
the fish on the banks of a stream and warmed by the sun. 3 The
Ojibways are descended from a dog. 4 The Crane clan of the
Ojibways are descended from a pair of cranes, which after long
wanderings settled on the rapids at the outlet of Lake Superior,
where they were transformed by the great spirit into a man and
woman. 5 The Black Shoulder clan (a Buffalo clan) of the Omahas
were originally buffaloes and dwelt under the surface of the water. 6
The Osages are descended from a male snail and a female beaver.
The snail burst his shell, developed arms, feet, and legs, and became
a fine tall man; afterwards he married the beaver maid. 7 The
clans of the Iowas are descended from the animals from which
they take their names, namely, eagle, pigeon, wolf, bear, elk,
beaver, buffalo, and snake. 8 The Moquis say that long ago the
Great Mother brought from the west nine clans in the form of
deer, sand, water, bears, hares, tobacco-plants, and reed-grass.
She planted them on the spots where their villages now stand and
transformed them into men, who built the present pueblos, and from
whom the present clans are descended. 9 The Californian Indians,
1 Timothy Dwight, Travels in New-England and New-York
(London,, 1823), iv. p. 184.
2 Catlin, North American Indians, ii. p. 128.
3 Lettres fidifiantes et Curieuses, Paris, 1781, vi. p. 171.
i A. Mackenzie, Voyages through the Continent of North America,
p. cxviii; Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, i. 118. So
with the Kaniagmuts, Dall, Alaska and its Resources, p. 404 sq.
6 Morgan, Anc. Soc., p. 180.
6 Third Ann. Rep. of Bur. of Ethnol., Washington, 1884, pp.
229, 231. Another Buffalo clan among the Omahas has a similar
legend (ib., p. 233).
7 Schoolcraft, The American Indians, p. 95 sq. ; Lewis and Clarke,
Travels to the Source of the Missouri River, 8vo, London, 1815, i.
p. 12. 8 Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, iii. 268 sq.
9 Schoolcraft, Ind. Tri., iv. 86. With the Great Mother Mr
TOTEMISM. 5
in whose mythology the coyote or prairie-wolf is a leading personage,
are descended from coyotes. At first they walked on all fours;
then they began to hare some members of the human body, one
finger, one toe, one eye, &c, then two fingers, two toes, &c, and
so on till they became perfect human beings. The loss of their
tails, which they still deplore, was produced by the habit of sitting
upright. 1 The Lenape or Delawares were descended from their
totem animals, the wolf, the turtle, and the turkey; but they
gave precedence to the Turtle clan, because it was descended, not
from a common turtle, but from the great original tortoise which
bears the world on its back and was the first of living beings. 2 The
Haidas of Queen Charlotte Islands believe that long ago the
raven, who is the chief figure in the mythology of the north-west
coast of America, took a cockle from the beach and married it; the
cockle gave birth to a female child whom the raven took to wife,
and from their union the Indians were produced. 3 The Kutchin
trace the origin of their clans to the time when all beasts, birds,
and fish were people ; the beasts were one clan, the birds another,
and the fish another. 1 The Arawaks in Guiana assert that their
clans are descended from the eponymous animal, bird, or plant. 5
Some of the aboriginal tribes of Peru (not the Inca race) were
descended from eagles, others from condors. 6 Some of the clans
Morgan compares the female deity worshipped by the Shawnees under
the title of "Our Grandmother" (Anc. Soc, p. 179»).
1 Schoolcraft, op. cit., iv. 224 sq., cf. v. 217 ; Boscana in A.
Robinson's Life in California, p. 298. Mr Stephen Powers, perhaps
the best living authority on the Californian Indians, finds no totems
among them (Tribes of California, p. 5). See, however, pp. 147,
199 of his work for some traces of totemism.
2 Brinton, The Lenape and their Legends, p. 39.
3 Geological Survey of Canada, Report of Progress for 1878-79, p.
149b sq. ; F. Poole, Queen Charlotte Islands, p. 136 ; Ausland, 6th
October 1884, p. 796. Among the neighbouring Thlinkets the raven
(Jeshl) is rather a creator than an ancestor. See Holmberg, " Ethno-
graphische Skizzen ueber die Voelker des russischen Amerika," in
Acta Soe. Sc. Fenniem, Helsingfors, iv. (1856) p. 292 sq. ; Baer and
Helmersen, Beitr. zur Kenntn. des russ. Reiches, i. p. 104. So with
the wolf in North-West America; it made men and women out of
two sticks (Baer and Helmersen, op. cit., i. 93). In Thlinket mytho-
logy the ancestor of the Wolf clan is said never to appear in wolf form
(Holmberg, op. cit., p. 293).
4 Dall, Alaska, p. 197.
5 Im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, p. 184.
6 Garcilasso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas, pt. i.
bk. i. chs. 9, 18.
6 TOTEMISM.
of western Australia are descended from duck?, swans, and other
water fowl. 1 The Geawe-gal tribe in New South "Wales believe
that each man is akin to his totem in an unexplained way. 2 The
Santals in Bengal, one of whose totems is the wild goose, trace
their origin to the eggs of a wild goose. 3 In Senegambia each
family or clan is descended from an animal (hippopotamus, croco-
dile, scorpion, &c.) with which it counts kindred. 4 The inhabitants
of Funafuti or Ellice Island in the South Pacific believe that the
place was first inhabited by the porcupine fish, whose offspring
became men and women. 5 The Kalaug, who have claims to be
considered the aborigines of Java, are descended from a. princess
and a chief who had been transformed into a dog. 6 Some of the
inhabitants of the islands Ambon, Uliase, Keisar (Makisar), and
Wetar, and the Aaru and Babar archipelagoes, are descended from
trees, pigs, eels, crocodiles, sharks, serpents, dogs, turtles, &c. 7
Somewhat different are the myths in which a human ancestress
is said to have given birth to an animal of the totem species.
Thus the Snake clan among the Moquis of Arizona are descended
from a woman who gave birth to snakes. 8 The Bakalai in western
equatorial Africa believe that their women once gave birth to the
totem animals ; one woman brought forth a calf, others a crocodile,
hippopotamus, monkey, boa, and wild pig. 9 In Samoa the prawn
or cray fish was the totem of one clan, because an infant of the
clan had been changed at birth into a number of prawns or cray-
fish. 10 In some myths the actual descent from the totem seems to
have been rationalized away. Thus the Bed Maize clan among the
Omahas say that the first man of the clan emerged from the water
with an ear of red maize in his hand. 11 A subclan of the Omahas
1 Sir George Grey, Vocabulary of the Dialects of South- Western
Australia, pp. 29, 61, 63, 66, 71.
2 Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 2S0.
3 Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, p. 209 ; Asiat. Quart.
Rev., July 1886, p. 76.
4 Revue d' Ethnographic, iii. p. 396, v. p. 81.
5 Turner, Samoa, p. 281.
6 Baffles, History of Java, ed. 1817, i. p. 328.
7 J. G. F. Biedel, De sluik- en hroesharige Rassen tusschen Selebes
en Papua (The Hague, 1886), pp. 32, 253, 334, 414, 432.
8 Bourke, SnaJce Dance of the Moquis of Arizona, p. 177.
9 Du Chaillu, Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa,
p. 308. 10 Turner, op. cit., p. 77.
11 B. James, Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains,
London, 1823, ii. p. 48 sq. ; Third Ann. Rep. of Bur. of Ethnol.
p. 231.
TOTEMISM. 7
say that the reason" why they do not eat buffalo tongues and heads
is that one of their chief men, while praying to the sun, once saw
the ghost of a buffalo, visible from the flank up, rising out of a
spring. 1 Two clans of western Australia, who are named after «.
small species of opossum and a little fish, think that they are so
called because they used to live chiefly on these creatures. 2 Some
families in the islands Leti, Moa, and Lakor reverence the shark,
and refuse to eat its flesh, because a shark once helped one of their
ancestors at sea. 3 The Ainos of Japan say that their first ancestor
was suckled by a bear, and that is why they are so hairy. 4
Believing himself to be descended from, and therefore
akin to, his totem, the savage naturally treats it with respect.
If it is an animal he will not, as a rule, kill nor eat it. In
the Mount Gambier tribe (South Australia) " a man does
not kill or use as food any of the animals of the same sub-
division with himself, excepting when hunger compels; and
then they express sorrow for having to eat their wingong
(friends) or tumanang (their flesh). When using the last
word they touch their breasts, to indicate the close relation-
ship, meaning almost a part of themselves. To illustrate :
—One day one of the blacks killed a crow. Three or four
days afterwards a Boortwa (crow) named Larry died.
He had been ailing for some days, but the killing of his
leingong hastened his death." 5 Here the identification of
the man with his totem is carried very far ; it is of the
same flesh with him, and to injure any one of the species
is physically to injure the man whose totem it is. Mr
Taplin was reproached by some of the Narrinyeri (South
Australia) for shooting a wild dog ; he had thereby hurt
their ngaitye (totem). 6 The tribes about the Gulf of Car-
1 Third Report, p. 231. 2 Grey, Vocabulary, 4, 95.
3 Riedel, op. cit, p. 376 sq.
* Reclus, Nouv. Geogr. Univ., vii. p. 755.
5 Stewart in Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 169.
6 Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 64.
8 TOTEMISM.
. pentaria greatly reverence their totems ; if any one were
to kill the totem animal in presence of the man whose
totem it was, the latter would say, " What for you kill
that fellow 1 that my father ! " or " That brother belonging
to me you have killed ; why did you do it 1 " x Again,
among some Australian tribes " each young lad is strictly
forbidden to eat of that animal or bird which belongs to
his respective class, for it is his brother." 2 Sir George
Grey says of the western Australian tribes that a man
will never kill an animal of his Icohong (totem) species if
he finds it asleep ; " indeed, he always kills it reluctantly,
and never without affording it a chance to escape. This
arises from the family belief that some one individual of
the species is their nearest friend, to kill whom would be
a great crime, and to be carefully avoided." 3 Amongst
the Indians of British Columbia a man will never kill his
totem animal ; if he sees another do it, he will hide his
face for shame, and afterwards'demand compensation for
the act. Whenever one' of these Indians exhibits,; his
totem badge (as by painting it on his forehead), all per-
sons of the same totem are bound to do honour to it by
casting property before it. 4 The Osages, who, as we have
seen, believe themselves descended from a female beaver,
abstained from hunting the beaver, " because in killing
that animal they killed a brother of the Osages." 5 The
Ojibways (Chippesvays) do not kill, hunt, or eat their totems.
An Ojibway who had unwittingly killed his totem (a bear)
1 Jour. Anthrop. Inst, xiii. p. 300. 2 lb., p. 303.
3 Grey, Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North- West
and Western Australia, ii. p. 228.
4 R. C. Mayne, British Columbia, p. 258.
Lewis and Clark, i. p. 12.
TOTEMISM. 9
described how, on his way home after the accident, he was
attacked by a large bear, who asked him why he had killed
his totem. The man explained, apologised, and was dis-
missed with a caution. 1 Being descended from a dog, the
Ojibways will not eat dog's flesh, and at one time ceased to
employ dogs to draw their sledges. 2 Some of the Indians
of Pennsylvania would not kill the rattlesnake, because
they said it was their grandfather, and gave them notice
of danger by its rattle. They also abstained from eating
rabbits and ground-hogs, because " they did not know but
that they might be related to them." 3 The Damares
in South Africa are [divided into totem clans, called
" eandas " ; and according to the clan to which they be-
long they refuse to partake, e.g., of an ox marked with
black, white, or red spots, or of a sheep without horns, or
of draught oxen. Some of them will not even touch
vessels in which such food has been cooked, and avoid
even the smoke of the fire which has been used to cook it. 4
The negroes of Senegambia do not eat their totems. 6
The Mundas (or Mundaris) and Oraons in Bengal, who are
divided into exogamous totem clans, will not kill or eat
the totem animals which give their names to the clans. 6
1 J. Long, op. cit., p. 87.
2 A. Mackenzie, loc. cit.; Bancroft, i. 118. The dog does not
appear in the list of Ojibway totems given by Morgan (A. S., p.
166) and P. Jones (Hist, of Ojehvay Indians, p. 138).
3 J. Heckewelder, "Account of the History, Manners, and Customs
of the Indian Nations who once inhabited Pennsylvania and the
neighbouring States," in Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc, Philadelphia,
1819, i. p. 245. This, combined with the mention of the ground-hog
in the myths of their origin, points, as Heckewelder observes, to a
ground-hog tribe or clan (ib., p. 244).
4 C. J. Anderson, Lake Ngami, p. 222 sa.
6 Revue d' Elhnographie, iii. p. 396.
6 Dalton in Trans, lithnolog. Soc., new series, vi. p. 36 ; Id.,
10 TOTEMISM.
A remarkable feature of some of these Oraon totems is,
that they are not whole animals, but parts of animals, as
the head of a tortoise, the stomach of a pig. In such cases
(which are not confined to Bengal) it is of course not
the whole animal, but only the special part which the
clansmen are forbidden to eat. Such totems may be
distinguished as split totems. The Jaganuathi Kumhar in
Bengal abstain from killing or injuring the totems of their
respective clans (namely tiger, snake, weasel, cow, frog,
sparrow, tortoise), and they bow to their totems when they
meet them. 1 The Badris, also in Bengal, may not eat of
their totem, the heron. 2 The inhabitants of Ambon
Uliase, Keisar (Makisar), Wetar, and the Aaru and Babar
archipelagoes may not ea,t the pigs, crocodiles, sharks,
serpents, dogs, turtles, eels, &c, from which they are
respectively descended. 3
When the totem is a plant the rules are such as these.
■ A native of western Australia, whose totem is a vegetable,
" may not gather it under certain circumstances and at a
particular period of the year." 4 The Oraon clan, whose
totem is the leaf of the Ficus Indicus, will not eat from
the leaves of that tree (the leaves are used as plates). 5
Another Oraon clan, whose totem is the Kujrar tree, will
not eat the oil of that tree, nor sit in its shade. 6 The Bed
Ethnol. of Bengal, pp. 189, 254; As. Quart. Rev., July 1886, p. 76.
Among the Muncla totems are the eel and tortoise ; among the Oraons
the hawk, crow, heron, eel, kerketar bird, tiger, monkey, and the
leaves of the Ficus Indicus. 1 As. Quart. Rev., July 1S86, p. 79.
2 Dalton, Ethnol. of Bengal, p. 327.
3 Riedel, op. tit., pp. 61, 253, 341, 414, 432.
4 Grey, Journals, ji. 228 sq.
5 Dalton, Ethn. of Bengal, p. 254; As. Quart. Rev., July 1886, p. 76.
6 Dalton, op. cit., 254; Id., in Trans. Ethnol. Soc., vi. p. 36; As.
Quart. Rev., loo. cit.
TOTEMIRM. 11
Maize clan of the Omahas will not eab red maize. 1 Those
of the people of Ambon and Uliase who are descended
from trees may not use these trees for firewood. 2
The rules not to kill or eat the totem are not the only-
taboos ; the clansmen are often forbidden to touch the
totem or any part of it, and sometimes they may not even
look at it.
Amongst the Omaha taboos are the following. (1) The Elk elan
neither eat the flesh nor touch any part of the male elk, and
they do not eat the male deer. 3 (2) A subelan of the Black
Shoulder (Buffalo) clan may not eat buffalo tongues nor touch a
buffalo head (split totem). 4 (3) The Hanga clan is divided into two
subclans, one of which may not eat buffalo sides, geese, swans, nor
cranes, but they may eat buffalo tongues ; the other may not eat
buffalo tongues but may eat buffalo sides (split totems). 5 (4)
Another subelan may not touch the hide of a black bear nor eat its
flesh. 6 (5) The Eagle subelan, curiously enough, may not touch a
buffalo head. 7 (6) A Turtle subelan may not eat a turtle, but
they may touch or carry one. 8 (7) Another clan may not touch
verdigris. 9 (8) The Buffalo-Tail clan may not eat a calf while it is
red, but they may do so when it turns black ; they may not touch
a buffalo head ; they may not eat the meat on the lowest rib,
because the head of the calf before birth touches the mother near
that rib. 10 (9) The Deer-Head clan may not touch the skin of any
animal of the deer family, nor wear moccasins of deer skin, nor
use the fat of the deer for hair-oil ; but they may eat the flesh
of deer. 11 (10) A subelan of the Deer-Head clan had a special taboo,
1 E. James, Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains,
ii. p. 48 ; Third Rep. Bur. Ethnol., p. 231.
2 Riedel, op. cit., p. 61.
8 James, op. cit., ii. 47; Third Rep., 225.
4 Third Rep., 231. . 5 Third Rep., 235. 6 lb., 237.
7 lb., 239. There seems to be a cross connexion between the
Eagles and the Buffaloes among the Omahas; for a. subelan of the
Buffalo clan (the Black Shoulder clan) had a series of eagle birth-
names in addition to the buffalo birth-names common to the whole
clan (ib., 231 sq. ).
8 lb., 240. James (op. cit, ii. 49) says they " do not touch turtles
or tortoises. " 9 James, loc. cit.; Third Rep. , 241.
10 James, loc. cit. ; Third Rep. ,244.
11 James, loc. cit.; Third Rep., 245.
12 TOTEMISM.
being forbidden to touch verdigris, charcoal, and the skin of a
wild cat. According to others, the whole Deer-Head clan was
forbidden to touch charcoal. 1 (11) Another clan does not eat a
buffalo calf. 2 (12) Another ,cran does not touch worms, snakes,
toads, frogs, nor any other kind of reptiles ; hence they are some-
times called Reptile People. 3
Of the totem clans in Bengal it is said that they "are prohibited
from killing, eating, cutting, burning, carrying, using, &c," the
totem. 4 The Keriahs in India not only do not eat the sheep, hut
will not even use a woollen rug. 5 Similarly in ancient Egypt (a nest
of totems) the shepp was reverenced and eaten by no one except the
people of Wolf town (Lycopolis), and woollen garments were not
allowed to be carried into temples. 6 Some of the Bengal totem
taboos are peculiar. The Tirki clan of the Oraons, whose totem is
young iniee, will not look at animals whose eyes are not yet open,
and their own offspring are never shown till they are wide awake. 7
Another Oraon clan objects to water in which an elephant has
bathed. 8 A Mahili clan will not allow their daughters to enter
their houses after marriage ; a, Kurmi clan will not wear shell
ornaments ; another will not wear silk ; another give children their
first rice naked. 9
The Bechuanas in South Africa, who have a. well-developed
totem system, may not eat nor clothe themselves in the skin of
the totem animal. 10 They even avoid, at least in some cases, to
look at the totem. Thus to a man of the Bakuena (Bakwain) or
Crocodile clan, it is "hateful and unlucky" to meet or gaze on a
1 Third Sep., 245 sq. Verdigris was thought to symbolize the
blue sky. 2 Third Rep., 248.
3 James, ii. 50 ; Third Rep., 248.
4 As. Quart. Rev., July 1886, p. 75.
6 V. Ball, Jungle Life in India, p. 89.
6 Herod., ii. 42, 81 ; Plut., Is. et Os., §§ 4, 72. Again the sheep
was worshipped in Samos (Aelian, N. A., xii. 40; Clem. Alex.,
Protrept. , 39) ; and Pythagoras, a native of Samos, forbade his
followers to wear or be buried in woollen garments (Herod., ii. 81 ;
Apuleius, De Magia, 56).
7 Dalton in Tr. Ethnol. Soc., vi. 36. For the totem, Id., Ethnol.
of Bengal, p. 254; As. Quart. Rev., 76. The reason of the taboo
is perhaps a fear of contracting blindness. Some North American
Indians will not allow their children to touch the mole, believing that
its blindness is infectious (J. Adair, History of the American Indians,
p. 133). 8 Tr. Ethnol. Soc, vi. 36.
9 As. Quart. Rev., July 1886, p. 77.
10 Cusalis, The Basutos, p. 211.
TOTEMISM. 13
crocodile ; the sight is thought to cause inflammation of the eyes.
So when a Crocodile clansman happens to go near a crocodile he
spits on the ground as a preventive charm, and says, "There is
sin." Yet they call the crocodile their father, celebrate it in their
festivals, swear by it, and make an incision resembling the mouth
of a crocodile in the ears of their cattle as a mark to distinguish
them from others. 1 The puti (a kind of antelope) is the totem of
the Bamangwats, another Bechuana clan ; and to look on it was a
great calamity to the hunter or to women going to the gardens. 2
The common goat is the sacred animal (totem ?) of the Madenassana
Bushmen ; yet " to look upon it would be to render the man for
the time impure, as well as to cause him undefined uneasiness. " 3
A Samoan clan had for its totem the butterfly. The insect was
supposed to have three mouths ; hence the Butterfly men were
forbidden ' ' to drink from a cocoa-nut shell water-bottle which had
all the eyes or openings perforated. Only one or at the most
two apertures for drinking were allowed. A third would be a
mockery, and, bring down the wrath of his butterflyship. " 4
Cross Totems. — Another Samoan clan had for its totem the ends of
leaves and of other things. These ends were considered sacred, and
not to be handled or used in any way. It is said to have been no
small trouble to the clansmen in daily life to cut off the ends of all
the taro, bread-fruit, and cocoa-nut leaves required for cooking.
Ends of yams, bananas, fish, &c, were also carefully laid aside
and regarded as being as unfit for food as if they had been poison. 5
This is an example of what may be called a cross totem, i.e.., atotem
which is neither a whole animal or plant, nor a part of one parti-
cular species of animal or plant, but is a particular part of all (or
of a number of species of) animals or plants. Other examples of
cross totems are the ear of any animal (totem of a Mahili clan in
Bengal) ; 6 the eyes of fish (totem of a Samoan clan) ; 7 bone (totem
of the Sauks and Foxes in North America) : 8 and blood (totem of
the Blackfeet Indians). 9 More exactly, such totems should be
1 Livingstone, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa,
p. 255 ; John Mackenzie, Ten Years North of the Orange River, p.
135m; Casalis, The Basutos, p. 211.
2 J. Mackenzie, op. cit., 391 sq. ; cf. Jour. Anthrop. Inst, xvi.
p. 84. 3 J. Mackenzie, op. cit.. 135.
4 Turner, Samoa, p. 76. 5 lb., 70.
6 As. Quart. Rev., July 1886, p. 77.
7 Turner, op. cit, p. 74. 8 Morgan, A. S., p. 170.
9 lb., p. 171.
14 TOTEMISM.
called cross-split totems ; while the name cross totem should be
reserved for a totem which, overstepping the limits of a single
natural species, includes under itself several species. Examples
of such cross totems are the small bird totem of the Omahas,
the reptile totem of the Omahas, 1 and the big tree totem of the
Sauks and Foxes. 2
Sometimes the totem animal is fed or even kept alive in captivity.
A Samoan clan whose totem was the eel used to present the
first fruits of the taro plantations to the eels; 3 another Samoan
clan fed the cray-fish because it was their totem. 4 The Delawares
sacrificed to hares ; to Indian corn they offered bear's flesh, but to
deer and bears Indian corn ; to fishes they offered small pieces of
bread in the shape of fishes. 5 Amongst the Narrinyeri in South
Australia men of the Snake clan sometimes catch snakes, pull out
their teeth or sew up their mouths, and keep them as pets. 6 In a
Pigeon clan of Samoa a pigeon was carefully kept and fed. 7
Amongst the Kalang in Java, whose totem is the red dog, each
family as a rule keeps one of these animals, which they will on no
account allow to be struck or ill-used by any one. 8 Eagles are
kept in cages and fed in some of the Moqui villages, and the eagle
is a Moqui totem. 9 The Ainos in Japan keep eagles, crows, owls,
and bears in cages, and show a superstitious reverence for them ;
the young bear cubs are suckled by the women. 10
The dead totem is mourned for and buried like a dead elnnsman.
In Samoa, if » man of the Owl totem found a dead owl by the
road side, he would sit down and weep over it and beat his forehead
with stones till the blood flowed. The bird would then be wrapped
up and buried with as much ceremony as if it had been a human
being. ' ' This, however, was not the death of the god. He was
1 Third Rep., 238, 248. 2 Morgan, A, S., 170.
3 Turner, op. cit., p. 71. 4 lb., p. 77.
5 Loskiel, History of the Mission of the United Brethren in North
America, i. p. 40; De Sohweiuitz, Life of Zeisberger, p. 95 sq.
6 Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 63.
7 Turner, op. cit., p. 64.
8 Raffles, Hist, of Java, i. p. 328, ed. 1817.
9 Bourke, Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona, pp. 252, 336.
10 /. A. I., ii. 252, 254; Id., iii. 239; Rein, Japan, i. 446 sq.\
Siebold, Ethnol. Stud, ueber die Ainos, p. 26 ; Scheube, Der Baeren-
cultus und die Baerenfest der Ainos, p. 44 sq. Young bears are
similarly brought up (though not suckled) by the Giljaks, a people
on the lower Amoor, who are perhaps akin to the Ainos (Scheube,
Die Ainos, p. 17; Revue d ' Ethnographie, ii. p. 307 sq.).
TOTEMISM. 15
supposed to be yet alive, and incarnate in'all the owls in existence. " *
The generalization here implied is characteristic of totemism ; it is
not merely an individual hut the species that is reverenced. The
Wanika in eastern Africa look on the hysena as one of their
ancestors, and the death of a hysena is mourned by the whole
people ; the mourning for a chief is said to be as nothing compared
to the mourning for a hysena. 2 A tribe of southern Arabia used to
bury a dead gazelle wherever they found one, and the whole tribe
mourned for it seven days. 3 The lobster was generally considered
sacred by the Greeks, and not eaten; if the people of Seriphos (an
island in the .ffigean) caught a lobster in their nets they put it
back into the sea ; if they found a dead one, they buried it and
mourned over it as over one of themselves. 4 At Athens any man
who killed a wolf had to bury it by subscription. 5 A Californian
tribe which reverenced the buzzard held an annual festival at which
the chief ceremony was the killing of a buzzard without losing a
drop of its blood. It was then skinned, the feathers were preserved
to make a sacred dress for the medicine-man, and the body was
buried in holy ground amid the lamentations of the old women,
who mourned as for the loss of a relative or friend. 6
As some totem clans avoid looking at their totem, so others are
careful not to speak of it by its proper name, but use descrip-
tive epithets instead. The three totems of the Delawares — the
wolf, turtle, and turkey — were referred to respectively as "round
foot," "crawler," and "not chewing," the last referring to the
bird's habit of swallowing its food; and the clans called themselves,
not Wolves, Turtles, and Turkeys, but "Round Feet," " Crawlers,"
and "Those who do not chew." 7 The Bear clan of the Ottawas
called themselves not Bears but Big Feet. 8 The object of these
1 Turner, op. cit., p. 21, cf. 26, 60 sq.
2 Charles New, Life, Wanderings, and Lahowrs in Eastern Africa,
p. 122.
3 Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Marly Arabia, p. 195.
4 Aelian, JY. A ., xiii. 26. The solemn burial of a sardine by a river-
side is a ceremony observed in Spain on Ash Wednesday (Folk-Lore
Record, iv. 184 sq.).
5 ayeipti ainif ra wpbs tt)v Ta<p^v. Schol. on Apollonius Rhodius,
ii. 124.
6 Boscana, in Alfred Robinson's Life in California, p. 291 sq. ;
Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, iii. p. 168.
7 Brinton, The Lenape and their Legends, p. 39; Morgan, A. S.,
p. 171 ; Heckewelder, p. 247.
8 Acad., 27th Sept. 1884, p. 203, quoting from the Canadian
Journal (Toronto), No. 14, March 1853.
16 TOTEMISM.
circumlocutions is probably to give no offence to the worship-
ful animal, just as Swedish herd girls are careful not to call the
wolf and the bear by their proper names, fearing that if they heard
themselves so called the beasts would attack the cattle. Hence
the herd girls call the wolf "the silent one," "grey legs," "golden
tooth"; and the bear "the old man," "great father," "twelve
men's strength," "golden feet," &C. 1 Similarly the Kamtchatkans
never speak of the bear and wolf by their proper names, believing
that these animals understand human speech. 2 Bushmen think
it very unlucky to refer to the lion by name. 3
The penalties supposed to be incurred by acting disre-
spectfully to the totem are various. The Bakalai think
that if a man were to eat his totem the women of his
clan would miscarry and give birth to animals of the totem
kind, or die of an awful disease. 4 The Elk clan among
the Oinahas believe that if any clansman were to touch
any part of the male elk, or eat its flesh or the flesh of
the male deer, he would break out in boils and white spots
in different parts of the body. 5 The Red Maize subclan
of the Omahas believe that, if they were to eat of the red
maize, they would have running sores all round their
mouth. 6 And in general the Omahas believe that to eat
of the totem, even in ignorance, would cause sickness, not
only to the eater, but also to his wife and children. 7
White hair is regarded by them as a token that the person
has broken a totem taboo, e.g., that a man of the Reptile
clan has touched or smelt a snake. 8 The inhabitants of
Wetar think that leprosy and madness are the result of
1 L. Lloyd, Peasant Life in Sweden, p. 251.
2 Steller, Beschr. von dem Lande Kamtschatka, p. 276.
3 J. Mackenzie, Ten Tears North of the Orange River, p. 151.
4 Du Chaillu, Squat. Afr., p. 309.
6 Third Rep., 225. 6 lb., 231.
7 James, Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, ii. p. 50.
8 Third Rep., 275.
TOTEMISM. 17
eating the totem. 1 The worshippers of the Syrian goddess,
whose creed was saturated with totemism, believed that if
they ate a sprat or an anchovy their whole bodies would
break out in ulcers, their legs would waste away, and their
liver melt, or that their belly and legs would swell up. 2
The Egyptians, one of whose totems seems to have been
the pig, thought that if a man drank pig's milk his body
would break out in a scab. 3 The Bosch negroes of Guiana
think that if they ate the capidi (an animal like a pig) it
would give them leprosy. 4 The Singhie tribe of Dyaks,
whose totem seems to be the deer (they will not eat its
flesh nor allow it to be carried into their houses or cooked
at their fires; the grown men will not even touch it), believe
that if any man were to eat deer's flesh he would go mad ;
a man who ran about the forest naked, imitating the noises
and habits of a deer, was thought to have eaten venison. 5
The Samoans thought it death to injure or eat their
totems. The totem was supposed to take up his abode in
the sinner's body, and there to gender the very thing
which he had eaten till it caused his death. 6
Thus if a Turtle man ate of a turtle he grew very ill, and the
voice of the turtle was heard in his inside saying, " He ate me ;
I am killing him." 7 If a Prickly Sea-Urchin man consumed one of
these shell-fish, a prickly sea-urchin grew in his body and killed
him. 8 Pig's heart and octopus were equally fatal to the eater
who had these for his totem. 9 If a Mullet man ate a mullet he
squinted. 10 If a Cockle man picked up a cockle and carried it away
from the shore, it appeared on some part of his person ; if he actually
1 Riedel, op. tit., p. 452.
2 Plutarch, Be Superst., 10; Selden, De dis Syris, p. 269 sq.,
Leipsic, 1668. 3 Plutarch, Isis et Os., 8.
4 J. Crevaux, Voyages dans tAmirique du Sud, p. 59.
5 Low, Sarawak, p. 265 sq.. 306. 6 Turner, Samoa, p. 17 sq.
7 lb., p. 50. ' 8 lb., 51.
9 lb., 72. i« lb., 61, 75.
18 TOTEMISM.
ate it, it grew on his nose. 1 If a man whose totem was the ends of
banana leaves used one of them as a cap, baldness was the result. 2
If a Butterfly man caught a butterfly, it struck him dead. 3 The
Wild Pigeon clan might not use as plates the reddish-seared
breadfruit leaves " under a penalty of being seized with rheumatic
swellings, or an eruption all over the body called tangosusu, and
resembling chicken-pox." 4 If a Domestic Fowl man ate of that
bird, delirium and death were the consequence. 6
In such cases, however, theSamoans had a mode of appeasing the
angry totem. The offender himself or one of his clan was wrapped
in leaves and laid in an unheated oven, as if he were about to
be baked. Thus if amongst the Cuttle-Fish clan a visitor had
caught <i cuttle-fish and cooked it, or if a Cuttle-Fish man had
been present at the eating of a cuttle-fish, the Cuttle-Fish clan
met and chose a man or woman who went through the pretence of
being baked. Otherwise a cuttle-fish would grow in the stomach
of some of the clan and be their death. 6 So with the stinging
ray fish and the mullet. But if a member of the clan of which
these two fish were the joint totem tasted either of them, then, in
addition to the baking, he had to drink a cup of rancid oil dregs,
probably as a purgative. 7 This pretence of cooking a clansman
seems to have been especially obligatory when the totem had been
cooked in the oven. To have afterwards used the oven without
going through this form of expiation would have been fatal to the
family. 8
In Australia, also, the punishment for eating the totem
appears to have been sickness or death. 9 But it is not
merely the totem which is tabooed to the Australians ;
they have, besides, a very elaborate code of food prohibi-
tions, which vary chiefly with age, being on the whole
strictest and most extensive at puberty, and gradually
relaxing with advancing years. Thus young men are
forbidden to eat the emu ; if they ate it, it is thought
1 lb., 40. 2 lb., 76.
8 lb., 76. 4 lb., 70.
5 lb., 37. 6 lb., 31 sq.
7 lb., 33, cf. 72. 8 lb., 59, cf. 53, 69 sq., 72.
9 /. A. I., xiii. p. 192.
TOTEMISM. 19
that they would be afflicted with sores all over their
bodies. 1 The restrictions on women till they are past the
age of child-bearing seem to be more numerous than those
on men. Children are not restricted at all, nor are old
men and old women. 2 These restrictions are removed by
an old man smearing the person's face with the fat of the
forbidden animal. 8
In some tribes the respect for the totem has lessened or dis-
appeared. Thus the Narrinyeri in South Australia do not kill
their totem unless it is an animal which is good for food, when
they have no objection to eating it. 4 Mr Eyre never observed
any reluctance on the part of the natives of South Australia to
kill their totems. 5 Some natives of New South Wales, though
they will not themselves kill their totem, have no objection to
any one else killing it and they will then eat it. 6 The Dieri in
South Australia pay no particular respect to their totems, and
they eat them, 7 A Samoan of the Turtle clan, though he would
not himself eat a turtle, would help a neighbour to cut up and
cook one ; but in doing so he kept a bandage over his mouth
lest an embryo turtle should slip down his throat, grow up, and
kill him. 8
A Bechuana will kill his totem if it be a hurtful animal,
e.g., a lion, but not without apologising to the animal ; and
the slayer must go through a form of purification for the
sacrilege. 9 Similarly in North America, if an Outaouak of the
Bear clan killed a bear, he made the beast a feast of its own flesh
and harangued it, apologising for the necessity he was under of
killing it, alleging that his children were hungry, &e. 10 Some but
not all of the Moqui clans abstain from eating their totems. 11 The
1 T. L. Mitchell, Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern
Australia, ii. p. 341.
2 See especially Eyre, Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into
Central Australia, ii. 293 sq. ; but see below, p. 44.
3 /. A. I., xiii. 456, xiv. 316.
4 Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 63.
6 Eyre, Jour., ii. 328. 6 J- A. I., xiv. 350.
7 Mr Samuel Gason of Beltana, South Australia, in a letter to the
present writer. See /. A. I., xvii. 8 Turner, op. eit., p. 67 sq.
9 Casalis, The Basutos, p. 211. 10 Lett. Edif, vi. p. 171.
11 Morgan, A. 8., p. 180, cf. Id., 86.
20 TOTEMISM.
tribes about Alabama and Georgia had no respect for their totems,
and would kill them when they got the chance. 1 The Oniahas do
not worship their totems. 2
The relation between a man and his totem is one of
mutual help and protection. If the man respects and cares
for the totem, he expects that the totem will do the same
by him. In Senegambia the totems, when they are
dangerous animals, will not hurt their clansmen; e.g., men
of the Scorpion clan affirm that scorpions (of a very deadly
kind) will run over their bodies without biting them. 3 A
similar immunity from snakes was claimed by a Snake
clan (Ophiogenes) in Cyprus. 4 Another Snake clan (Ophio-
genes) in Asia Minor, believing that they were descended
from snakes, and that snakes were their kinsmen, sub-
mitted to a practical test the claims of any man amongst
them whnm they suspected of being no true clansman.
They made a snake bite him; if he survived, he was a
true clansman ; if he died, he was not. 5
Similar is the test of a medicine-man among the Moxos
of Peru. One of their totems is the tiger (jaguar); and a
candidate for the rank of medicine-man must prove his
kinship to the tiger by being bitten by that animal and
surviving the bite. 6 The Psylli, a Snake clan in Africa,
had a similar test of kinship ; they exposed their new-born
children to snakes, and if the snakes left them unharmed
1 Adair, Hist. Amer. Indians, p. 16.
2 Dorsey in American Antiquarian, v. 274.
3 Revue d' Bthnographie, iii. p. 396.
4 Pliny, N. H., xxviii. 30.
5 Varro in Priscian x. 32, vol. i. p. 524, ed. Kiel. For the snake
descent of the clan, see Strabo, xiii. 1, 14; Aelian, N. A., xii. 39.
6 "Relation de la Mission des Moxes dans le Perou," printed in Fr.
Coreal's Voyages aux Indes Occidentales, iii. p. 249, and in Lett, tldif.,
viii. p. 89.
TOTEMISM. 21
or only bit without killing them, the children were legiti-
mate ; otherwise they were bastards. 1 In Senegambia, at
the present day, a python is expected to visit every child
of the Python clan within eight days after birth; a
Mandingo of this clan has been known to say that if his
children were not so visited, he would kill them. 2
The Malagasy custom of placing a new-born child at the entrance
to a cattle-pen, and then driving the cattle over it to see whether
they would trample on it or not, was perhaps originally a kin-
ship test. 3 Another birth test of kinship with the sacred animal
(though ofa different kind) is thatused to discover the new Dhurma
Raja in Assam. He is supposed to be an incarnation of the deity ;
and when he dies the child that refuses its mother's milk and
prefers that of a cow is the new Dhurma Raja. 4 This points to a
cow totem.
Other totem clans regard a man who has been bitten by
the totem, even though he survives, as disowned by the"
totem, and therefore they expel him from the clan.
Among the Crocodile clan of the Bechuanas, if a man has
been bitten by a crocodile, or merely had water splashed
over him by a _ crocodile's tail, he is expelled the clan. 6
Some judicial ordeals may have originated in totem tests
of kinship. Thus, in Travancore, there was a judicial
ordeal by snake-bite ; the accused thrust his hand into a
mantle in which a cobra was wrapped up ; if it bit him,
he was guilty ; if not, he was innocent. 6 That we have
1 Varro, loc. ait.; Pliny, N. II, vii. § 14. Pliny has got it wrong
end on. He says that if the snakes did not leave the children they
were bastards. We may safely correct his statement by Varro's.
2 Revue d' Ethnographic, iii. p. 397.
3 Ellis, Hist, of Madagascar, i. p. 157. According to Mr Sibree,
this was only done with children born in the month Alakaosy {Folk-
Lore Rec, ii. 35 sq.).
4 Robinson, Descriptive Account of Assam, p. 342 sq.
5 Livingstone, South Africa, p. 255.
6 J. Canter Visscher, Letters from Malabar, p. 69. For an ordeal
22 TOTEMISM.
here a relic of totemism appears not only from the worship
of snakes in the district, but also from the fact that, if a
dead cobra was found by the people, it was burned with
the same ceremonies as the body of a man of high caste. 1
Oaths were originally ordeals, and some of them are of
totem origin. The Crocodile clan of the Bechuanas swear
by the crocodile ; the Santals (or Sonthals), a totem tribe
of Bengal, are said to adore the tiger (which probably
means that the tiger is one of their totems), and to swear
on a tiger's skin is their most solemn oath. 2
But it is not enough that the totem should merely
abstain from injuring, he must positively benefit the men
who put their faith in him. The Snake clan (Ophiogenes)
of Asia Minor believed that if they were bitten by an
adder they had only to put a snake to the wound and
their totem would suck out the poison and soothe away
the inflammation and the pain. 3 Hence Omaha medicine-
men, in caring the sick, imitate the action and voice of
their (individual) totem. 4 Members of the Serpent clan in
Senegambia profess to heal by their touch persons who have
been bitten by serpents. 6 A similar profession was made
in antiquity by Snake clans in Africa, Cyprus, and Italy. 6
by crocodiles in Madagascar (where the crocodile is much reverenced),
see Folk-Lore Rec, ii. p. 35, cf. p. 21.
1 Vischer, op. cit., p. 162. For ordeal by snake-bite, cf. Asiatick
Researches, i. p. 391.
2 Dalton, Eth. of Ben., p. 214. For the Sonthal (Santal) totems,
see As. Quart. Rev. , July 1886, p. 76. For other oaths bearing strong
impress of a totem origin (swearing on a bear's skin, a lizard's skin,
earth of an ant hill, &c. ), see Dalton, op. cit., pp. 38, 158, 294.
3 Strabo, xiii. 1, 14. In Madagascar a god of healing was also, like
Aesculapius, a god of serpents ; his attendants carried living serpents
in their hands (Folk- Lore Rec. , ii. 20).
4 James, Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, i. p. 247.
5 Revue a" Ethnographic, iii. p. 396.
6 Pliny, N. H., xxviii. 30.
V
TOTEMISM. 23
The Small Bird subolan of the Omahas, though ordinarily they
are forbidden to eat small birds, in sickness may eat prairie
chickens. 1 The Samoan clan whose totem was the ends of leaves
and of other things, though in ordinary life they might not use
them, were allowed and even required to fan a sick clansman with
the ends of cocoa-nut leaflets. 2 Members of the Sea-Weed clan in
Samoa, when they went to fight at sea, took with them some sea-
weed, which they threw into the sea to hinder the flight of the
enemy ; if the enemy tried to pick it up it sank, but rose again
when any of the Sea- Weed clan paddled up to it. 3 This resembles
the common incident in folk tales of magic obstacles thrown out
by fugitives to stay pursuit.
Again, the totem gives his clansmen important informa-
tion by means of omens. In the Coast Murring tribe of
New South Wales each man's totem warned him of com-
ing danger ; if his totem was a kangaroo, a kangaroo
would warn him against his foes. 4 The Kurnai in Victoria
reverence the crow as one of their ancestors, and think
that it watches over them and answers their questions by
cawing. 5
The Samoan totems gave omens to their clansmen.
Thus, if an owl flew before the Owl clan, as they
marched to war, it was a signal to go on ; but if it flew
across their path, or backwards, it was a sign to retreat. 6
Some kept a tame owl on purpose to give omens in war. 7
The appearance of the totem in or about the house was by
some clans regarded as an omen of death ; the totem had
1 Third Rep., 238. 3 Turner, Samoa, 70.
3 lb., p. 71. 4 /. A. L, xiii. 195»., xvi. 46.
* Id., xv. p. 415. 6 Turner, Samoa, 21, 24, 60.
7 lb., 25 sq. Other omens were drawn from the rainbow (ib., 21,
35), shooting star (21), species of fish (27), clouds (27), cuttle-fish
(29), herons (35), a creeper-bird (38), lizards (44, 47), a species of
bird (48), kingfishers (48, 54), dogs (49), bats (51), shark's teeth (55),
lightning (59 sq.), rail bird (61, 65), the bird called porphyris
Samoensis (64), eels (66), and centipedes (69).
24 TOTEMISM.
come to fetch his kinsman. This was the case with land-
crabs and eels. 1
When the coiiduct of the totem is not all that his"] clansmen
could desire, they have various ways of putting pressure on him.
In harvest time, when the birds eat the corn, the Small Bird clan
of the Omahas take some corn which they chew and spit over the
field. This is thought to keep the birds from the crops. 2 If
worms infest the corn the Reptile clan of the Omahas catch some of
them and pound them up with some grains of corn which have been
heated. They make a soup of the mixture and eat it, believing that
the corn will not be infested again, at least for that year. 3 During
a fog the men of the Turtle subclan of the Omahas used to draw
the figure of a turtle on the ground with its face to the south.
On the head, tail, middle of the back, and on each leg were
placed small pieces of a red breech-cloth with some tobacco. This
was thought to make the fog disappear. 4 Another Omaha clan,
who are described as Wind people, "flap their blankets to start a
breeze which will drive off the mosquitoes." 5
It is more difficult to realize the relation between a man
and his totem when that totem is an inanimate object.
But such totems are rare.
In Australia we find: thunder (Encounter Bay tribe, S.Australia)
(Xat. Tr. S. Aust, 186), rain (Dieii, S. Australia) (J. A. 1., xii.
33)t), the star a Aquilse or Fomalhaut (Mukjarawaint, W. Victoria)
(Id., xii. 33re, xiii. 193»), hot wind and sun (Wotjoballuk, N. W.
Victoria) (Id., xvi. 31jj ; Report of the Smithsonian Institution for
1 Turner, ib., 66, 72.
2 Third Report, p. 238 sq. The idea perhaps is that the birds
eat in the persons of their clansmen, and give tangible evidence that
they have eaten their fill. But cf. Riedel, op. cit., p. 327.
3 Third Rep., 248. With this custom compare a Syrian superstition
When caterpillars invaded a vineyard or field the virgins were gathered
and one of the caterpillars was taken and a girl made its mother
Then they bewailed and buried it. Thereafter they conducted the
"mother" to the place where the caterpillars were, eonsolin°- h er
in order that all the caterpillars might leave the garden (La°arde'
Rcliquim juris Eeelesiastiei Antiqussimie, p. 135). Cf. Zeitschrifl
fiir Ethnologie, xv. p. 93 ; The People of Turlxy, by a Consul's
daughter and wife, ii. p. 247.
1 Third Rep., 240. 6 lb., 241.
TOTEMISM. 25
1883, p. 818), honey. (Eamilaroi, N. S. Wales) (J. A. I., xii. 500),
and clear water (Kuin-Murbura, Queensland) (Id., xiii. 344). Flood-
water and lightning are names of what Messrs Fison and Howitt call
the two primary classes of the Kiabara tribe in Queensland (Id.,
xiii. 336). As we shall see, they probably are or were totems. In
America we find ice (Punka totem) (Morgan, A. S., 155), thunder
(Omaha, Kaw, "Winnebago, Potawattamie, Sauk and Foxes) (ib.,
155, 156, 157, 167, 170), earth (Kaw) (ib., 156), water (Minnitaree,
Miami, Moqui) (ib., 159, 168 ; Bourke, Snake Dance of the Moquis
of Arizona, 50, 117, 335), wind (Creek) (Morgan, op. cit., 161 ;
Adair, Hist. Amer. Indians, p. 15 ; Gatschet, Migration Legend of
the Creek Indians, i. p. 155), salt (Creek) (Morgan, loc. cit. ; Gatschet,
02). cit., i. 156), sun (Miami, Moqui) (Morgan, op. cit., 168 ; Bourke,
op. cit, 50, 117, 335 sq.), snow (Miami) (Morgan, loc. cit; cf. below,
p. 37), bone (Sauk and Foxes) (ib., 170), sea (Sauk and Foxes) (ib.,
170), sand (Moqui) (ib., 179; Bourke, op. cit, 335), and rain (Moqui)
(Morgan, op. cit, 179). In Africa sun and rain are Damara
totems (Anderson, Lake Ngami, p. 221). In India one of the
constellations is a Santal (Sonthal) totem (As. Quart. Rev., July
1886, p. 76); and the foam of the river is an Oraon totem and not
to be eaten by the clansmen (Dalton in Tr. Mhnol. Soc, N. S.,
vi. 36). In Samoa we have the rainbow, shooting star, cloud,
moon, and lightning (Turner, Samoa, 21, 27, 35, 53, 59, 67).
In a few cases colours are totems : thus red is an Omaha totem
(Morgan, A. S., p. 155), red paint and blue are Cherokee totems
(ib., 164), and vermilion is the name of a subdivision of the
Delawares (ib., 172; however, the nature of these subdivisions of
the three Delaware clans is not clear). This perhaps explains the
aversion which some tribes exhibit for certain colours. Thus red
was forbidden in one district of Mangaia (in the South Pacific)
because it was thought offensive to the gods (Gill, Myths and Song's
of the South Pacific, p. 29). Light yellow is a detestable colour to
a Hervey islander (ib., 227). The Yezidis abominate blue (Layard,
Nineveh, i. p. 300).
It is remarkable how small a part is played in totemism by the
heavenly bodies. In the lists of totems before us, the sun
occurs once in Australia, once in Africa, and several times in
America (besides Morgan and Bourke as above, cf. M'Lennan
in Fortn. Rev., October 1869, p. 413). The sun was the special
divinity of the chiefs of the Natchez, but that it was a totem is
not certain ; cf. Lafitau, Mceurs des Sauvages Ameriquains, i. 168 ;
Charlevoix, Hist de la Nouvelle France, vi. 177 sq.; Lett, fidif,
26 TOTEMISM.
vii. 9 sq. ; Chateaubriand, Voyage en Amerique, 227 sq., ed. 12mo,
Michel Levy ; C. C. Jones, Antiquities of the Southern Indians,
p. 23) ; but a star or constellation appears only twice, and the
moon appears, with a doubtful exception in America (S. Hearne,
Journey from Prince of Wales Fort in Hudson's Bay to the
Northern Ocean, p. 148 ; it may have been an individual totem),
only in Samoa.
With regard to artificial totems, we are told generally that
Bengal totems include' artificial objects (As. Quart. Rev., July
1886, p. 75), and net is given as a Emmi totem (ib., 77). In
America, tent is a totem of the Eaws (Morgan, A. S., 156) ; ball of
the Onondaga Iroquois (ib., 91) ;* good knife of the Mandans (ib.,
158); and knife, lodge, and bonnet of the Minnitarees (ib., 159).
Schoolcraft gives cord as a Huron (Wyandot) totem, but it is not
included in Morgan and Powell's lists of Huron totems (School-
craft, Ind. Tr., iv. 204; Morgan, op. cit., 153; First Rep. Bur.
Ethnol., p. 59).
In order, apparently, to put himself more fully under
the protection of the totem, the clansman is in the habit
of assimilating himself to the totem by dressing in the skin
or other part of the totem animal, arranging his hair and
mutilating his body so as to resemble the totem, and repre-
senting the totem on his body by cicatrices, tattooing, or
paint. The mental state thus revealed is illustrated by
the belief held by many North American Indians that they
have each an animal (bison, calf, tortoise, frog, bird, &c.)
in their bodies. 2
In going to battle the Minnitarees dress in wolf skins ; the skin
with the tail attached hangs down the back, the man's head is
inserted in a hole in the skin, and the wolfs head hangs down on
his breast. 3 Lewis and Clarke saw a Teton Indian wearing two or
1 But according to Mr Beauchanip (American Antiquarian, viii. p.
85) no such totem existed, and the mention of it is due to a misunder-
standing.
2 Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied, Reise in das innere Nord-Amerika,
ii. pp. 190, 270.
3 lb., ii. 224. The Minnitarees regard the wolf as especially strong
" medicine '' (ib.). This is the spirit, if not the letter, of totemism.
TOTESIISM. 27
three raven skins fixed to the back of the girdle, with the tails
sticking out behind ; on his head he wore a raven skin split into
two parts and tied so as to let the beak project from the forehead. 1
Amongst the Thlinkets on solemn occasions, such as dances,
memorial festivals, and burials, individuals often appear disguised
in the full form of their totem animals ; and, as a rule, each clans-
man carries at least an easily recognisable part of his totem with
him. 2 Condor clans in Peru, who believed themselves descended
from the condor, adorned themselves with the feathers of the
bird. 3
The Iowa clans have each a distinguishing mode of dressing the
hair, e.g., the Buffalo clan wear two locks of hair in imitation of
horns. These modes of dressing the hair, however, are confined
to male children, who, as soon as they are grown, shave off all
the hair except the scalp-lock, with a fringe of hair surrounding
it. 4 Amongst the Omahas, the smaller boys of the Black Shoulder
(Buffalo) clan wear two locks of hair in imitation of horns. 5 The
Hanga clan of the Omahas (also a Buffalo clan) wear a crest of
hair about two inches long, standing erect and extending from ear
to ear ; this is in imitation of the back of a buffalo. 6 The Small
Bird clan of the Omahas " leave a little hair in front, over the
forehead, for a bill, and some at the back of the head, for the bird's
tail, with much over each ear for the wings." 7 The Turtle sub-
clan of the Omahas ' ' cut off all the hair from a boy's head,
except six locks ; two are left on each side, one over the forehead,
and one hanging down the back in imitation of the legs, head, and
tail of a turtle." 8 Amongst the Manganja in eastern Africa
" one trains his locks till they take the admired form of the
buffalo's horns ; others prefer to let their hair hang in a thick coil
down their backs, like that animal's tail." 9
The practice of knocking out the upper front teeth at puberty,
which prevails in Australia and elsewhere, is, or was once, probably
1 Lewis and Clarke, Travels to the Source of the Missouri River, i.
p. 123, London, 1815.
2 Holmberg in Acta Soc. Scient. Fennicw, iv. 293 sq., 328 ; Petroff,
Report on the Population, Industries, and Resources of Alaska, p.
166.
3 J. G. Mailer, Gesch. d. americanischen Urreligionen, p. 327.
4 Schoolcraft, lnd. Tr., iii. 269.
5 Third Rep., 229.
6 lb., 235. 7 lb., 238. 8 lb., 240.
9 Livingstone, Zambesi, p. 114. But it does not appear whether
this people have totems or not.
28 TOTEMISM.
an imitation of the totem. The Batoka in Africa who adopt this
practice say that they do so in order to be like oxen, while those
who retain their teeth are like zebras. 1 The Manganja chip their
teeth to resemble those of the cat or crocodile. 2 It is remarkable
that among some Australian tribes who knock out one or two of the
upper front teeth of boys, the most prized ornaments of the women
are the two upper front teeth of the kangaroo or wallaby ; those
are tied together at the roots so as to form a V, and are worn in a
necklace or hung amongst the hair. 3 In other cases it is the boys'
teeth which the women wear round their necks. 4
The bone, reed, or stick which some Australiau tribes thrust
through their nose may be also an imitation of the totem. It is
not worn constantly, but is inserted when danger is apprehended ;
which perhaps means that the man then seeks most to assimilate
himself to his totem when he most needs the totem's protection. 5
Kurnai medicine-men could only communicate with the ghosts
when they had these bones in their noses. 6
The Haidas of Queen Charlotte Islands are universally tattooed,
the design being in all cases the totem, executed in a conventional
style. When several families of different totems live together in
the same large house, a Haida chief will have all their totems
tattooed on his person. 7 The Iroquois tattooed their totems on
their persons. 8 Mr E. James, a high authority on the North
1 Livingstone, South Africa, p. 532.
2 Id., Zambesi, p. 115. On the general custom of filing the teeth
among savages, see Zeitsclvrift filr Bthnologie, xiv. p. 213 sq.
3 Tr. Ethnol. Soc., new series, i. p. 287 sq. ; Jour, and Proc.
R. Soc. N. S. Wales, xvii. (1883) p. 26 ; cf. G. F. Angas, Savage
Life and Scenes in Austr. and New Zeal., i. pp. 92, 98; Eyre,
Jour., ii. p. 342.
4 Collins, A ccount cf the English Colony of N. S. Wales, London,
1798, p. 581.
5 T. L. Mitchell, Three Expeditions into the Interior of New South
Wales, ii. p. 339.
6 Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 253.
7 Geolog. Sun. of Canada, Rep. for 1878-79, pp. 108b, 135b ;
Smithsonian Contrib. to Enowl. , vol. xxi. No. 267, p. 3 sq. ; Nature,
20th January 1887, p. 285; Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of
Ethnology, Washington, 1886, p. 67 sq. How different the conven-
tional representation in tattooing may be from the true, we learn from
the Hindu tattoo marks (conventionally supposed to represent ducks,
geese, peacocks, &c. ) depicted by Major-General A. Cunningham in
his work, The Stupa of Bharut, plate lii.
8 E. de Schweinitz, Life and Times of David Zeisberger, p. 78.
TOTEMISM. 29
American Indians, denies that it was a universal— from which
we infer that it was a common — practice with them to have their
totems tattooed on their persons. 1 Mackenzie says that the Ojib-
ways (Chippeways) are tattooed on their cheeks or forehead "to
distinguish the tribe to which they belong." 2 The Assinibois
(Assiniboels) tattooed figures of serpents, birds, &c. (probably
their totems) on their persons. 3 Tribes in South America are
especially distinguished by their tattoo marks, but whether these
are totem marks is not said. 4 The same applies to the natives
of Yule Island, 5 Eskimos of Alaska, 6 and Manganjas in Africa. 7
In one of the Hervey Islands (South Pacific) the tattooing was an
imitation of the stripes on two different species of fish, probably
totems. 8 The Australians do not tattoo but raise cicatrices ; in
some tribes these cicatrices are arranged in patterns which serve
as the tribal badges, oonsistings of lines, dots, circles, semicircles,
&c. 9 According to one authority, these Australian tribal badges
are sometimes representations of the totem. 10 For the cases in
which the women alone tattoo, see the note below. 11
1 James hi Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John
Tanner, p. 315.
2 A. Mackenzie, Voyages through the Continent of North America,
p. cxx.
3 Lettr. Edif., vi. 32.
4 Martius, Zur Ethnographic America's zumal Brasiliens, p. 55.
5 D'Albertis, New Guinea, i. p. 419. -
6 Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, i. 48.
7 Livingstone, Last Journals, i. p. 110, cf. p. 125.
8 Gill, Myths and Songs of the S. Pacific, p. 95.
9 Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. p. xli. sq., 295, ii. 313 ;
Eyre, Journ., ii. 333, 335; Bidley, Kamilaroi, p. 140 ; Journ. and,
Proceed. JR. Soc. N. S. Wales, 1882, p. 201.
10 Mr Chatfield, in Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p.
66n. On tattooing in connexion with totemism, see Haberlandt in
Mittheil. der anthrop. Cesell. in Wien, xv. (1885) p. [53] sq.
11 Among most of the Galifornian tribes, the Ainos of Japan, the f
Chukchi in Siberia, and many of the aborigines of India, it is the women I
alone who are tattooed. See S. Powers, Tribes of California, p. 109 ;[
Siebold, Ethnol. Stud, ueber die Ainos, p. 15 ; Scheube, Die Ainos, p.
6 ; Nordenskiold, Voyage of the Vega, p. 296, popular edition ; Dalton,
Ethnol. of Bengal, pp. 114, 157, 161, 219, 251. (Among the Nagas
of Upper Assam the men tattoo. Dalton, op. oil., p. 39 sq. ) Old
pioneers in California are of opinion that the reason why the women
alone tattoo is that in case they are taken captive they may be recog-
nized by their own people when opportunity serves. This idea, Mr
Powers says, is borne out by the fact that " the California Indians are
30 TOTEMISM.
Again, the totem is sometimes painted on the person of the elans-
man. This, as we have seen (p. 8), is sometimes done by the
Indians of British Columbia. Among the Hurons (Wyandots)
each clan has a distinctive mode of painting the face, and, at least
in the ease of the chiefs at installation, this painting represents
the totem. 1 Among the Moquis the representatives of the clans at
foot-races, dances, &c. , have each a conventional representation of
his totem blazoned on breast or back. 2 A Pawnee, whose totem
was a buffalo head, is depicted by Catlin with a buffalo's head
clearly painted on his face and breast. 3
The clansman also affixes his totem mark as a signature
to treaties and other documents, 4 and paints or carves it
on his weapons, hut, canoe, &c.
Thus the natives of the upper Darling carve their totems on their
shields. 5 The Indians who accompanied Samuel Hearne on his
journey from Hudson's Bay to the Pacific painted their totems
(sun, moon, and diverse birds and beasts of prey) on their shields
before going into battle. 6 Some Indian tribes going to war carry
standards, consisting of representations of their totems drawn on
pieces of bark, which are elevated on poles. 7 Among the Thlinkets
shields, helmets, canoes, blankets, household furniture, and houses
are all marked with the totem, painted or carved. In single com-
bats between chosen champions of different Thlinket clans, each
rent into such infinitesimal divisions, any one of which may be
arrayed in deadly feud against another at any moment, that the slight
differences in their dialects would not suffice to distinguish the captive
squaws" (Powers, Tr. of Calif., p. 109). There may therefore be a
grain of truth in the explanation of tattooing given by the Khyen
women in Bengal ; they say that it was meant to conceal their beauty,
for which they were apt to be carried off by neighbouring tribes
{Asiatic Researches, xvi. p. 268 ; Dalton, op. cit., p. 114).
1 First Rep., pp. 62, 64.
2 Bourke, Snake Dance, p. 229.
3 Catlin, N. Amer. Ind., ii. plate 140.
4 Heckewelder, Indian Nations, p. 247.
6 Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. pp. xlii. 284.
6 S. Hearne, Journey to the Northern Ocean, p. 148 sq. These
however, may have been individual totems. Some of the Indians had
many such figures on their shields.
7 Chateaubriand, Voy. en Amer., pp. 194, 199, 224; Charlevoix,
Hist, de la Nouv. Fr. , v. p. 329.
TOTEMISM. 31
wears a helmet representing his totem. 1 In front of the houses of
the chiefs and leading men of the Haidas are erected posts carved
with the totems of the inmates. As the houses sometimes contain
several families of different totems, the post often exhibits a
number of totems, carved one above the other. 2 Or these carvings ^
one above the other represent the paternal totems in the female
line, which, descent being in the female line, necessarily change
from generation to generation. 3 The coast Indians of British
Columbia carve their totems on the beams which support the
roof's of their lodges, paint them over the entrance, and paint
or carve them on their paddles and canoes. * The Pawnees mark
their huts and even articles of apparel with their totems. 5 The
Delawares (Lenape) painted their totems on their houses. The
Turtle clan painted a whole turtle ; but the Turkey clan painted only
a foot of a turkey ; and the Wolf clan only one foot of a wolf, though
they sometimes added an outline of the whole animal. 6 In the
Ottawa villages the different clans had separate wards, at the gates
of which were posts bearing the figure of the clan totem or of parts of
it. 7 The Omaha clans paint their totems on their tents. 8 Amongst
the Iroquois the totem sign over each wigwam consisted, at least in
some cases, of the skin of the totem animal, as of a beaver, a deer,
a bear. 9 Sometimes the skin is stuffed and stuck on a pole before
the door. 10 Lastly, the totem is painted or carved on the clansman's
tomb or grave-post, the figure being sometimes reversed to denote 1 ^
death. It is always the Indian's totem name, not his personal
1 Holmberg in Acta Soe. So. Fennicm, iv. 294, 323 ; AurelKrause,
Vie Tlinkit-Indianer, p. 130 sq. ; Petroff, Report on Alaska, pp. 166,
170.
2 Smithsonian Contrib. to Knowl., xxi, No. 267, p. 3 sq. ; Geol.
Surv. of Canada, Rep. for 1878-79, p. 148b; Ausland, 6 October %
1884, p. 794; Id., 7 September 1885, p. 701. Totem-posts, 50 to
100 feet high, in front of nearly every Thlinket house (Petroff, Report
on Alaska, p. 165; Krause, I.e. ; Sheldon Jackson, Alaska, p. 78).
3 American Antiquarian, ii. p. 110; Sheldon Jackson, Alaska,
p. 81.
4 Mayne, Brit. Columb., p. 257 sq.
5 Magazine of American History, iv. p. 260.
6 Heckewelder, op. cit., p. 247; Brinton, The Lenape and their
Legends, p. 39 sq. , 68 sq.
7 Acad., 27th Sept. 1884, p. 203.
8 Third Rep., 229, 240, 248.
9 Second Rep., p. 78.
10 E. I. Dodge, Our Wild Indians (Hartford, Conn., 1882), p.
225.
32 TOTEMISM.
name, which is thus recorded. 1 Sometimes the stuffed skin of the
totem is hung over the grave, or is placed at the dead man's side. 2
The identification of a man with his totem appears
further to have been the object of various ceremonies
observed at birth, marriage, death, and other occasions.
Birth Ceremonies. — On the fifth day after birth a child
of the Deer-Head clan of the Omahas is painted with red
spots on its back, in imitation of a fawn, and red stripes
are painted on the child's arms and chest. All the Deer-
Head men present at the ceremony make red spots on their
chests. 3 When a South Slavonian woman has given birth
to a child, an old woman runs out of the house and calls
out, " A she-wolf has littered a he-wolf," and the child is
drawn through a wolfskin, as if to simulate actual birth
from a wolf. Further, a piece of the eye and heart of a
wolf are sewed into the child's shirt, or hung round its
neck ; and if several children of the family have died
"* before, it is called Wolf. The reason assigned for some of
these customs is, that the witches who devour children
will not attack a wolf. 4 In other words, the human child
disguised as a wolf to cheat its supernatural foes. /The
same desire for protection against supernatural danger
may be the motive of similar totemic customs, if not of
\totemism in general. The legend of the birth of Zamolxis
Schoolcraft, Ind. Tr., i. p. 356 sq., ii. 49, v. 73; A. Mackenzie,
Voyages, &c, pp. xcix, 316; J. Dunn, Hist, of the Oregon Territory,
p. 94; Mayne, Br. Columb., pp. 258, 271; A. Krause, Die Tlinkit-
Indianer, p. 230; American Antiquarian, ii. p. 112. It has "been
conjectured that the animal-shaped mounds in the Mississippi valley
(chiefly in the State of Wisconsin) are representations of totems
[American Antiquarian, iii. p. 7 sq.; vi. pp. 8, 326 sq.).
2 Dodge, op. cit., pp. 158, 225.
3 Third Rep., p. 245 sq.
4 Krauss, Sitte und Branch der Siidslaven, p. 541 sq.
TOTEMISM. 33
(it is said that he was so called because a bearskin was
thrown over him at birth ] ) points to a custom of wrap-
ping infants at birth in a bearskin, and this again perhaps
to a bear totem. The belief of the Getae that their
dead went to Zamolxis would thus be the totemic view
that the dead clansman is changed into his totem. When
a Hindu child's horoscope portends misfortune or crime,
he is born again from a cow, thus : being dressed in
scarlet and tied on a new sieve, he is passed between the
hind legs of a cow forward through the fore legs to the
mouth and again in the reverse direction, to simulate birth;
the ordinary birth ceremonies (aspersion, &c.) are then
gone through, and the father smells his son as a cow smells
her calf. 2 In India grown persons also may be born again
by passing through a golden cow in simulation of birth ;
this is done when, e.g., they have polluted themselves by
contact with unbelievers. 3
Marriage Ceremonies. — Among the Kalang of Java, v
whose totem is the red dog, bride and bridegroom before
marriage are rubbed with the ashes of a red dog's bones. 1
Among the Transylvanian gypsies, bride and bridegroom
are rubbed with a weasel skin. 5 The sacred goatskin
(aegis) which the priestess of Athene took to newly
1 Porphyry, Vit. Pyfhag., 14. On the etymology of Zamolxis and
the possible identity of — olxis with the Greek &pKTOs, Latin ursus,
"a bear," see V. Hehn, Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere, p. 450.
2 Jmur. Asiat. Soc. Beng., liii. (1884) pt. i. p. 101.
3 Asiatick Researches, vi. p. 535 sq. ; Liebrecht, Gervasiusvon Til-
bury, p. 171 ; Id., Zur Volkskunde, p. 397. For an Ojibway birth
ceremony, cf. P. Jones, Hist, of Ojebway Indians, p. 160, cf. p. 138.
4 Raffles, Hist, of Java, i. 328. On rubbing with ashes as a
religious ceremony, cf. Spencer, De legibus Hebrseorum ritualibus,
vol. ii. Diss. iii. Lib. iii. cap. 1.
6 Original- Mittheil. aus der ethnolog. Abtheil. der Kbnigl. Museen
m Berlin, i. p. 156.
C
34 TOTEMISM.
married women may have been used for this purpose. 1
At Eome bride and bridegroom sat down on the skin of
the sheep which had been sacrificed on the occasion. 2 An
Italian bride smeared the doorposts of her new home with
wolf's fat. 3 It is difficult to separate from totemism the
custom observed by totem clans in Bengal of marrying the
bride and bridegroom to trees before they are married to
each other. The bride touches with red lead (a common
marriage ceremony) a mahwa tree, clasps it in her arms,
and is tied to it. The bridegroom goes through a like
ceremony with a mango tree. 4
Traces of marriage to trees are preserved in Servia. The bride
is led to an apple-tree (apples often appear in South Slavonian
marriage customs) under which stands a pitcher full of water.
Money is thrown into the pitcher ; the bride's veil is taken from
her and fastened to the tree ; she upsets the pitcher of water with
her foot; and a, dance three times round the tree concludes the
ceremony. 6 Tree marriage appears very distinctly in the Greek
festival of the Daedala, at which an oak tree, selected by special
divination, was cut down, dressed as a bride, and conveyed, like a
bride, in solemn procession on a waggon with a bridesmaid beside
it. The mythical origin of the festival was a mock marriage of
Zeus to an oak. 6 The identification with a tree, implied in these
1 Suidas, s.v. , alyis.
2 Servius on Virgil, Aen., iv. 374; Festus, s.v. In pelle.
3 Pliny, Nat. Hist, xxviii. 142.
4 Dalton, Ethn. of Bengal, p. 194 (Mundas), p. 319 (Kurmis).
Among the Mundas both bride and bridegroom are sometimes married
to mango trees. For Kurmi totems, see As. Quart. Rev., July 1886
p. 77.
5 Krauss, S&dsl, p. 450. With regard to upsetting the pitcher, it
is to be noted that water is an important element in marriage cere-
monies, e.g., among the same Mundas who are married to trees a
pitcher of water is poured over both bride and bridegroom (Dalton,
op. cit., 194). Two cabbages, one from the garden of the bride and
another from that of the bridegroom, play a very important part in
rural weddings in Lorraine (George Sand, La Mare au Diable, append.
v.; Folk-Lore Ree., iii. p. 271 sq. ).
6 Pausanias, ix. 3 ; Eusebius, Praep. Evang. , iii. 1 and 2. The oak
was especially associated with Zeus. See Botticher, Der Baumkvttus
TOTEMISM. 35
marriage ceremonies, is illustrated by a Kicara custom. Ricara
Indians used to make a hole in the skin of their neck, pass a string
through it, and tie the other end to the trunk of an oak tree; by
remaining tied in this fashion for some time, they thought they
became strong and brave like the tree. 1
The idea of substitution or disguise, which seems to be at the
root of these marriage (as of the birth) ceremonies, appears in some
Hindu marriages. Thus when a man has lost several wives in
succession, he.must marry a bird with all ceremony before another
family will give him their daughter to wife. 2 Or wishing to
marry a third wife, whether his other wives are alive or not, he
must first formally wed a plant of a particular kind. 3 "When the
planets threaten any one with misfortune in marriage, he or she is
married to an earthen vessel. 4 Dancing girls of Goa are married
to daggers before they may exereise their profession. 5 Courtesans
born of courtesans are married to flowering plants, which are planted
in the house for the purpose ; they water and tend the plants, and
observe mourning for them when they die. 6
Some cases of marriage of human beings to inanimate objects
seem to be unconnected with totemism. 7 A totemic marriage
der Hellenen, p. 408 sq. The oak of Zeus (like a totem) gave omens
to its worshippers ; and the ceremony of making rain by means of an
oak branch (Paus., viii. 38) is remarkably like ceremonies observed for
the purpose of making rain by the sacred Buffalo society among the
Omahas (Third Rep., p. 347) and by a set of worshippers in totem-
riddeD Samoa (Turner, Samoa, p. 45).
1 Lewis and Clarke, i. p. 155, 8vo, 1835.
2 Indian Antiquary, x. p. 333.
3 Ind. Antiq., iv. p. 5 ; Jour. Asint. Soc. Bengal, liii. pt. i. p.
99 sq. 4 J. A. S. Beng., liii. i. p. 300.
5 Ind. Antiq., xiii. p. 168 sq.
6 Ind. Antiq., ix. p. 77. We are reminded of the Gardens of
Adonis. See W. Mannhardt, Antilce Wald- und Feldkulte, p. 279 sq.
7 Thus in Java the man who taps a palm for palm wine goes through
a form of marriage with the tree before he begins to tap it (Wilken
in De Indische Gids, June 1884, p. 963, of. 962). The Hurons
annually married their fishing nets, with great ceremony, to two young
girls (Relations des Jlsuites, 1636, p. 109 ; ib. , 1639, p. 95 ; Charle-
voix, Hist, de la Noun. Fr., v. p. 225 ; Chateaubriand, Voy. en
Ainer., p. 1'40 sq. ; Parkman, Jesuites of North America, p. lxix.).
The old Egyptian custom, in time of drought, of dressing a woman
as a bride and throwing her into the Nile is the subject of Ebers's novel
Nilbraut, noticed in the Atlienasum, July 2, 1887, p. 12. The. custom
seems to be the foundation of legends like those of Andromeda and
Hesione. For a Norse Andromeda, see Asbjtirnsen og Moe, Norshe
36 TOTEMISM,
ceremony of a different kind is that] observed by a Tiger clan of
the Gonds, in which two men imitate tigers by tearing to pieces a
living kid with their teeth. 1
■J Death Ceremonies. — In death, too, the clansman seeks
to become one with his totem. Amongst some totem
clans it is an article of faith that as the clan sprang from
the totem, so each clansman at death reassumes the totem!
form. Thus the Moquis, believing that the ancestors of
the clans were respectively rattlesnakes, deer, bears, sand,
water, tobacco, &c, think that at death each man, accord-
ing to his clan, is changed into a rattlesnake, a deer, &c. 2
Amongst the Black Shoulder (Buffalo) clan of the Omahas
a dying clansman was wrapped in a buffalo robe with the
hair out, his face was painted with the clan mark, and his
friends addressed him thus : " You are going to the
animals (the buffaloes). You are going to rejoin your
ancestors. You are going, or your four souls are going,
to the four winds. Be strong." 8 Amongst the Hanga
Follce-Eventyr (First Series), No. 24 (Dasent's Tales from the Norse,
p. 125 sq. ). The custom shadowed forth in these legends may be
only another form of the Egyptian customs referred to by Pindar (in
Strabo, xvii. 1, 19 — the full passage is omitted in some MSS. and
editions; cf. jElian, Nat. An., vii. 19; Herodotus, ii. 46; Plutarch,
Brut. Rat. Uti, 5 ; Clemens Alex., Protr., 32 ; and of which a trace
appears in Italy (Ovid, Fast. , ii. 441). This would bring us round to
totemism. It is therefore notable that the Andromeda story occurs in
Senegambia, where totemism exists. See Berenger-Feraud, Contes
populaires de la Senegambia, p. 185 sq. The Mandan custom (Catlin,
O-Kee-pa, Fol. reserv. , ii. ) is hardly parallel, though Liebrecht (Zur
Volkskunde, p. 395) seems to think so.
1 Dalton, op. cit, p. 280.
2 Schoolcraft, Ind. Tr., iv. 86.
3 Third Rep., p. 229. As to the "four souls," many savages are
much more liberally provided with souls than civilized men. See
Rel. des JSs., 1636, p. 133; Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied, Nord-
Amerika, ii. 206; Charlevoix, Hist, de la Nouv. Fr., vi. p. 75;
Laborde, "Eel. de l'origine, &c, des Caraibes," p. 15, in Recueil de
divers Voyages faits en Afrique et en VAmerique (Paris, 1684) ;
TOTEMISM. 37
clan, another Buffalo clan of the Omahas, the ceremony
was similar, and the dying man was thus addressed :
" You came hither from the animals, and you are going
back thither. Do not face this way again. When you
go, continue walking." 1
Members of the Elk clan among the Omahas, though in life they
may not touch any part of a male elk nor taste of a male deer, are
buried in moccasins of deer skin. 2 Egyptian queens were some-
times buried in cow-shaped sarcophaguses. 3 Among the Australian
"Wotjoballuk, men of the Hot- Wind totem are buried with the head
in the direction from which the hot wind blows, and men of the
Sun totem are buried with their heads towards the sunrise.'' Among
the Marias, a Gond clan whose name is thought to be derived from
Mara, "a tree," the corpse of an adult male is fastened by cords to
a mahwa tree in an erect position and then burned. 5 On the anni-
versary of the death of their kinsmen, the Natavanes in Paraguay
carried dead ostriches in procession as representatives of the
deceased, probably because the ostrich was the clan totem. 6 Men
of the Snow totem among the Pouteoiiatmi, contrary to the general
custom of the tribe, were burned instead of buried, the belief being
that, as snow comes from on high, so the bodies of men of the Snow
totem should not be poked away underground, but suffered to rejoin
their Sn"ow kindred in the upper air. Once when a man of the
Snow totem had been buried underground, the winter was so long
and the snow fell so deep that nobody ever thought to see spring
any more. Then they bethought them of digging up the corpse
and burning it ; and lo ! the snow stopped falling and spring came
with a burst. 7
Washington Matthews, The Hidatsa Indians, p. 50 ; Macpherson,
Memorials of Service in India, p. 91 sq. ; Schoolcraft, Am. Ind.,
pp. 127, 204; Id., Ind. Tr., iv. 70; Arctic Papers for the Expe-
dition of 1875, p 275 ; Williams, Fiji, i. p. 241 ; Wilken, " Het
animisme bij cle volken van den indischen archipel," in Ind. Gids,
June 1884, p. 929 sq. ; Id., Veber das Haaropfer, p. 75».
1 Third Rep., p. 233. 2 lb., 225.
3 Lepsius, Chronologie der Aegypter, p. 309m. ; cf. Herodotus, ii.
129; Stephanus Byzant, s.v., Boiaipis.
4 J. A. I, xvi. p. 31».
5 Dalton, Ethn. ofBeng., pp. 278, 283.
6 Charlevoix, Hist, du Paraguay, i. p. 462.
7 Bel. des Jes., 1667, p. 19; iettr'. Edif, vi. 169 sq.
38 TOTEMISM.
\J Ceremonies at Puberty. — The attainment of puberty is
celebrated by savages with, ceremonies, some of which seem
to be directly connected with totemism. The Australian
rites of initiation at puberty include the raising of these
scars on the persons of the clansmen and clanswomen which
serve as tribal badges or actually depict the totem. They
also include those mutilations of the person by knocking out
teeth, &c, which we have seen reason to suppose are meant
to assimilate the man to his totem. "When we remember
that the fundamental rules of totem society are rules re-
gulating marriage, or rather sexual intercourse, and that
these rules are based on distinctions of totem, persons of
the same totem being forbidden, under pain of death, to
have connexion with each other, the propriety of imprint-
ing these marks on the persons of the clansmen and of
inculcating these rules on their minds at the very moment
when transgression of these all-important rules first
becomes possible, is immediately apparent ; and the
necessity for such marks will further appear when we
consider the minute subdivision of savage tribes into local
groups, which, at once united and divided by an elaborate
code of sexual permissions and prohibitions, are at the
same time disjoined by a difference of dialect or even of
language, such as, in the absence of some visible symbol-
ism, must have rendered all these permissions and pro-
hibitions inoperative. On this view, a chief object of
these initiation ceremonies was to teach the youths with
whom they might or might not have connexion, and to put
them in possession of a visible language, consisting of per-
sonal marks and (as we shall see immediately) gestures, by
means of which they might be able to communicate their
TOTEMISM. 39
totems to, and to ascertain the totems of, strangers whose
language they did not understand. So far, the considera-
tion of these ceremonies would fall naturally under the
section dealing with the social side of totemism. But as
the rules which it is an object of these ceremonies to
inculcate are probably deductions from that fundamental
and as yet unexplained connexion between a man and his
totem, which constitutes the religion of totemism, they
may fairly be considered here.
That lessons in conduct, especially towards the other
sex, form part of these initiatory rites is certain. The
youth is charged " to restrict himself to the class (totem
division) which his name confines him to. . . . The secrets
of the tribe are imparted to him at this time. These
instructions are repeated every evening while the Bora
ceremony lasts, and form the principal part of it." 1 To
supply the youth with a gesture language for the purpose
already indicated may be the intention of the totem dances
or pantomimes which form part of the initiatory rites.
E.g., at one stage of these rites in Australia a number of
men appear on the scene howling and running on all fours in
imitation of the dingo or native Australian dog ; at last the leader
jumps up, clasps his hands, and shouts the totem name "wild
dog." 2 The Coast Murring tribe in New South Wales had an
initiatory ceremony at which the totem name "brown snake" was
shouted, and a medicine-man produced a live brown snake out of
his mouth. 3 The totem elans of the Bechuanas have each its
1 J. A. L, xiii. 296, cf. 450.
2 J. A. I., xiii. 450.
3 lb., xvi. p. 43. At the initiatory rites of the Phrygian god
Sabazius, a snake (or a golden image of one) was drawn through the
novice's robe. Arnobius, Adv. Nat., v. 21; Firmicus Maternus, De
errore pro/an. relig., 10 ; Clem. Alex., Protrept., § 16. Cf. Demosth.,
p. 313 (De Corona, § 260) ; Strab., x. 3, 18. See Foucart, Des Asso-
ciations religieuses chez les Grecs, p. 66 sq.
40 TOTEMISM.
special dance or pantomime, and when they wish to ascertain a
stranger's clan, they ask him " What do you dance ? " 1 We find
elsewhere that dancing has been used as a means of sexual selec-
tion. Thus among the Tshimsians, one of the totem tribes on the
north-west coast of North America, one of the ceremonies observed
by a, girl at puberty is a formal dance before all the people. 2
Amongst the Kasias in Bengal, amongst whom husband and wife
are always of different clans, Kasia maidens dance at the new moon
in March ; the young men do not dance but only look on, and
many matches are made at these times. 3 On the 15th day of the
month Abh the damsels of Jerusalem, clad in white, used to go out
and dance in the vineyards, saying, " Look this way, young man,
and choose a wife. Look not to the face but rather to the family. " i
Attic maidens between the ages of five and ten had to pretend to
be bears ; they were called bears, and they imitated the action of
bears. No man would marry a girl who had not thus "been a
bear." 5
The totem dances at initiation are to be distinguished from those
animal dances, also practised at initiation, the object of which
appears to be to give the novice power over the animals represented.
Thus an initiatory ceremony in New South Wales is to present to
the novices the effigy of a kangaroo made of grass. ' ' By thus
presenting to them the dead kangaroo, it was indicated that the
power was about to be imparted to them of killing that animal."
The men then tied tails of grass to their girdles and hopped about
1 Livingstone, South Africa, p. 13 ; J. Mackenzie, Ten Tears
North of the Orange River, p. 391, cf. p. 135m; J. A. I., xvi. p.
83.
2 Qeol. Sun. of Canada, Report for 1878-79, p. 131b ; for the
Tshimsian totems, ib., 134b.
3 Tr. JSth. Soo. , new series, vii. 309 ; for Kasia exogamy, Dalton,
Ethn. of Beng., p. 56.
4 Mishna, Tdanith, iv. 8 (Surenhus., ii. p. 385).
5 Schol. on Aristophanes, Lysist., 645; Harpocration, s.v. ipicr-
tvtrai ; Siridas, s.v. apKTev&at and &pnros ^ fipavpwviois ; Bekker's
Anecd. Or., p. 206, 4 ; ii., 444, 30. This sacred dance or pantomime
was a dedication of the damsels to either the Brauronian or Munychian
Artemis ; and legend said that a tame bear had been kept in her
sanctuary. The Arcadian Artemis, as K. 0. Miiller says (Dorier 2
i. p. 376), appears to be identical with Callisto ; and Callisto was the
ancestress of the Arcadians ( = Bear people, from &pKos, another form
of UpKTos), was herself turned into a bear, and was represented seated
on a bearskin (Paus., x. 31, 10). For an African example, see
Dapper, Description de I'Afrique (Amsterdam, 1686), p. 249.
TOTEMISM. 41
in imitation of kangaroos, while two others followed them with
spears and pretended to wound them. 1 An imitation of a wallaby
hunt forms another Australian initiatory ceremony. 2 These hunt-
ing dances, or rather pantomimes, at initiation are therefore closely
similar to those pantomimes which savage hunters perform before
going to the chase, believing that through a sort of sympathetic
magic the game will be caught like the actors in the mimic hunt.
Thus, before the Eoossa Caffres go out hunting one of them takes
a handful of grass in his mouth and crawls about on all fours to
represent the game, while the rest raise the hunting cry and rush
at him with their spears till he falls apparently dead. 3 Negros of
western equatorial Africa, before setting out to hunt the gorilla,
act a gorilla hunt, in which the man who plays the gorilla pretends
to be killed. 4
Before hunting the bear the Dacotas act a bear pantomime, in
which a medicine-man dresses entirely in the skin of a bear, and
others wear masques consisting of the skin of the bear's head, and
all of them imitate bears. 5 When buffaloes are scarce, the Mandans
dance wearing the skins of buffaloes' heads with the horns on their
heads. 6 " Each hunt," says Chateaubriand, "has its dance, which
consists in the imitation of the movements, habits, and cries of the
animal to be hunted ; they climb like a bear, build like a beaver,
galop about like a buffalo, leap like a roe, and yelp like a fox." 7
The Indians of San Juan Capistrano acted similar hunting panto-
mimes before the stuffed skin of a coyote or of a mountain cat before
they set out for the chase. 8 The ancient Greeks had similar
dances for the purpose of catching beasts and birds. Thus a man
wearing a headdress or necklace in imitation of a species of owl
mimicked the bird and was supposed thus to catch it. 9 Such
1 Collins, Account of the English Colony of New South Wales,
London, 1798, pp. 569, 571 ; Angas, Savage Life and Scenes in
Australia and New Zealand, ii. p. 219.
2 /. A. I., xiii. p. 449.
3 Lichtenstein, Travels in S. Afr., i. p. 269.
4 W. W. "Beade, Savage Africa, p. 194 sq.
Catlin, Amer. Indians, i. p. 245. Cf. Schoolcraft, Ind. Tr., iv.
60; the Dacotas " pretend to charm some kinds of animals by mimick-
ing them, and sometimes succeed in killing game in this way. "
6 Catlin, op. cit., i. 127. Cf. Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied, Nord-
Amerika, ii. p. 263 sq.
7 Chateaubriand, Voy. en Amer., p. 142 sq.
8 Bancroft, Nat. Races of the Pac. St., iii. p. 167.
9 Julius Pollux, iv. 103 ; Aelian, N. A., xv. 28 ; Athenaeus, 391a&,
629/.
42 TOTEMISM.
pantomimes, acted, in presence of the animal, may be entirely
rational, as in the common cases where the savage disguises himself
in the animal's skin and is thus enabled either to act as a decoy to
the herd 1 or to approach and kill the animal. 2 But these panto-
mimes, when they are acted before the hunt takes place, are of
j/ course purely magical. 3
But in these rites of initiation the religious aspect of
totemism is also prominent. In some of the dances this
is certainly the case. Thus at their initiatory rites the
Yuin tribe in New South Wales mould figures of the
totems in earth and dance before them, and a medicine-
man brings up out of his inside the " magic " appropriate
to the totem before which he stands : before the figure of
the porcupine he brings up a stuff like chalk, before the
kangaroo a stuff like glass, <fec* Again, it is at initiation
that the youth is solemnly forbidden to eat of certain foods ;
but as the list of foods prohibited to youths at puberty both,
in Australia and America extends far beyond the simple
totem, it would seem that we are here in contact with those
unknown general ideas of the savage, whereof totemism
1 Schoolcraft, Ind. Tr., iv. 93.
2 E.g., American Naturalist, iv. 136 sq. ; American Antiquarian,
viii. 328. Iroquois hunters wore skeleton frameworks of wood over
which they threw the skin of whatever animal they wished to imitate.
J. A. I., xiv. p. 246.
3 For other examples of animal dances or pantomimes (some of them
apparently merely recreations) see Schoolcraft, Ind. Tr. , v. p. 277 ;
Catlin, Amer. Ind., ii. 126, 248 ; Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied, Nord-
Amerika, ii. p. 246 ; S. Powers, Tr. of Calif., p. 199 sq.; Bancroft,
Nat. Races of the Pac. St., i. p. 706; Rep. of Internat. Polar
Exped. to Point Barrow, Alaska, p. 41 sq. ; E. James, Exped. to the
Rocky Mountains, ii. 58 ; American Antiquarian, vii. p. 211 ; A.
R. Wallace, Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, p. 296 sq. ;
Revue d' Ethnographic, vi. (1887) p. 54; Balton, Ethn. of Beng.,
p. 155 sq. ; Pallas, Reise durch verschiedene Theile des russischen
Reichs, iii. p. 64 sq. ; Anderson, Lake Ngami, p. 230 ; Original-
Mittheil. aus der ethnolog. Abth. der Eonigl. Museen zu Berlin, i. p.
179 sq., 184; Eyre, Journals, ii. p. 233.
4 Journ. and Proc. R. Soc. N. S. Wales, 1882, p. 206.
TOTEMISM. 43
is only a special product. Thus the Narrinyeri youth at
initiation are forbidden to eat twenty different kinds of
game, besides any food belonging to women. If they eat
of these forbidden foods it is thought they will grow ugly. 1
In the Mycoolon tribe, near the Gulf of Carpentaria, the
youth at initiation is forbidden to eat of eaglehawk and its
young, native companion and its young, some snakes,
turtles, ant-eaters, and emu eggs. 2 In New South Wales the
young men at initiation are forbidden to kill and eat (1)
" any animal that burrows in the ground, for it recalls to
mind the foot-holes s where the tooth was knocked out, e.g.,
the wombat ; (2) such creatures as have very prominent
teeth, for these recall the tooth itself ; (3) any animal
that climbs to the tree tops, for they are then near to
Daramulun, 4 e.g., the native bear ; (4) any bird that
swims, for it recalls the final washing ; (5) nor, above
all, the emu, for this is Ngalalbal, the ..wife of Daramuliin,
and at the same time ' the woman ' ; for the novice during
his probation is not permitted even so much as to look at
a woman or to speak to one ; and even, for some time
after, he must cover his mouth with his rug when one is
present." These rules are relaxed by degrees by an old
man giving the youth a portion of the forbidden animal
or rubbing him with its fat. 6 The Kurnai youth is not
allowed to eat the female of any animal, nor the emu, nor
1 Nat. Tribes of S. Austral., p. 17.
2 /. A. I., xiii. p. 295.
3 Amongst these tribes the novice is placed with his feet in a pair
of holes preparatorily to the knocking out of the tooth (/. A. I.,
xiii. p. 446 sq. ; ib., xiv. p. 359; Journ. and Proc. H. Soc. N. S.
Wales, 1883, p. 26).
4 I.e., the mythical being "who is supposed to have instituted these
ceremonies (/. A. I., xiii. 442, 446).
* J. A. I., xiii. p. 455 sq.
44 TOTEMISM.
the porcupine. He becomes free by having the fat of the
animal smeared on his face. 1 On the other hand, it is
said that " initiation confers many privileges on the youths, '
as they are now allowed to eat many articles of food which
were previously forbidden to them." 2 Thus in New South
Wales before initiation a boy may eat only the females of
the animals which he catches ; but after initiation (which,
however, may not be complete for several years) he may
eat whatever he finds. 3 About the lower Murray boys
before initiation are forbidden to eat emu, wild turkey,
swan, geese, black duck, and the eggs of these birds ; if
they infringed this rule, "their hair would become pre-
maturely grey, and the muscles of their limbs would waste
away and shrink up." 4 The Dieri think that if a native
grows grey or has much hair on his breast in youth, it has
been caused by his eating iguana in childhood. 6 In North
America the Creek youths at puberty were forbidden for
twelve months to eat of young bucks, turkey-cocks, fowls,
peas, and salt. 6 The Andamanese abstain from various
1 lb., xiv. p. 316.
2 lb., 360. So with the Uaupe's on the Amazon (A. E. Wallace,
Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, p. 496).
3 Journ. and Proc. R. Soc. N. S. Wales, 1882, pp. 208.
4 Journ. and Proc. R. Soc. N. S. Wales, 1883, p. 27.
6 Native Tribes of S. Australia, p. 279.
6 . Gatschet, Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, i. p. 185.
For superstitious abstinence from salt, cf. Adair, Hist. Amer.
Indians, pp. 59, 115, 125, 166; Acosta, Hist, of the Indies, v.
17; Schoolcraft, Ind. Tr., v. p. 268; Du Tertre, Histoire generate
des Antilles, vol. ii. (Paris, 1667) p. 371; Bancroft, Nat. Races of
the Pac. St. , i. p. 520» ; Sievers, Reise in der Sierra Nevada de Santa
Marta, p. 94 ; C. Bock, Headhunters of Borneo, pp. 218, 223 ;
Plutarch, Qu. Conviv., viii. 8, 2 ; Id., 7s. et Osir., 5; A. R. Wallace,
Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, p. 502 ; Asiatick Researches,
vii. p. 307; Duff Macdonald, Africana, i. pp. 110, 170; Grierson,
Bihar Peasant Life, p. 405. For an African example of the pro-
hibition of different foods at successive periods of life, see Dapper,
Description de TAfriaue, p. 336.
TOTEMISM. 45
kinds of food, including turtle, honey, and pork, for a year
or several years before puberty; and amongst the cere-
monies by which they are made free of these foods is the
smearing of their bodies by the chief with honey and the
melted fat of turtle and pork. 1
These ceremonies seem also to be meant to admit the |
youth into the life of the clan, and hence of the totem.
The latter appears to be the meaning of a Carib ceremony,
in which the father of the youth took a live bird of prey,
of a particular species, and beat his son with it till the
bird was dead and its head crushed, thus transferring the
life and spirit of the martial bird to the future warrior.
Further, he scarified his son all over, rubbed the juices of
the bird into the wounds, and gave him the bird's heart to
eat. 2 Amongst some Australian tribes the youth at initia-
tion is smeared with blood drawn from the arms either of
aged men or of all the men present, and he even receives the
blood to drink. Amongst some tribes on the Darling this
tribal blood is his only food for two days. 3 The meaning
1 E. H. Man, Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands,
p. 62 sq.
2 Rochefort, Hist. nat. et mor. des lies Antilles (Rotterdam, 1666),
p. 556; Du Tertre, Histoire generate des Antilles, vol. ii. p. 377.
3 /. A. I., xiii. 128, 295; G. F. Angas, Savage Life and Scenes in
Austr. and New Zeal., i. 115; Nat. Tribes of S. Austr., 162 sq., 227,
232,. 231, 270; Brough Smyth, i. 67 sq. ; Fison and Howitt, 286. The
Australians also draw blood from themselves and give it to their sick
relations to drink (J. A. I., xiii. 132 sq.). So do the Hare Indians
in America (Petitot, Monor/raphie des Dene- Dindjie, p. 60; Id., Tra-
ditions Indiennes du Canada Nordouest, p. 269). Amongst the Guamos
on the Orinoco the chief was hound to draw blood from his body
wherewith to anoint the stomach of a sick clansman. If sickness was
at all prevalent he was thus reduced to great emaciation (Gumilla,
Hist, de I'Orenoque, i. p. 261). The Chinese sometimes cut pieces
out of their flesh and give them to their sick parents to eat (Dennys,
Folk-Lore of China, p. 68 sq.). Amongst some of the Caribs a new-
born child was smeared with its father's blood (Rochefort, op. cit., p.
46 TOTEMISM.
of this smearing with blood seems put beyond a doubt by
the following custom. Among the Gonds, a non-Aryan
race of Central India, the rajas, by intermarriage with
Hindus, have lost much of their pure Gond blood, and are
half Hindus ; hence one of the ceremonies at their installa-
tion is " the touching of their foreheads with a drop of
blood drawn from the body of a pure aborigine of the tribe
they belong to." 1 Further, the Australians seek to convey
to the novices the powers and dignity of manhood by
means of certain magic passes, while the youths receive
the spiritual gift with corresponding gestures. 2 Among
some tribes the youths at initiation sleep on the graves of
their ancestors, in order to absorb their virtues. 3 It is,
however, a very notable fact that the initiation of an
Australian youth is said to be conducted, not by men of
the same totem, but by men of that portion of the tribe
into which he may marry. 4 In some of the Victorian
tribes no person related to the youth by blood can interfere
or assist in his initiation. 5 Whether this is true of all
tribes and of all the rites at initiation does not appear. 6
Connected with totemism is also the Australian cere-
552). In all these eases the idea is that the life of the elan or family I
is in the hlood, and may be transferred with the blood from one member I
of it to another. For another way of communicating the common life 1
of the clan to a sick member of it, see Jour, and Proc. R. Soc. N. S.
Wales, 1883, p. 32.
1 J. Forsyth, Highlands of Central India, p. 137.
2 J. A. L, xiii. 451.
3 Jour, and Proc. R. Soc. N. S. Wales, 1882, p. 172.
« Howitt in J. A. I., xiii. 458.
Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 30.
6 We should certainly expect it not to be true of the blood smearing.
And this ceremony appears not to be practised by the tribes referred
to by Howitt and Dawson, 11. cc. The plucking out of the hair of the
pubis (see below) is performed by men of a different tribe (Eyre,
Journals, ii. p. 337).
TOTEMISM. 47
mony at initiation of pretending to recall a dead man to
life by the utterance of his totem name. An old man lies
down in a grave and is covered up lightly with earth j but
at the mention of his totem name he starts up to life. 1
Sometimes it is believed that the youth himself is killed
by a being called Thuremlui, who cuts him up, restores
him to life, and knocks out a tooth. 2 Here the idea
seems to be that of a second birth, or the beginning of a
new life for the novice ; hence he receives a new name at
the time when he is circumcised, or the tooth knocked
out, or the blood of the kin poured on him. 3 Amongst the
Indians of Virginia and the Quojas in Africa, the youths
after initiation pretended to forget the whole of their former
lives (parents, language, customs, &c), and had to learn
everything over again like new-born babes. 4 A Wolf clan
in Texas used to dress up in wolf skins and run about on
all fours, howling and mimicking wolves ; at last they
scratched up a living clansman, who had been buried on
purpose, and, putting a bow and arrows in his hands, bade
him do as the wolves do — rob, kill, and murder. 5 This may
have been an initiatory ceremony, revealing to the novice
in pantomime the double origin of the clan— from wolves
and from the ground. For it is a common belief with
totem clans that they issued originally from the ground. 6
1 J. A. L, xiii. 453 sq. 2 lb., xiv. 358.
3 Angas, i. 115 ; Brough Smyth, i. 75re; J. A. I., xiv. 357, 359 ;
Nat. Tr. of S. Austr., pp. 232, 269. Hence, too, the plucking of
the hair from the pubis or incipient beard of the youth at initiation.
See Eyre, Journals, ii. p. 337 sq., 340; Native Tribes of S. Australia,
p. 188.
4 R. Beverley, History of Virginia (London, 1722), p. 177 sq. ;
Dapper, Description de VAfrique, p. 268. On initiation regarded as
a new birth, see Kulischer in Zeiischrift fur Ethnologic, xv. p. 194 sq.
5 Schoolcraft, Inch. Tr. , v. 683.
6 Lewis and Clarke, i. 190, ed. 1815; Dwight, Travels in New
48 TOTEMISM.
Connected with this mimic death and revival of a clans-
man appears to be the real death and supposed revival of
the totem itself. We have seen that some Californian
Indians killed the buzzard, and then buried and mourned
over it like a clansman. But it was believed that, as often
as the bird was killed, it was made alive again. Much
the same idea appears in a Zuni ceremony described by an
eyewitness, Mr Cushing. He tells how a procession of fifty
men set off for the spirit-land, or (as the Zunis call it)
" the home of our others," and returned after four days,
each man bearing a basket full of living, squirming turtles.
One turtle was brought to the house where Mr Cushing
was staying, and it was welcomed with divine honours.
It was addressed as, " Ah ! my poor dear lost child or
parent, my sister or brother to have been ! Who knows
which 1 May be my own great great grandfather or
mother 1 " Nevertheless, next day it was killed and its
flesh and bones deposited in the river, that it might
" return once more to eternal life among its comrades
in the dark waters of the lake of the dead." The idea
that the turtle was dead was repudiated with passionate
sorrow ; it had only, they said, " changed houses and
gone to live for ever in the home of ' our lost others.' " 1
The meaning of such ceremonies is not clear. Perhaps, as
has been suggested, 2 they are piacular sacrifices, in which
the god dies for his people. This is borne out by the
England and NewYork, iv. p. 185; ThirdRep., p. 237; Maximilian,
Prinz zu Wied, Nord-Ameriha, ii. 160; C. C. Jonas, Antiquities of the
Southern Indians, p. i sq. The Californian Indians think that their
coyote ancestors were moulded directly from the soil (S. Powers,
Tribes of California, pp. 5, 147).
1 Mr Cushing in Century Magazine, May 1883.
2 See Encyclojpsedia Britannica, article "Sacrifice," vol. xxi. p. 137.
TOTEMISM. 49
curses with which the Egyptians loaded the head of the
slain bull. 1 Such solemn sacrifices of the totem are not
to be confused with the mere killing of the animal for
food, even when the killing is accompanied by apologies
and tokens of sorrow. Whatever their meaning, they
appear not to be found among the rudest totem tribes,
but only amongst peoples like the Zuni and Egyptians,
who, retaining totemism, have yet reached a certain level
of culture. (The idea of the immortality of the individual '
totem, which is brought out in these ceremonies, appears I
to be an extension of the idea of the immortality of the
species, which is, perhaps, of the essence of totemism,
and is prominent, e.g., in Samoa. I Hence it is not neces-
sary to suppose that the similar festivals, which, with
mingled lamentation and joy, celebrate the annual death
and revival of vegetation, 2 are directly borrowed from
totemism ; both may spring independently from the obser-
vation of the mortality of the individual and the immor-
tality of the species.
Closely connected with totemism, though crossing the
regular lines of totem kinship, are the sacred dancing
bands or associations, which figure largely in the social life
of many North American tribes. These bands for the I
most part bear animal names, and possess characteristic
dances, also badges which the members wear in dancing,
and which often, though not always, consist of some parts
(skin, claws, &c.) of the animals from which the bands
take their name. As distinguished from totem clans,
these bands consist not of kinsmen, but of members who
1 Herod., ii. 39.
2 See Encyc. Britan., ninth ed., article "Thesmophoria."
50 TOTEMISM.
have purchased the privilege of admission, and who in each
soeiety are generally all about the same age, boys belong-
ing to one band, youths to another, and so on through the
different stages of life. In some tribes both sexes belong
to all the bands ; in others there are separate bands for
the sexes. Some of the bands are entrusted with certain
police functions, such as maintaining order in the camp, on
the march, in hunting, &C. 1 Such associations probablyv
originate in a feeling that the protection of the totem is
not by itself sufficient ; feeling this, men seek an ad-
ditional protection. Hence some of these bands have
"medicines" with which they rub their bodies before
going into battle, believing that this makes them invulner-
able. 2 However, in the Snake Band of the Moquis we
have an instance of a kinship group expanding by natural
growth into a religious association, 3 and this is probably
not an isolated case.
The " clans " which Mr Philander Prescott described as existing »
among the Dacotas in 1847 4 appear to have been religious associa-
tions rather than totem clans. These Dacota ' ' clans " were con-
stituted by the use of the same roots for " medicine " ; each " clan "
had its special "medicine," and there were constant feuds between
them owing to the belief that each "clan" employed its magic
"medicine" to injure men of other "clans." Each "clan" had
some sacred animal (bear, wolf, buffalo, &c), or part of an animal
(head, tail, liver, wing, &e.), which they venerated through life,
and might not eat nor (if it was a whole animal) kill; nor might
they step on or over it. 6 Violation of these rules was thought to
1 See Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied, Nord-Ainerika, i. 401, 440 sq
576-579, ii. 138-146, 217-219, 240 sq.; Third Rep., pp. 342-355,
cf. Second Hep., p. 16. 3 Third Report, 349, 351.
s Bourke, Snake Dance, p. 180 sq.
" In Schoolcraft's Ind. Tr., ii. 171, 175.
6 Stepping over a person or thing is not, to the primitive mind,
merely disrespectful ; it is supposed to exercise an injurious influence
on the person or thing stepped over.
TOTEMISM. 51
bring trouble on the offender. All this is totemic; but the mode
of admission to the "clans" (namely, through the great medicine
dance) seems appropriate rather to associations.
At this point a few words may be added on two sub-
ordinate kinds of totems which have been already referred
to.
Sex Totems. — In Australia (but, so far as is known at
present, nowhere else) each of the sexes has, at least in
some tribes, its special sacred animal, whose name each
individual of the sex bears, regarding the animal as his or
her brother or sister respectively, not killing it nor suffer- /
ing the opposite sex to kill it. These sacred animals'
therefore answer strictly to the definition of totems. Thus
amongst the Kurnai all the men were called Yeerung
(Emu-Wren) and all the women Djeetgun (Superb War-
bler). The birds called Yeerung were the " brothers " of
the men, and the birds called Djeetgun were the women's
"sisters." If the men killed an emu-wren they were
attacked by the women, if the womeu killed a superb
warbler they were assailed by the men. Yeerung and
Djeetgun were the mythical ancestors of the Kurnai. 1
The Eulin tribe in Victoria, in addition to sixteen clan totems,
has two pairs of sex totems ; one pair (the emu-wren and superb
warbler) is identical with the Kurnai pair ; the other pair is the
bat (male totem) and the small night jar (female totem). The
latter pair extends to the extreme north-western confines of Victoria
as the " man's brother " and the " woman's sister. " 2 Amongst the
Coast Murring tribe, as among the Kurnai and Kulin, the emu-
wren is the "man's brother," but the "woman's sister" is the
tree creeper. 3 Among the Mukjarawaint in western Victoria, who
have regular clan totems (white cockatoo, black cockatoo, iguana,
1 Fison and Howitt, 194, 201 sq., 215, 235.
2 J. A. I., xv. p. 416, c/. xii. p. 507.
3 Id., xv. 416.
52 TOTEMISM.
crow, eaglehawk, &c), all the men have, besides, the bat for their
totem, and all the women have the small night jar for theirs. 1
The Ta-ta-thi group of tribes in New South "Wales, in addition to
regular clan totems, has a pair of sex totems, the bat for men and
a small owl for women; (men and women address each other as
Owls and Bats] and there is a fight if a woman kills a bat or a
man kills a small owl. 2 Of some Victorian tribes it is said that
"the common bat belongs to the men, who protect it against injury,
even to the half killing of their wives for its sake. The fern owl,
or large goatsucker, belongs to the women, and although a bird of
evil omen, creating terror at night by its cry, it is jealously pro-
tected by them. If a man kills one, they are as much enraged as
if it was one of their children, and will strike him with their long
poles." 3 At Gunbower Creek on the lower Murray the natives
called the bat "brother belonging to blackfellow," and would
never kill one ; they said that if a bat were killed, one of their
women would be sure to die. 4 Among the Port Lincoln tribe, South
Australia, the male and female of a small lizard seem to be the male
and female totems respectively ; at least either sex is said to have
a mortal hatred of the opposite sex of these little animals, the men
always destroying the female and the women the male. They have
a myth that the lizard divided the sexes in the human species. 6
Clearly these sex totems are not to be confounded with
clan totems. To see in them, as Messrs Fison and Howitt
do or did, merely clan totems in a state of transition from
female to male kinship is to confound sex with kinship.
Even if such a view could have been held so long as sex
totems were only known to exist among the Kurnai, who
have no clan totems left, it must have fallen to the ground
when sex totems were found coexisting with clan totems,
and that either with female or male (uterine or agnatic)
descent. The sex totem seems to be still more sacred than
the clan totem ; for men who do not object to other people
1 /. A. I., xii. 45. 2 Id., xiv. 350.
3 Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 52.
4 Trans. Philosqph. Soo. XT. S. Wales, 1862-1865, p. 359 sq.
5 Angas, op. ait., i. 109; Nat. Tr. of S. Austr., p. 241.
TOTEMISM. 53
killing their clan totem will fiercely defend their sex totem
against any attempt of the opposite sex to injure it. 1
Individual Totems. — It is not only the clans and the ul
sexes that have totems ; individuals also have their own
special totems, i.e., classes of objects (generally species of
animals), which they regard as related to themselves by
those ties of mutual respect and protection which are L - L - L -
characteristic of totemism. This relationship, however, in
the case of the individual totem, begins and ends with the
individual man, and is not, like the clan totem, transmitted
by inheritance. The evidence for the existence of indi-
vidual totems in Australia, though conclusive, is very
scanty. In North America it is abundant.
In Australia we hear of a medicine-man whose clan totem through
his mother was kangaroo, but whose "secret" (i.e., individual)
totem was the tiger-snake. Snakes of that species, therefore, would
not hurt him. 2 An Australian seems usually to get his individual
totem by dreaming that he has been transformed into an animal of ■ ■ ■■
the species. Thus a man who had dreamed several times that he
had become a lace-lizard was supposed to have acquired power over
lace-lizards, and he kept a tame one, which was thought to give
him supernatural knowledge and to act as his emissary for mischief.
Hence he was known as Bunjil Bataluk (Old Lizard). 3 Another
man dreamed three times he-was a kangaroo ; hence he became one
of the kangaroo kindred, and might not eat any part of a kangaroo
on which there was blood ; he might not even carry home one on
which there was blood. He might eat cooked kangaroo; but if he
were to eat the meat with the blood on it, the spirits would no
longer take him up aloft. 4
1 J. A. I., xiv. p. 350.
2 Id., xvi. p. 50. 3 lb., 34.
4 lb. , 45. The aversion, in certain cases, of savages to Hood
seems to be an important factor in their customs. The North American
Indians, ' ' through a strong principle of religion, abstain in the strictest
manner from eating the blood of any animal" (Adair, Hist. Amer.
Ind., p. 134). They "commonly pull their new-killed venison (before
they dress it) several times through the smoke and flame of the fire,
both by the way of a sacrifice and to consume the blood, life, or animal
54 TOTEMISM.
In America the individual totem is usually the first animal of
which a youth dreams during the long and generally solitary fasts
which American Indians observe at puberty. He kills the animal |
or bird of which he dreams, and henceforward wears its skin or
feathers, or some part of them, as an amulet, especially on the
war-path and in hunting. 1 A man may even (though this seems
exceptional) acquire several totems in this way ; thus an Ottawa
medicine-man had for his individual totems the tortoise, swan,
woodpecker, and crow, because he had dreamed of them all in his
fast at puberty. 2 The respect paid to the individual totem varies
in different tribes. Among the Slave, Hare, and Dogrib Indians
a man may not eat, skin, nor if possible kill his individual totem,
which in these tribes is said to be always a carnivorous animal.
Each man carries with him a picture of his totem (bought of a v
trader) ; when he is unsuccessful in the chase, he pulls out the
picture, smokes to it, and makes it a speech. 3
The sacrifices made to the individual totem are sometimes very
heavy ; a Mandan has been known to turn loose the whole of his
horses and abandon them for ever as a sacrifice to his " medicine "
or individual totem. 4 The sacrifices at the fasts at puberty some-
spirits of the beast, which it would be a, most horrid abomination to
eat" (ib., p. 117). Many of the Slave, Hare, and Dogrib Indians
will not taste the blood of game ; hunters of the two former tribes
collect the blood in the paunch of the animal and bury it in the snow
at some distance from the flesh (Petitot, Monographic des Dene-
Dindjie, p. 76). Men have a special objection to see the blood of
women, at least at certain times ; they say that if they were to see it
they would not be able to fight against their enemies and would be
killed (Mrs James Smith, The Booandik Tribe, p. 5). Hence, although
bleeding is a common Australian cure for men, women are not allowed
to be bled (Angas, i. p. 111). This aversion is perhaps the explana-
tion of that seclusion of women at puberty, childbirth, &c, which
has assumed different forms in many parts of the world.
1 Catlin, N. Amer. Indians, i. p. 36 sq. ; Schoolcraft, Ind. Tr., v.
p. 196; Id., Amer. Ind., p. 213; Lettr. ltdif., vi. 173; Washington
Matthews, Hidatsa Indians, p. 50 ; Sproat, Scenes and Studies of
Savage Life, p. 173 sq. ; Bancroft, i. 283 sq. ; Id., iii. 156; Mayne,
Brit. Columb.,y. 302; P. Jones, Hist. Ojebway Indians, p. 87 sq.;
Loskiel, i. 40; Tr. Ethnol. Soe., new series, iv. 281, 295 sq.; Petitot,
Monographie des Dini-Dindjti, p. 36 ; Collect. Minnes. Hist. Soc,
v. p. 65 ; American Antiquarian, ii. p. 10; Parkman, Jesuits in
North America, p. lxx. sq. 2 Schoolcraft, Am. Ind., p. 210.
3 Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1866, p. 307 •
cf. Petitot, I.e.
4 Lewis and Clarke, i. p. 189 sq., 8vo ed., 1815.
TOTEMISM. 55
times consist of finger joints. 1 The Mosquito Indians in Central
America, after dreaming of the beast or bird, sealed their compact
with it by drawing blood from various parts of their body. 2 The ^
Innuits of Alaska (who are not Indians, but belong to the Eskimo
family and have no clan totems) do not scruple to eat their guardian
animals, and, if unsuccessful, they change their patron. Innuit
women have no such guardian auimals. 3 The Indians of Canada
also changed their okki or manitoo (individual totem) if they had
reason to be dissatisfied with it; amongst them, women had also \
their okkis or manitoos, but did not pay so much heed to them as |
did the men. They tattooed their individual totems on their
persons. 4 Amongst the Indians of San Juan Capistrano, a figure
of the individual totem, which was acquired as usual by fasting,
was moulded in a paste made of crushed herbs on the right arm
of the novice. Fire was then set to it, and thus the figure of
the totem was burned into the flesh. 6 Sometimes the individual
totem is not acquired by the individual himself at puberty, but is
fixed for him independently of his will at birth. Thus among *
the tribes of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, when a woman was about
to be confined, the relations assembled in the hut and drew on the
floor figures of different animals, rubbing each one out as soon as
it was finished. This went on till the child was born, and the figure
that then remained sketched on the ground was the child's tona or
totem. When he grew older the child procured his totem animal
and took care of it, believing that his life was bound up with the
animal's, and that when it died he too must die. 6 Similarly in
Samoa, at child-birth the help of several ' ' gods " was invoked in
succession, and the one who happened to be addressed at the
moment of the birth was the infant's totem. These "gods" were
dogs, eels, sharks, lizards, &c. A Samoan had no objection to eat /
another man's " god " ; but to eat his own would have been death </
or injury to him. 7 Amongst the Quiches in Central America, the
sorcerer gives the infant the name of an animal, which becomes
1 Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied, Nord-Amerika, ii. p. 166.
2 Bancroft, i. p. 740 sq.
3 Dall, Alaska, p. 145.
4 Charlevoix, Sist. de la JVouv. Fr., vi. 67 sq. The word okki is
Huron ; manitoo is Algonkin [ib. ; Sagard, Le grand Voyage du pays
des Murons, p. 231).
5 JBoscana in A. Robinson's Life in California, pp. 270 sq., 273;
Bancroft, i. 414, iii. 167 sq.
6 Bancroft, i. 661. 7 Turner, Samoa, 17.
56 TOTEMISM.
the child's guardian spirit for life. 1 In all such cases there is the
possibility of the totem being ancestral; it may be that of the
mother or father. In one Central American tribe the son of a chief
was free to choose whether he would accept the ancestral totem or
adopt a new one-, but a son who did not adopt his father's totem
was always hateful to his father during his life. 2 Sometimes the .
okkis or mauitoos acquired by dreams are not totems but fetiches, v
being not classes of objects but individual objects, such as a par-
ticular tree, rock, knife, pipe, &c. 3 When the okkis or manitoos
are, as sometimes happens, not acquired by a special preparation
like fasting, bat picked up at hazard, they have no longer any
resemblance to totems, but are fetiches pure and simple. 4 The
Andamanese appear to have individual totems, for every man and
woman is prohibited all through life from eating some one (or
more) fish or animal ; generally the forbidden food is one which
the mother thought disagreed with the child ; but if no food dis-
agreed with him, the person is free to choose what animal he will
avoid. 5 Some of the people of Mora, Banks Islands, have a kind
of individual totem called tamaniu. It is some object, generally
an animal, as a lizard or snake, but sometimes a stone, with which
, the person imagines that his life is bound up ; if it dies or is broken
or lost, he will die. Fancy dictates the choice of a tamaniu; or it
\may be found "by drinking an infusion of certain herbs and
heaping together the dregs. Whatever living thing is first seen in
or upon the heap is the tamaniu. It is watched but not fed or
worshipped." It is thought to come at call. 6 But as the tamaniu
seems to be an individual object, it is a fetich rather than a
totem.
Besides the £lan_lotem, sex_ totem, and indjyidual_totem, there
are (as has been indicatea) some other kinds or varieties of totems ;
but the consideration of them had better be deferred until the social
organization based on totemism has been described.
1 Bancroft, i. 703.
2 Id., i. 753.
s Lafltau, Mceursdes Sauvages Ameriquains, i. 370 sq.; Charlevoix,
Hist, de la Nouv. Fr., vi. 68 ; "Kohl, Kitchi Qami, i. 85 sq.
4 Rel. des Jte., 1648, p. 74 sq.
6 E. H. Man, Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, y>.
134.
6 The Eev. R. H. Codrington in Trans, and Proc. Roy. Soc. of
Victoria, xvi. p. 136. The Banks Islanders are divided into two
exogamous intermarrying divisions with descent in the female line
(ib., p. 119 sq.), but these divisions seem not to possess totems.
TOTEMISM. 57
Social Aspect of Totemism, or the relation of the men of
a totem to each other and to men of other totems.
(1) All the members of a totem clan regard each other
as kinsmen or brothers and sisters, and are bound to help
and protect each other. 1 The totem bond is stronger than J
the bond of blood or family in the modern sense. This is
expressly stated of the clans of western Australia and of
north-western America, 2 and is probably true of all societies
where totemism exists in full force. Hence in totem tribes
every local group, being necessarily composed (owing to
exogamy) of members of at least two totem clans, is liable"'
to be dissolved at any moment into its totem elements by
the outbreak of a blood feud, in which husband and wife
must always (if the feud is between their clans) be arrayed
on opposite sides, and in which the children will be arrayed
against either their father or their mother, according as
descent is traced through the mother, or through the
father. 3 In blood feud the whole clan of the aggressor is *
responsible for his deed, and the whole clan of the aggrieved
is entitled to satisfaction. 4 Nowhere perhaps is this
solidarity carried further than among the Goajiros in
Colombia, South America. The Goajiros are divided into
1 James in Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John
Tanner, p. 313 ; P. Jones, Hist. Ojebway Indians, p. 138 ; Oeol.
Sur. of Canada, Hep. for 1878-79, p. 134b; H. Hale, The Iroquois
Book of Mites, p. 52; A. Hodgson, Letters from North America, i.
p. 246; Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 81 sq.
2 Grey, Journ. , ii. 231 ; Report of the Smithsonian Inst, for 1866,
p. 315; Petroff, Rep. on Alaska, p. 165. Other authorities speak
to the superiority of the totem bond over the tribal bond (Morgan,
League of the Iroquois, p. 82 ; Mayne, Brit. Columh., p. 257 ;
American Antiquarian, ii. p. 109).
3 Grey, Journals, ii. 230, 238 sq. ; Smithsonian Rep. , loo. cit.
* Fison and Howitt, 156 sq., 216 sq. Sometimes the two clans meet
and settle it by single combat between picked champions {Journ. and
Proc. R. Soc. N. S. Wales, 1882, p. 226).
58 TOTEMISM.
some twenty to thirty totem clans, with, descent in the
female line ; and amongst them, if a man happens to cut
himself with his own knife, to fall off his horse, or to
injure himself in any way, his family on the mother's side
immediately demand payment as blood-money from him.
I " Being of their blood, he is not allowed to spill it without
paying for it.'' His father's family also demands com-
pensation, but not so much. 1
J To kill a fellow-clansman is a heinous offence. In
Mangaia " such a blow was regarded as falling upon the
god [totem] himself ; the literal sense of " ta atua " [to
kill a member of the same totem clan] being god-striking
or god-killing." 2 |
^ (2) Exogamy. — Persons of the same totem may not
marry or have sexual intercourse with each other. The
Navajos believe that if they married within the clan
" their bones would dry up and they would die." 3 But
the penalty for infringing this fundamental law is not
merely natural; the clan steps in and punishes the offenders.
In Australia the regular penalty for sexual intercourse with
a person of a forbidden clan is death.
It matters not whether the woman be of the same local group or
has been captured in war from another tribe ; a man of the wrong
clan who uses her as his wife is hunted down and killed by his
clansmen, and so is the woman ; though in some cases, if they suc-
ceed in eluding capture for a certain time, the offence may be con-
doned. In the Ta-ta-thi tribe, New South "Wales, in the rare
cases which occur, the man is killed but the woman is only beaten
or speared, or both, till she is nearly dead ; the reason given for not
1 Simons in Proc. R. Geogr. Soc, Nov. 1885, p. 789 sq. Simons's
information is repeated by W. Sievers in his Reise in der Sierra Nevada
de Santa Marta (Leipsic, 1887), p. 255 sq.
2 Gill, Myths and Songs of the South Pacific, p. 38.
3 Bourke, Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona, p. 279.
TOTEMISM. 59
actually killing her being that she was probably coerced. Even in
casual amours the clan prohibitions are strictly observed ; any
violations of these prohibitions "are regarded with the utmost
abhorrence and are punished by death." J Sometimes the punish-
ment stops short at a severe beating or spearing. Amongst some of
the Victorian tribes, " should any sign of affection and courtship be
observed between those of 'one flesh,' the brothers or male relatives
of the woman beat her severely ; the man is brought before the
chief, and accused of an intention to fall into the same flesh, and is
severely reprimanded by the tribe. If he persists and runs away
with the object of his affections, they beat and ' cut his head all
over, ' and if the woman was a consenting party she is half killed. " 2
An important exception to these rules, if it is correctly reported,
is that of the Port Lincoln tribe, which is divided into two clans
Mattiri and Karraru, and it is said that though persons of the same
clan never marry, yet "they do not seem to consider less virtuous
connexions between parties of the same class [clan] incestuous." 3
Another exception, which also rests on the testimony of a single
witness, is found among the Kunandaburi tribe. 4 Again, of the
tribes on the lower Murray, lower Darling, &c, it is said that
though the slightest blood relationship is with them a bar to
marriage, yet in their sexual intercourse they are perfectly free, and
incest of every grade continually occurs. 6
In America the Algonkins consider it highly criminal
for a man to marry a woman of the same totem as himself,
and. they tell of cases where men, for breaking this rule,
have been put to death by their nearest relations. 6
Amongst the Ojibways also death is said to have been
formerly the penalty. 7 Amongst the Loucheux and Tinneh
the penalty is merely ridicule. " The man is said to have
1 Howitt in Rep. of the Smithsonian Inst, for 1883, p. 804 ; Fison
and Howitt, pp. 64-67, 289, 344 sq.; J. A. I., xiv. p. 351 sq.
2 Dawson, Austr. Abor., p. 28.
3 Nat. Tr. of S. Australia, p. 222.
4 Howitt in Ann. Hep. of the Smithsonian Inst, for 1883, p. 804.
5 Jour, and Proc. R. Soc. N. S. Wales, 1883, p. 24; Transactions
of the Royal Society of Victoria, vi. p. 16.
6 James in Tanner's Narr., p. 313.
7 Collect. Minnesota Eistor. Soc, v. p. 42.
i/
60 TOTEMISM.
married Lis sister, even though she may be from another
tribe and there be not the slightest connection by blood
between the two." 1
J In some tribes the marriage prohibition only extends to
a man's own totem clan ; he may marry a woman of any
totem but his own. This is the case with the Haidas of
the Queen Charlotte Islands, 2 and, so far as appears, the
Narrinyeri in South Australia, 3 and the western Aus-
tralian tribes described by Sir George Grey. 4 Oftener,
however, the prohibition includes several clans, in none of
which is a man allowed to marry. For such an exogamous
group of clans within the tribe it is convenient to have a
/ name ; we shall therefore call it a phratry (L. H. Morgan),
defining it as an exogamous division intermediate between
the tribe and the clan. The evidence goes to show that
in many cases it was originally a totem clan which has
undergone subdivision.
Examples. — The Creek Indians are at present divided into about
j twenty clans (Bear, Deer, Panther, "Wild-Cat, Skunk, Racoon,
| Wolf, Fox, Beaver, Toad, Mole, Maize, Wind, &c. ), and some clans
have become extinct. These clans 'are (or were) exogamous; a
Bear might not marry a Bear, &c. But further, a Panther was
prohibited from marrying not only a Panther but also a Wild-Cat.
Therefore the Panther and Wild-Cat clans together form a phratry.
Similarly a Toad might not marry a member of the extinct clan
Tchu-Kotalgi ; therefore the Toad and Tchu-Kotalgi clans formed
another phratry. Other of the Creek clans may have been included
in these or other phratries ; but the memory of such arrangements,
if they existed, has perished. 5 The Moquis of Arizona are divided
into at least twenty-three totem clans, which are grouped in ten
1 Ann. Rep. Smithson. Inst, for 1866, p. 315.
2 Geol. Sur. of Canada, Rep. for 1878-79, p. 134b.
3 Nat. Tr. of S. Austr., p. 12; J. A. I., xii. p. 46.
4 Grey, Journ., ii. p. 226.
Gatschet, Migration Legend of the, Creek Indians, p. 154 sj.
TOTEMISM. 61 «
phratries ; two of the phratries include three clans, the rest com-
prise two, and one clan (Blue-Seed-Grass) stands by itself. 1 The /
Chootaws were divided into two phratries, each of which included 1 '
four clans ; marriage was prohibited between members of the same
phratry, but members of either phratry could marry into any clan
of the other. 2 The Chickasas are divided into two phratries — (1)
the Panther phratry, which includes four clans, namely the Wild-
Cat, Bird, Fish, and Deer ; and (2) the Spanish phratry, which
includes eight clans, namely Racoon, Spanish, Royal, Hush-ko-ni,
Squirrel, Alligator, Wolf, and Blackbird. 3 The Seneca tribe of
the Iroquois was divided into two phratries, each including four
clans, the Bear, Wolf, Beaver, and Turtle clans forming one
phratry, and the Deer, Snipe, Heron, and Hawk clans forming the
other. Originally, as among the Choctaws, marriage was prohibited
within the phratry but was permitted with any of the clans of
the other phratry ; the prohibition, however, has now broken down,
and a Seneca may marry a woman of any clan but his own. Hence
phratries, in our sense, no longer exist among the Sonecas, though
the organization survives for certain religious and social purposes. 4 V
The Cayuga tribe of Iroquois had also two phratries and eight clans,
but one phratry included five clans (Bear, Wolf, Turtle, Snipe,
Eel) and the other included three (Deer, Beaver, Hawk). 6 The
Onondaga-Iroquois have also eight clans, unequally distributed into
two phratries, the Wolf, Turtle, Snipe, Beaver, and Ball forming
one phratry, and the Deer, Eel, and Bear clans forming the other. 6
Amongst the Tuscarora-Iroquois the Bear, Beaver, Great Turtle,
and Eel clans form one phratry ; and the Grey Wolf, Yellow Wolf,
Little Turtle, and Snipe form the other. 7 The AVyandots (Hurons)
are divided into four phratries, the Bear, Deer, and Striped Turtle
forming the first; the Highland Turtle, Black Turtle, and Smooth
Large Turtle the second ; Hawk, Beaver, and Wolf the third ;
and Sea Snake and Porcupine the fourth. 8
The phratries of the Thlinkets and the Mohegans deserve especial
attention, because each phratry bears a name which is also the
name of one of the clans included in it. The Thlinkets are divided
as follows : — Raven phratry, with clans Raven, Frog, Goose, Sea-
1 Bourke, Snake Dance, p. 336.
2 Archmologia Americana, Trans, and Collect. Americ. Antiq. Soc,
vol. ii. p. 109; Morgan, A. S., pp. 99, 162.
3 Morgan, A. S., pp. 99, 163. p 4 Morgan; op. cit., pp. 90, 9J »/.
5 Morgan, op. cit, p. 91. 6 Morgan, op. cit, p. 91 sq.
7 Morgan, op. cit, p. 93. 8 First Rep., p. 60.
62 TOTEMISM.
Lion, Owl, Salmon ; Wolf phratry, with clans Wolf, Bear, Eagle,
Whale, Shark, Auk. Members of the Raven phratry must marry
members of the Wolf phratry, and vice versa. 1 Considering the
prominent parts played in Thlinket mythology by the ancestors of
the two phratries, and considering that the names of the phratries
are also names of clans, it seems probable that the Raven and
Wolf were the two original clans of the Thlinkets, which afterwards
by subdivision became phratries. This was the opinion of the
Russian missionary Veniaminof, the best early authority on the
tribe. 2 Still more clearly do the Mohegan phratries appear to
have been formed by subdivision from clans. They are as follows : 3
— Wolf phratry, with clans Wolf, Bear, Dog, Opossum; Turtle
phratry, with clans Little Turtle, Mud Turtle, Great Turtle, Yellow
Eel; Turkey phratry, with clans Turkey, Crane, Chicken. Here
we are almost forced to conclude that the Turtle phratry was origin-
ally a Turtle clan which subdivided into a number of clans, each
of which took the name of a particular kind of turtle, while the
Yellow Eel clan may have been a later subdivision. Thus we get
a probable explanation of the origin of split totems ; they seem to
have arisen by the segmentation of a single original clan, which
had a whole animal for its totem, into a number of clans, each of
which took the name either of a part of the original animal or of a
subspecies of it. We may conjecture that this was the origin of
the Grey Wolf and the Yellow Wolf, and the Great Turtle and the
Little Turtle clans of the Tuscarora- Iroquois (see above, p. 61) ; the
Black Eagle and the White Engle, and the Deer and Deer-Tail clans
of the Kaws ; 4 and of the Highland Turtle (striped), Highland
Turtle (black), Mud Turtle, and Smooth Large Turtle clans of the
Wyandots (Hurons). 6 This conclusion, so far as concerns the
Hurons, is strengthened by the part played in Huron (and Iroquois)
mythology by the turtle, which is said to have received on its
back the first woman as she fell from the sky, and to have formed
and supported the earth by the accretion of soil on its back. 6
1 A. Krause, Die Tlinlcit-Indianer, 112, 220; Holmberg, op. cit.,
293, 313; Pinart in Bull. Soc. Anthrop. Paris, 7th Nov. 1872, p.
792 sq. ; Petroff, Rep. on Alaska, p. 165 sq.
2 Petroff, op. cit, p. 166. s Morgan, op. cit, 174.
4 Morgan, op. cit, p. 156. 5 First Rep., p. 59.
6 Ret des Jes., 1636, p. 101; Lafitau, Moeurs des Sauvages
Ameriquains, i. p. 94 ; Charlevoix, Hist, de la Nouv. Fr., vi. p. 147;
T. Dwight, Travels in New England and New 1'ork, iv. p. 180 sq.
Precedence was given to the Turtle clan among the Iroquois (the kindred
TOTEMISM. 63
This explanation of the origin of split totems is confirmed by the
custom of calling each member of a clan by a name which has some
reference to the common totem of the clan. Thus among the birth-
names x of boys in the Elk clan of the Omahas the following used to
be given to sons in order of their birth — Soft Horn, Yellow Horn,
Branching Horn, &c. Amongst the men's names in the same clan
are Elk, Standing Elk, White Elk, Big Elk, Dark Breast (of an
elk), Stumpy Tail (of an elk), &c. Amongst the women's names
in the same clan are Female Elk, Tail Female, &c. 2 Amongst the
names of men in the Black Shoulder (Buffalo) clan of the Omahas
are Black Tongue (of a buffalo), He that walks last in the herd,
Thick Shoulder (of a buffalo), &c. 3 And so with the names of
individual members of other clans. 4 The same custom of naming i
clansmen after some part or attribute of the clan totem prevails |
also among the Encounter Bay tribe in South Australia; a clan
totem of that tribe is the pelican, and a clansman may be called,
e.g., Pouch of a Pelican. 5 Clearly split totems might readily arise
from single families separating from the clan and expanding into
new clans, while they retained as clan names the names of their
individual founders, as White Elk, Pouch of a Pelican. Hence
such split totems as Bear's Liver, 6 Head of a Tortoise, Stomach of
a Pig (see above, p. 10); such taboos as those of the subclans of
the Omaha Black Shoulder clan (see above, p. 11); and such sub-
clans as the sections of the Omaha Turtle subclan, namely, Big
Turtle, Turtle that does not flee, Bed-Breasted Turtle, and Spotted
Turtle with red eyes. 7 Finally, Warren actually states that the
of the Hurons) (T. Dwight, op. cit., iv. p. 185; Zeisberger in H.
Hale, Tlie Iroquois Booh of Rites, p. 5in), the Delawares (Brinton,
The Lenape and their . Legends, p. 39; De Schweinitz, Life of Zeis-
berger, p. 79), and the Algonkins(Leland, Algoiiquin Legends of New
England, p. 51m) ; and Heckewelder (op. oil., p. 81) states generally
that the Turtle clan always takes the lead in the government of an
Indian tribe. In the Delaware mythology the turtle plays the same
part as in the Huron mythology (see above, p. 5).
1 "Two classes of names were in use, one adapted to childhood
and the other to adult life, which were exchanged at the proper period
in the same formal manner ; one being taken away, to use their ex-
pression, and the other bestowed in its place " (Morgan, A. S. , p. 79).
2 Third Rep., p. 227 sq. 3 /*., 232.
4 lb., 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248,
250 ; Morgan, A. S., p. 169m.
5 Nat. Tr. of S. Austr., p. 187.
6 P. Jones, Hist. Ojebway Ind., p. 138.
7 Third Rep., p. 240 sq.
64 TOTEMISM.
numerous Bear clan of the Ojibways'was formerly subdivided into
subclans, each of which took for its totem some part of the Bear's
body (head, foot, ribs, &c), but that these have now merged into
two, the common Bear and the Grizzly Bear. 1 The subdivision
of the Turtle (Tortoise) clan, which on this hypothesis has taken
place among the Tuscarora- Iroquois, is nascent among the Onon-
daga-Iroquois, for among them "the name of this clan is Hahnowa,
which is the general word for tortoise ; but the clan is divided into
two septs or subdivisions, the Hanyatengona, or Great Tortoise,
and the Nikahnowaksa, or Little Tortoise, which together are held
to constitute but one clan." 2
On the other hand, fusion of clans is known to have
taken place, as among the Haidas, where the Black Bear
and Fin- Whale clans have united ; 3 and the same thing has
happened to some extent among the Omahas and Osages. 4
We may also suspect fusion of clans wherever apparently
disconnected taboos are observed by the same clan, as, e.g.,
the prohibition to touch verdigris, charcoal, and the skin of
a cat (supra, p. 11 sq.). Fusion of clans would also explain
those totem badges which are said to be composed of parts
of different animals joined together. 5
In Australia the phratries are still more important than
in America. Messrs Howitt and Fison, who have done
so much to advance our knowledge of the social system of
the Australian aborigines, have given to these exogamous
divisions the name of classes ; but the term is objection-
able, because it fails to convey (1) that these divisions are
kinship divisions, and (2) that they are intermediate
divisions ; whereas the Greek term phratry conveys both
these meanings, and is therefore appropriate. 1
1 Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society, v. p. 49.
2 H. Hale, The Iroquois Book of Rites, p. 53 sq.
3 Geol. Sun. of Canada, Rep. for 1878-79, p. 134b.
4 Third Rep., p. 235 ; American Naturalist, xviii. p. 114
5 Acad., 27th Sept. 1884, p. 203.
TOTEMISM. 65
We have seen examples of Australian tribes in which
members of any clan are free to' marry members of any
clan but their own ; but such tribes appear to be excep-
tional. Often an Australian tribe is divided into two
(exogamous) phratries, each of which includes under it a
number of totem clans; and oftener still there are sub-
phratries interposed between the phratry and the clans,
each phratry including two subphratries. and the sub-
phratries including totem clans. We will take examples
of the former and simpler organization first.
The Turra tribe in Yorke Peninsula, South Australia, is divided
into two phratries, Wiltu (Eaglehavvk) and Miilta (Seal). The
Eaglehawk phratry includes ten totem clans (Wombat, Wallaby,
•j Kangaroo, Iguana, Wombat-Snake, Bandicoot, Black Bandicoot,
Crow, Rock Wallaby, and Emu); and the Seal phratry includes
.six (Wild Goose, Butterfish, Mullet, Schnapper, Shark, and Salmon).
The phratries are of course exogamous, but (as with the Choctaws,
Mohegan, and, so far as appears, all the American phratries) any
clan of the one phratry may intermarry with any clan of the other
phratry. 1 Again, the Wotjoballuk tribe in north-western Victoria
is divided into two phratries (Krokitch and Gamutch), each of
which includes three totem clans ; the rule of intermarriage is the
same as before. 2 The Ngarego and Theddora tribes in New South
Wales are divided into two phratries, Meriing (Eaglehawk) and
Yukembriik (Crow) ; and each phratry includes eight totem clans. 3
In Australia, as in America, we have an instance of a tribe with
its clans arranged in phratries, but with an odd clan unattached
to a phratry. This occurs in western Victoria, where there are
five totem clans thus arranged :
First phratry, . I (1) Lon g- Billecl Cockatoo clan.
1 J I (2) Pelican clan.
Second phratry, . j (3) Banksian Cockatoo clan.
* ( (4) Boa Snake clan.
(5) Quail clan.
1 Fison and Howitt, p. 285.
2 Howitt in Rep. of the Smithson. Inst, for 1883, p. 818.
3 J. A. I., xiii. p. 437m.
E
66
TOTEMISM.
Hero clans 1 and 2 may marry 3, 4, 5 ; 3 and 4 may marry 1, 2,
5; 5 may marry 1, 2, 3, 4. 1
But the typical Australian tribe is divided into two exogamous
pliratries; each of these phratries is subdivided into two sub-
phratries ; and these subphratries are subdivided into an indefinite
number of totem clans. The phratries being exogamous, it follows
that their subdivisions (the subphratries and clans) are so also.
The well-known Kamilaroi tribe in New South "Wales will serve
as an example. Its subdivisions are as follows : 2 —
Phratries.
Subphratries.
Totem Clans.
Dilbi. |
Kupathin. -J
Muri. 3 1
Kubi. I
Ipai. \
Kumbo. )
Kangaroo, Opossum, Bandicoot, Padi-
melon, Iguana, Black Duck, Eagle-
hawk, Scrub Turkey, Yellow- Fish,
Honey-Fish, Bream.
Emu, Carpet-Snake, Black Snake,
Red Kangaroo, Honey, Walleroo,
Frog, Cod-Fish.
In such tribes the freedom of marriage is still more curtailed.
A subphratry is not free to marry into either subphratry of the
other phratry ; each subphratry is restricted in its choice of partners
to one subphratry of the other phratry; Muri can only marry
Kumbo, and vice versa ; Kubi can only marry Ipai, and vice versa.
Hence (supposing the tribe to be equally distributed between the
phratries and subphratries), whereas under the two phratry and
clan system a man is free to choose a wife from half the women of
the tribe; under the phratry, subphratry, and clan system he is
restricted in his choice to one quarter of the women.
1 Dawson, Austr. Abor., p. 26 sq. 2 J. A. I., xii. 500.
3 The names of the subphratries here given are the names of the
male members of each. There is a corresponding female form for each,
formed by the addition of tha to the masculine. Thus Muri —
Matha (contracted for Muritha), Kubi— Kuhitha, Ipai— Ipatha,
Kumbo — Butha (contracted for Kumbatha) (Fison and Howitt, p.
37»). In a tribe of western Victoria the feminine termination is heear
(Dawson, Austr. Abor., p. 26) ; in a Queensland tribe it is an (Fison
and Howitt, p. 33) ; in some tribes it is un or gun (Ridley in
Brough Smyth, ii. p. 288). The tribe at "Wide Bay, Queensland,
appears to have five subphratries, with male and female names (Ridley,
loc. cit. ). In some tribes the male and female names of the sub-
phratries are distinct words (see J. A. I., xiii. pp. 300, 343, 345). In
describing the rules of marriage and descent these feminine forms or
names are for simplicity's sake omitted.
TOTEMISM. 67
The Kiabara tribe, south of Maryborough in Queensland, will
furnish another example i 1 —
Phratries.
Subphratries.
Totem Clans.
Dilebi (Flood-Water), j
Cubatine (Lightning), -j
Baring (Turtle).
Turowine (Bat).
Bulcoin (Carpet-Snake)
Bundah (Native Cat).
|:
Here Baring marries Buudah, and Turowine marries Bulcoin,
and vice versa.
A remarkable feature of the Australian social organiza-
tion is that divisions of one tribe have their recognized
equivalents in other tribes, whose languages, including the
names for the tribal divisions, are quite different. A
native who travelled far and wide through Australia stated
that " he was furnished with temporary wives by the
various tribes with whom he sojourned in his travels ; that
his right to these women was recognized as a matter of
course ; and that he could always ascertain whether they
belonged to the division into which he could legally marry,
' though the places were 1000 miles apart, and the langu-
ages quite different.' " 2 Again, it is said that " in cases of
distant tribes it can be shown that the class divisions cor-
respond with each other, as for instance in the classes of
the Flinders river and Mitchell river tribes ; and these
tribes are separated by 400 miles of country, and by many
intervening tribes. But for all that, class corresponds to
class in fact and in meaning and in privileges, although
the name may be quite different and the totems of each
dissimilar." 3 Particular information, however, as to the
1 J. A. I., xiii. 336, 341.
2 Fison and Howitt, p. 53 sq. ; cf. Brough Smyth, i. p. 91.
3 J. A. I., xiii. p. 300.
68 T0TEM1SM.
equivalent divisions is very scanty. 1 Hence it often
happens that husband and wife speak different languages
and continue to do so after marriage, neither of them ever
thinking of changing his or her dialect for that of the
other. 2 Indeed, in some tribes of western Victoria a man
is actually forbidden to marry a wife who speaks the same
dialect as himself ; and during the preliminary visit which
each pays to the tribe of the other neither is permitted to
speak the language of the tribe whom he or she is visit-
ing. 3 This systematic correspondence between the inter-
marrying divisions of distinct and distant tribes, with the
rights which it conveys to the members of these divisions,
points to sexual communism on a scale to which there is
1 For a few particulars see Fison and Howitt, 38, 40 ; Brough
Smyth, ii. 288; /. A. I., xiii. 304, 306, 346, xiv. 348 sq., 351.
2 Nat. Tr. of S, Austr., p. 249.
3 Dawson, Austr. Abor., 27, 30 sq. ; of. Fison and Howitt, p. 276.
The custom observed in some places of imposing silence on women for
a long time after marriage may possibly be a relic of the custom of
marrying women of a different tongue [of. Haxthausen, Transkaukasia,
i. 200 sq. ; ib., ii. 23 ; Krauss, Siidsl., p. 450; Hahn, Albanes. Sttid., i.
147). Hence too perhaps the folk-lore incident of the silent bride (of.
Grimm, Kinder und Hausindhrchen, No. 3; Crane, Popular Italian
Tales, p. 54 sq. ). In a modern Greek folk-tale which presents some
points of resemblance to the legend of Peleus and Thetis the silent
bride is a Nereid ; hence Schmidt conjectures with great probability
that the expression of Sophocles, quoted by the scholiast on Pindar,
Nem., iv. 60 (a<t>66yyovs yd/xovs), means that Thetis was silent during
her married life (B. Schmidt, Volksleben der Neugriechen, p. 116).
Amongst the Caribs the language of the men differed to some extent
from that of the women (see Rochefort, Hist, des lies Antilles, p. 350;
LaBorde, " Relation de l'origine, &c. , des Caraibes," in Rec. de divers
voyages faits en Afr. et en I'Amer., Paris, 1684, pp. 4, 39; Humboldt,
Reise in die Aequinoctial-Gegenden des Neuen Continents, iv. 204 sq.
(Hauff's German trans.); Im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana,
186 ; Lucien de Rosny, Les lies Antilles,^23, 261). So amongst the
Mbayas in Paraguay (Azara, Voyages daAsl'AmSrique Meridionale,
ii. p. 106). In the Booandik tribe, Soutlfciustralia, persons con-
nected by marriage talk to each other in a Tow whining voice and
use words different from those in common use (Mrs James Smith, The
Booandik Tribe, p. 5).
TOTEMISM. 69
perhaps no parallel elsewhere, certainly not in North
America, where marriage is always within the tribe,
though outside the clan. 1 But even in Australia a man
is always bound to marry within a certain kinship group ;
that group may. extend across the whole of Australia, but
nevertheless it is exactly limited and defined. If endo-
gamy is used in the sense of prohibition to marry outside
of a certain kinship group, whether that group be exclusive
of, inclusive of, or identical with the man's own group,
then marriage among the totem societies of Australia,
America, and India is both exogamous and endogamous ;
a man is forbidden to marry either within his own clan
or outside of a certain kinship group. 2
Native Australian traditions as to the origin of these various
tribal divisions, though small credit can be given to them, deserve
to be mentioned. The Dieri tribe has a legend that mankind
married promiscuously till Muramura (Good Spirit) ordered that
the tribe should be divided into branches which were to be called
after objects animate and inanimate (dogs, mice, emus, iguanas,
rain, &c. ), the memhers of each division being forbidden to inter-
marry. 3 The tribes of western Victoria, whose totems are long-
billed cockatoo, pelican, banksian cockatoo, boa snake, and quail,
say that their progenitor was a long-billed cockatoo who had »
banksian cockatoo to wife ; their children, taking their clan from
their mother, were Banksian Cockatoos ; but, being forbidden by
the laws of consanguinity to marry with each other, they had to
introduce "fresh flesh," which could only be done by marriage
with strangers ; so they got wives from a distance, and hence the
introduction of the pelican, snake, and quail totems. 4
(3) Rules of Descent. — In a large majority of the totem
tribes at present known to us in Australia and North
1 First Rep. , p. 63. Between North-American tribes " there were
no intermarriages, no social intercourse, no intermingling of any kind,
except that of mortal strife " (Dodge, Our Wild Indians, p. 45).
2 Of. First Rep., loc. cit.\ As. Quart. Rev., July 1886, p. 89 sq.
3 Nat. Tr. o/S. Austr., p. 260 sq. 4 Dawson, Austr. Abor., p. 27.
70 TOTEMISM.
America descent is in the female line, i.e., the children
belong to the totem clan of their mother, not to that of
their father. In Australia the proportion of tribes with
female to those with male descent is as four to one ; in
America it is between three and two to one. The table
which follows is a very rough one. For instance, the
western Australians, given as one tribe, no doubt include
many ; and it is possible that the western Victorian tribes
given on Dawson's authority may include some tribes
mentioned separately by other authorities.
Table of Male and Female Descent.
Australia. — Female Descent. — 1, "West Australians (Grey,
Journ., ii. 226; Brough Smyth, ii. 267); 2 and 3, Ngarego and
Theddora (/. A. I., xiii. 437); 4, Wakelbura (J. A. L, xii. 43);
5, Kunandaburi (ib.); 6, Mukjarawaint (ib.); 7, Yerrunthully
(/. A. 1., xiii. 339, 342); 8, Koogo-Bathy (ib., 339, 343); 9,
Kombinegherry (ib., 340, 343); 10, Wonghibon (Id., xiv. 348,
350); 11, Barknji (ib., 349, 350); 12, Ta-ta-thi (ib.); 13, Eeramin
(ib.); 14, Wiraijuri (Id., xiii. 436); 15, Wolgal (ib., 437); 16,
"Wotjoballuk (Smithson. Sep. for 1883, p. 818); 16-26, western
Victorian tribes, ten in number (Dawson, Aust. Ab., 1 sq., 26) ; 27,
Wa-imbio (Fison and Howitt, 291 ; Brough Smyth, i. 86) ; 28,
Port Lincoln tribe (Nat. Tr. of S. Aust, 222); 29, Kamilaroi
(Fison and Howitt, 43, 68) ; 30, Mount Gambier tribe (ib., 34) ; 31,
Darling River tribe (ib.); 32, Mackay tribe, Queensland (ib.).
Male Descent.— 1, Turra (Fison and Howitt, 285; J. A. I., xii.
44); 2, Narrinyeri (J. A. 1., xii. 44, 508; Nat. Tr. of S. Aust.,
p. 12); 3, Kulin(/. A. I., xii. 44, 507); 4, Aldolinga (/. A. I., xii.
506) ; 5, "Wolgal (ib.) ; 6, Ikula— partly male (J. A. I., xii. 509) ;
7, Kiabara (J. A. I., xiii. 336, 341); 8, Mycoolon (J. A. I., xiii.
339, 343) ; a large tribe or group of tribes (no names given) to the
south of the Gulf of Carpentaria (/. A. 1. , xii. 504). The Gourn-
diteh-Mara have male descent, but among them the rule of exogamy
has disappeared (Fison and Howitt, p. 275 sq. ).
"With regard to the Kurnai in Victoria, after all the explanations
of Messrs Fison and Howitt, it remains uncertain whether descent
in that tribe is female or male. The existence of sex totems among
TOTEMISM. 71
them (which Messrs Fison and Howitt took as evidence that descent
was "male as to boys, female as to girls") proves nothing. The
tribe is organized in local districts, and apparently a man may take
a wife neither from his father's nor his mother's district (Fison and
Howitt, p. 226 sq.). How deceitful inferences from local prohibi-
tions may be appears from Dawson's account of the western Vic-
torian tribes. Among these tribes a, man may not marry into
his father's tribe (which seems to be a local division). From this
one might infer that descent was male. But in addition to these
local exoganious divisions, there are among these tribes totem clans,
and children belong to their mother's clan and may not marry into
it. Therefore in these tribes descent is after all female (Dawson,
Aust. Abor., p. 26).
America. — Female, Descent. — 1, Thlinkets (A. Krause, Die
Tlinket-Ind. , p. 231 sq.); 2, British Columbians (Mayne, Br.
Columb., 258); 3, Haidas (Geol. Surv. of Canada, Hep. for
1878-79, p. 134b); 4, Loucheux (Smithson. Rep. for 1866, p. 315);
5, Kutchin (Dall, Alaska, p. 197); 6, Iroquois (Morgan, League of
the Iroquois, 83; Id., A. S., 64); 7, "Wyandots or Hurons (First
Report, 60; Morgan, A. S., 153); 8, Bella Coola Indians, British
Columbia (Original-Mittheil. , 4c, i. p. 186); 9-17, Creeks, Semi-
noles, Hitchetes, Yoochees, Alabamas, Coosatees, Natchez (Gatschet,
Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, p. 153 ; Morgan, A. S., 160
sq. ; Archwologia Americana, ii. p. 109); 18, 19, Choctaws,
Cherokees (Archmol. Amer., loc. cit. ; Morgan, op. cit., 162, 164)
20, Lenape or Delawares (Morgan, op. cit, 166, 172); 21, 22
Otoes and Missouris (Morgan, op. cit., 156); 23, Mandaus (Morgan
op. cit., 158); 24, Minnitarees (ib., 159); 25, Upsarokas or Crow:
(ib., 159); 26, Chickasas (ib., 163); 27, Menominces (ib., 170)
28, Munsees (ib., 173); 29, Mohegans (ib., 174) ; 30, Pequots (ib.)
31, Narragansetts (ib.); 32, Moquis (Bourke, Snake Dance, p. 230)
33, Goajiros . (Proc. Roy. Geogr. Soc, December 1885, p. 790)
34, Arawaks (Brett, Ind. Tr. of Guiana, 98 ; Im Thurn, Among
the Indians of Guiana, p. 185).
Male Descent— 1, Omahas (Third Rep., 225; Morgan, op. cit,
155); 2, Punkas (Morgan, loc. cit); 3, Iowas (Morgan, 156); 4,
Kaws (ib.); 5, Winnebagoes (Id., 157); 6, Ojibways (Id., 166;
Collect. Minnesota Eistor. Soc, v. p. 42); 7, Pottawatamies (Morgan,
op. cit, 167); 8, Miamis (Id., 168); 9, Shawnees (Id., 169); 10,
Sauks and Foxes (Id., 170); 11, Blood Blackfeet (Id., 171); 12,
Piegan Blackfeet (ib.); 13, Abenakis (Id., 175).
As to the totem tribes of Africa, desceut among the Damaras is
72 TOTEMISM.
in the female line, 1 and there are traces of female kin among the
Beehuanas. 2 Among the Bakalai property descends in the male
line, but this is not a conclusive proof that descent is so reckoned ; 3
all the clans in the neighbourhood of the Bakalai have female
descent both for blood and property. 4 In Bengal, where there is a
considerable body of totem tribes, Mr Bisley says that after careful
search he and his coadjutors have found no tribe with female
descent, and only a single trace of it in one. 5 Colonel Dalton,
however, states that the Kasias in Bengal are divided into exogam-
ous tribes with descent in the female line ; and with regard to this
people he mentions, on the authority of Colonel Yule, that " some
individuals have a superstitious objection to particular kinds of
food, and will not allow such to be brought into their houses. Is
not this superstition, " asks Colonel Dalton very properly, "con-
nected with their tribal divisions as amongst the Oraons of Chota
Nagpur and the Beehuanas of Africa, who cannot eat the animal
after which their tribe is named?" At least if this is not totemism,
it is uncommonly like it. 6 In the exogamous clans or " mother-
hoods " of the Garos in Bengal descent is also in the female line,
and some of the Garo legends point to totemism. 7 It is remarkable
either that these examples should have been overlooked by Mr
Risley and his coadjutors or that both these tribes should have
exchanged female for male kinship within the fourteen 8 years
which elapsed between the publication of Colonel Dalton's work and
Mr Risley's paper. With regard to the other undoubtedly totem
tribes of Bengal (Oraons, &c), we may take it on Mr Bisley's
authority that descent is in the male line.
In the Australian tribal organization of two phratries,
1 Anderson, Lake Ngami, p. 221.
2 Casalis, TJie Basutos, p. 179 sq.
3 Because property may descend in the male, while kinship is
traced in the female line, as with the natives of western Australia
(Grey, Journals, ii. 230, 232 sq. ) and some Victorian tribes (Dawson,
Austral. Aborigines, 1, 26). In Mota, Banks Islands, where kinship
is traced in the female line, landed property descends in the female
line (i.e., to sister's children), but personal property in the male line
(i.e., to sons); but the practice is for the sons to redeem the land
with the personal property. See the Rev. E. H. Codrington in
Trans, and Proc. Roy. Soc. of Victoria, xvi. pp. 119 sq.
4 Du Chaillu, Journey to Ashango Land, 429 ; Id. , Equat. Afr. ,
308 sq. 6 As. Quart. Rev., July 1886, p. 94.
6 Dalton, Ethnol. ofBeng. , p. 56 sq. 7 Dalton, op. cit. , 60, 63.
Or seven years, if we accept the statements in the Indian Antiquary
viii. (1879) p. 205 ; but these may be borrowed from Colonel Dalton.
TOTEMISM.
73
four subphratries, and totem clans, there occurs a peculiar
form of descent of which no plausible explanation has yet
been offered. It seems that in all tribes thus organized
the children are born into the subphratry neither of their
father nor of their mother, and that descent in such cases
is either female or male, according as the subphratry into
which the children are born is the companion subphratry
of their mother's or of their father's subphratry. In the
former case we have what may be called indirect female
descent ; in the latter, indirect male descent. But it is
only in the subphratry that descent is thus indirect. In
the totem clan it is always direct ; the child belongs to
the clan either of its mother or of its father. Thus in the
typical Australian organization, descent, whether female
or male, is direct in the phratry, indirect in the sub-
phratry, and direct in the clan. To take examples, the
following is the scheme of descent, so far as the phratries
and subphratries are concerned, in the Kamilaroi.
Phratries.
Male.
Marries
Children are
Dilbi. [
Kupathin. J
Muri.
Kubi.
Ipai.
Kumbo.
Kumbo.
Ipai.
Kubi.
Muri.
Ipai.
Kumbo.
Muri.
Kubi.
This is an example of indirect female descent, because
the children belong to the companion subphratry of their
mother, not to the companion subphratry of their father.
But in the totems the female descent is direct ; e.g., if
the father is Muri-Kangaroo and the mother is Kumbo-
Emu, the children will be Ipai-Emu; if the mother is
Kumbo-Bandicoot the children will be Ipai-Bandicoot. 1
1 Fison and Howitt, p. 37 sq.; J. A. I., xiii. 335, 341, 344.
74
TOTEMISM.
The following is the scheme of descent in the Kiabara
tribe : J —
Phratries.
Male.
Marries
Children are
Dilehi. j
Cubatine. 4
Baring.
Turowine.
Bulcoin.
Bundah.
Bundah.
Bulcoin.
Turowine.
Baring.
Turowine.
Baring.
Bundah.
Bulcoin.
This is an example of indirect male descent, because the
children belong to the companion subphratry of their
father, not to the companion subphratry of their mother.
We have no information as to the totems, but on the
analogy of indirect female descent we should expect them
to be taken from the father. This at any rate is true of a
large tribe or group of tribes to the south of the Gulf of
Carpentaria ; their rules of marriage and descent, so far as
concerns the subphratries, are like those of the Kiabara,
and the totems (which at the lower Leichhardt river are
the names of fish) are inherited from father to son. 2
In some Australian tribes sons take their totem from
their father and daughters from their mother. Thus the
Dieri in South Australia are divided into two phratries,
each of which includes under it sixteen totem clans
(Caterpillar, Mullet, Dog, Eat, Kangaroo, Frog, Crow,
&c.) ; 8 and if a Dog man marries a Eat woman, the sons
of this marriage are Dogs and the daughters are Eats. 4
The Ikula (Morning Star)' 1 tribe, at the head of the Great
Australian Bight, has, with certain exceptions, the same
1 J. A. I., xiii. 336, 341.
2 J. A. I., xii. 504. Mr Howitt, to whom we are indebted for this
information, omits to give the names of the tribe and its subdivisions.
s /. A. I., xii. 500.
4 Letter of Mr S. Gason to the present writer.
TOTEMISM.
75
rule of descent. 1 The tribe includes four totem clans,
namely, Budera (Root), Kura (Native Dog), Budu
(Digger), and Wenung (Wombat). The rules of marriage
and descent are as follows : —
Male.
Marries
Children are
(m.) 2 Budera... \
(f.) Kura
(m.) Budera; (f.) Kura.
(m. ) and (f. ) Budera.
(m. ) Kuru ; (f . ) Budera.
(m.) and (f.) Kura.
(m.) Budu; (f.) "Wenung.
(m.) Wenung; (f.) Budu.
or
(f. ) Wenung
or
(f.)Budu
(f.) Budu
Here, in all cases except two, the son takes his totem
from his father, the daughter from her mother. The ex-
ceptions are where Budera (m.) marries Wenung (f.), and
where Kura (m.) marries Budu (f.) ; in both which cases
the children, whether sons or daughters, take their father's
totem. This, combined with the fact that no male of
Budu or Wenung is allowed to marry a female of Budera
or Kura, points, as Mr Howitt says, to a superiority of
Budera and Kura over Budu and Wenung.
It is obvious that the totems of the Dieri and Ikula are
not sex totems. A sex totem is confined to members of
one sex j whereas all the totems of the Dieri and Ikula
are common to both men and women. It is of these
totems (and not of sex totems) that it may be said in the
words of Messrs Fison and Howitt, that descent is " male
as to boys, female as to girls." 3
1 J. A. I., xii. 509. 2 m. =male; f. =female.
3 /. A. I., xii. 45. Tha opposite rule of descent (sons belong to
76 TOTEMISM.
Besides the tribes whose line of descent is definitely
fixed in the female or male line, or, as with the Dieri and
Ikula, half-way between the two, there are a number of
tribes which are wavering between female and male
descent ; amongst whom, in other words, a child may be
entered in either his mother's or his father's clan. After
the researches of Bachofen, M'Lennan, and Morgan, we
may be sure that such a wavering marks a transition from
female to male descent, and not conversely. Among the
Haidas, children regularly belong to the totem clan of
their mother ; but in very exceptional cases, when the
clan of the father is reduced in numbers, the newly born
child may be given to the father's sister to suckle. It is
then spoken of as belonging to the paternal aunt, and is
counted to its father's clan. 1 Amongst the Dela wares
descent is regularly in the female line ; but it is possible to
transfer a child to its father's clan by giving it one of the
names which are appropriated to the father's clan. 2 A
similar practice prevails with the Shawnees, except that
with them male descent is the rule and transference to the
mother's clan (or any other clan) by naming is the excep-
tion. 3 In the Hervey Islands, South Pacific, the parents
settled beforehand whether the child should belong to the
father's or mother's clan. The father usually had the pre-
ference, but sometimes, when the father's clan was one
which was bound to furnish human victims from its ranks,
the mother had it adopted into her clan by having the
the mother's, daughters to the father's family) is observed in the
islands of Leti, Moa, and Lakor (Riedel, op. cit., pp. 384, 392).
1 Oeol. Surv. of Canada, Rep. for 1878-79, p. 134b.
2 Morgan, A. S., p. 172 sq.
3 lb., 169.
TOTEMISM. 77
name of her totem pronounced over it. 1 In Samoa at the
birth of a child the father's totem was usually prayed to
first ; but if the birth was tedious, the mother's totem was
invoked ; and whichever happened to be invoked at the
moment of birth was the child's totem for life. 2
These modes of effecting the change of kin touched only
the children ; others affected the children through the
mother ; they were transferred to their father's clan by the
previous transference of the mother. This, as M'Lennan
has observed, was perhaps the intention and doubtless must
have been the effect of the custom in Guinea of dedicating
one wife to the husband's Bossum or god. 3 The transfer-
ence of the wife to the husband's clan seems to have been
the intention of smearing bride and bridegroom with each
other's blood. 4 Amongst some of the totem clans of
Bengal the bride is transferred to the husband's clan by
ceremoniously eating or drinking with him. 5 Another
mode is to purchase the woman and her offspring.
1 Gill, Myths and Songs of the South Pacific, p. 36.
2 Turner, Samoa, p. 78 sq. The child might thus be transferred
to a clan which was that neither of his father nor of his mother (see
above, p. 55).
3 M'Lennan, Patriarchal Theory, 235 sq. ; Bosman's " Guinea'' in
Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels, xvi. 420.
4 Dalton, Eth. ofBeng., p. 220. In some parts of New Guinea bride
and bridegroom draw blood from each other's foreheads (S. Miiller,
Reizen en Onderzoekingen in den Indischen Archipel, i. p. 105). In
Bengal the ceremony appears to have usually degenerated into smearing
each other with red lead (Dalton, op. cit, 160, 194, 216, 253, 319).
The blood of animals, when used for this purpose, as by the Dyaks,
may be a substitute for that of the bride and bridegroom ; possibly it
may be the blood of the totem (Perelaer, Ethnogr. Beschrijv. der
Dajaks, p. 52 ; Tijdschrift v. Indisehe Taal- land- en Volkenkunde,
xxv. (1879), p. 116; Ausland, 16th June 1884, p. 469; Journals of
James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, i. p. 2Q4 ; Carl Bock, Read-
Hunters of Borneo, p. 222).
5 Dalton, op. cit, 193, 216; cf. Lewin, Wild Races of South-
Eastern India, 177 sq.
78 TOTEMISM.
Amongst the Banyai on the Zambesi, if the husband gives
nothing, the children of the marriage belong to the wife's
family ; but if he gives so many cattle to his wife's
parents the children are his. 1 In the Watubela Islands
between New Guinea and Celebes a man may either pay
for his wife before marriage, or he may, without paying, live
as her husband in her parents' house, working for her and
her parents. In the former case the children belong to
him ; in the latter they belong to his wife's family, but he
may acquire them subsequently by paying the price. 2 So
in Sumatra. 8 Similarly in some Californian tribes, the
husband must live with his wife's family and work for
them till he has paid the full price for her and her
children ; the children of a wife who has not been paid
for are regarded as bastards, and treated with contempt. 4
The couvade or custom in accordance with which the
husband takes to his bed and is treated as an invalid when
his wife has given birth to a child, is perhaps a fiction
intended to transfer to the father those rights over the
children which, under the previous system of mother-kin,
had been enjoyed by 1 the mother alone. 6 The same may
possibly be the intention of the apparently widespread
1 Livingstone, Travels in S. Afr. , 622 sq. ; cf. M 'Lennan, Patri-
archal Theory, 324 sq.
2 Eiedel, De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Papua en
Selebes, 205 sq.
3 Maraden, Hist, of Sumatra, 257 sq. ; Schreiber, Die Battas in
ihrem Verhdltniss zu den Malaien von Sumatra, p. 34 ; Junghuhn,
Die Battalander auf Sumatra, ii. 131 sq.
4 Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, i. 350.
5 This is the view of Baehofen, Mutterrecht, 255 sq. ; Giraud-
Teulon, Les origines du manage et de la famille, 138 sq. ; Post, Die
Anfange des Stoats- und Rechtslebens, 18; and (with some limita-
tions) Zmigrodzki, Die Mutter bei den VoUeern des arischen Stammes
270.
TOTEMISM. 79
custom of men dressing as women and women as men at
marriage. Thus in the Greek island of Cos the bridegroom
was attired as a woman when he received his bride. 1 In
Central Africa a Masai man dresses as a girl for a month
after marriage. 2 Argive brides wore false beards when
they slept with their husbands. 3 The Alsatian custom of
men dressing as women and women as men at the vintage
festival is clearly part of an old marriage ceremony. 4 But
perhaps all these mummeries are to be otherwise explained.
Lastly, the transference of the child to the father's clan
may be the object of a ceremony observed by the Todas
in southern India. When the wife has gone seven months
with her first child she retires with her husband to the
forest, where, at the foot of a tree, she receives from her
husband a bow and arrows. She asks him, " What is the
name of your bow ? " each clan apparently having a dif-
ferent name for its bow. The question and answer are
repeated three times. She then deposits the bow and
arrows at the foot of the tree. The pair remain on the
spot all night, eating a meal in the evening and another in
the morning before they return home. 6
As a'rule, perhaps, members of the same totem clan do not eat
each other. To this, however, there are large exceptions. The
Kurnai and Maneroo observe the rule, eating their slain enemies
but not their slain friends. 6 But tribes about the Gulf of Carpen-
1 Plutarch, Qu. Or., 58.
2 J. Thomson, Through Masai Land, 442.
3 Plutarch, De mul. virt. , 4.
4 Mannhardt, Der Baumkultus, 314. For forms of marriage as
means of communicating fertility to the fields, cf. ib., 480 sq. ; Id. ,
Mythol. Forsch., 340; Wilken in De Indische Gids, June 1884, pp.
958, 962.
5 Marshall, Travels Among the Todas, 214 sq. The Todas have
male descent for themselves, but retain female descent for their sacred
cattle {ib., 132). 6 Fison and Howitt, 214, 218, 223 sq.
80 TOTEMISM.
taria after a battle eat their slain friends but not their enemies; and
amongst them children, when they die, are eaten. 1 Some Victorian
tribes kill their new-born children, eat them, and give them to their
elder children to eat, believing that the latter will thus possess the
strength of the babes in addition to their own. 2 In some parts of
New South Wales it was the custom for the firstborn child of every
woman to be eaten by the tribe as part of a religious ceremony. 3
The eating of aged relations 4 is intelligible on the principle that
" the life is not allowed to go out of the family. " Some of the Vic-
torian tribes, who ate their relations but not their enemies nor
members of a different tribe, asserted that they did so, not to
gratify their appetites, but only as a symbol of respect and regret
for the dead. They only ate the bodies of relations who had died
by violence. 6 The Dieri have exact rules according to which they
partake of the flesh of dead relations ; the mother eats of her chil-
dren and the children eat of their mother ; but the father does not
eat of his offspring, nor the offspring of their father. 6 This custom
points to the time when the Dieri had female kinship, when there-
fore the father, as a member of a different tribe, had no right to
partake of his child. The eating of dead relations is parallel to
the custom of smearing the person with the juices which exude from
their decaying corpses. 7 The object of these and similar ceremonies
(see above, p. 45 sq. ) is to keep the life, regarded as incarnate in
the body and blood of the kinsmen, within the circle of the kin.
Hence in some tribes at circumcision boys are laid on »• platform,
formed by the living bodies of the tribesmen, 8 and when the tooth
is knocked out they are seated on the shoulders of men on whose
breast the blood flows and is not wiped away. 9 The blood of the
tribe is not allowed to be spilt on the ground, but is received on
the bodies of tribesmen. Bleeding is a native Australian cure for
headache, &c. ; but in performing the operation they are very careful
1 /. A. I., xiii. 283. 2 Trans. Bthn. Soc, new series, i. 289.
3 Brongh Smyth, ii. 311.
1 For examples, see Journals of James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak,
i. p. 209; Garcilasso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas, I.
i. 12; Riedel, o#. cit., p. 267; Herodotus, iv. 26; Mela, II. i. 9.
6 Dawson, Austr. Abor., 67.
6 Nat. Tr. of S. Australia, p. 274.
7 Fison and Howitt, 243 sq. ; Riedel, op. cit., p. 308.
8 Nat. Tr. of S. Austr., 230; Brough Smyth, i. 75«; Eyre,
Journals, ii. p. 335.
9 Collins, Account of the English Colony of N. S. W., London,
1798, p. 580.
TOTEMISM. 81
not to spill any of the blood on the ground, but sprinkle it on
each other. 1 Similarly when bleeding is done as a means of pro-
ducing rain, the blood is made to flow on men, not on the ground. 2
Another form of transferring the blood, i.e., the life of the kin, is
seen in an Australian funeral ceremony; the relations gash them-
selves over the corpse till it and the grave are covered with their
blood ; this is said to strengthen the dead man and enable him
to rise in another country. 3 Among some South American tribes
the bones of deceased relations are ground into powder, mixed
with a liquid, and so swallowed. 4
When a North American tribe is on the march, the members of
each totem clan camp together, and the clans are arranged in a
fixed order in camp, the whole tribe being arranged in a great
circle or in several concentric circles. 5 When the tribe lives in
settled villages or towns, each clan has its separate ward. 6
The clans of the Osages are divided into war clans and peace clans ;
when they are out on the buffalo hunt, they camp on opposite sides
of the tribal circle ; and the peace clans are not allowed to take
animal life of any kind ; they must therefore live on vegetables
unless they can obtain meat in exchange for vegetables from the
war clans. 7 Members of the same clan are buried together and
apart from those of other clans; hence the remains of husband
and wife, belonging as they do to separate elans, do not rest
together. 8 It is remarkable that among the Thlinkets the body
1 Angas, Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand,
i. 110 sq.
2 Nat. Tr. of S. Aust., 111.
" Brough Smyth, ii. 274; Grey, Journ., ii. 332; J. A. I., xiii.
134 sq.
4 J. G. Miiller, Gesch. der Amerik. Urreligionen, 289 sq. ; A. R.
Wallace, Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, p. 498. Artemisia
drank the ashes of Mausolus (Aulus Genius, x. 18 ; Valerius Maxi-
mus, iv. 6, 5). On the question of American cannibalism, cf. Miiller,
op. cit., p. 144 sq. ; R. I. Dodge, Hunting Grounds of tlie Great
West, p. 420.
6 First Rep., 64; Third Rep., 219 sq. ; American Naturalist,
xviii. p. 113 sq.
6 Gatschet, Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, 154; Bourke,
Snake Dance, 229; Acad., 27th Sept. 1884, p. 203.
7 The Bev. J. Owen Dorsey in American Naturalist, xviii. p. 113.
8 Adair, Hist. Amer. Ind., 183 sq.; Morgan, A. S., 83 sq. ; Brinton,
The Lenape and their Legends, 54 ; Id. , Myths of the New World,
87ra ; A. Hodgson, Letters from North America, i. p. 259 ; Dalton,
Eth. of Beng., 56 ; cf. Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage
in Early Arabia, 315 sq.
F
82 TOTEMISM.
must always be carried to the funeral pyre and burned by men of
another totem, 1 and the presents distributed on these occasions by
the representatives of the deceased must always be made to men
of a different clan. 2
Here we must revert to the religious side of totemism,
in order to consider some facts which have emerged from
the study of its social aspect. "We have seen that some
phratries, both in America and Australia, bear the names
of animals ; 3 and in the case of the Thlinkets and Mohegans
we have seen reason to believe that the animals which
give their names to the phratries were once clan totems.
The same seems to hold of the names of the Australian
phratries, Eaglehawk, Crow, and Seal, or at least of the
two former. For Eaglehawk and Crow are clan totems
in other tribes, and are, besides, important figures in
Australian mythology.
Eaglehawk and Crow, as names of phratries, " extended over a
large part of Victoria and over the greater part of the extreme west
of New South "Wales." 4 They are clan totems of the Dieri in
South Australia, 5 the Mukjarawaint in western Victoria, 6 and the
Ta-ta-thi and the Keramiu tribes in New South "Wales. 7 The
eaglehawk is besides a clan totem of the Kamilaroi in New Soutli
"Wales, 8 the Mycoolon in Queensland, 9 the Barinji in New South
"Wales, 10 and the Kuinmurbura in Queensland. 11 The crow is
further a clan totem of the Turra tribe, 12 and the Mount Gambier
tribe in South Australia, 13 the Kunandabiiri in Queensland, 14 and
1 Holmberg, op. tit., 324.
2 Krause, Die TlinMt-Indianer, 223.
3 As among the CMckasas, Thlinkets, and Mohegans in America;
and the Turra, Ngarego, and Theddora tribes in Australia (see
above, pp. 61 sq., 65). The subphratries of the Kiabara also bear
animal names. See above, p. 67.
4 J. A. I., xiii. 437, n. 1; Fison and Howitt, 322.
6 J. A. I., xii. 500; Id., xiii. 338. 6 Id., xii. 45.
7 Id., xiv. 349. 8 Id., xii. 500, xiii. 335.
'■> Id., xiii. 303, 339. 10 Id., xiv. 348.
11 Id., xiii. 336, 344. 12 Id., xii. 45.
13 Fison and Howitt, 168 14 /. A. I., xii. 45, xiii. 338.
TOTEMISM. 83
of the Wonghibon in New South Wales. 1 Among the Dieri the
eaglehawk was supposed to inflict a penalty for violating a rule in
connexion with the knocking out the teeth at initiation. 2 Among
the Kurnai the eaglehawk is greatly reverenced; his plumes and
talons were used in necromancy ; and he figures in their stories in
company with the little owl. 3 The Kurnai also reverence the crow
as one of their ancestors, 4 and consult it as a bird of omen. 6
According to a Victorian myth, the crow and the eaglehawk were
the progenitors, or among the progenitors, of the human race, and
now shine as stars in the sky. 6 According to another Victorian
myth the eagle and the crow were the creators of the world, and
divided the Murray blacks into two classes (clans or phratries), the
Eaglehawk and Crow. 7
Further, there are traces in Australia of the splitting of totems.
Thus in the Ta-ta-thi tribe in New South Wales there are two
Eaglehawk elans, namely the Light Brown Eaglehawk and the
Brown Coloured Eaglehawk, one in each of the two phratries. 8
Amongst the Kamilaroi there is a Kangaroo clan and a Red
Kangaroo clan, one in each of the two phratries. 9 In the
Kunandabiiri tribe in Queensland there are totem clans — Brown
Snake, Speckled Brown Snake, Carpet-Snake, also Rat, Kangaroo
Rat, and Bush Rat. 10 In the MtLkjarawaint in western Victoria
there are White Cockatoo and Black Cockatoo, also Buff-coloured
Snake and Black Snake ; u in other Victorian tribes there are the
Long-Billed Cockatoo and the Banksian Cockatoo ; 12 in the
Wakelbiira in Queensland there are Large Bee and Small Bee in
different phratries ; 13 in the Mycoolon there are Whistling Duck
and Black Duck. 14
From all this we should infer that the objects from
which the Australian phratries take their names were once
totems. But there seems to be direct evidence that both .
the phratries and subphratries actually retain, at least in
some tribes, their totems. Thus the Port Mackay tribe in
1 Id., xiv. 348. 2 Nat. Tr. of S. Austr., 267.
3 Fison and Howitt, 323. * J. A. I., xv. 415.
6 Id., xvi. 46. 6 Brough Smyth, i. 431.
7 Id., i. 423 s?. o .A .4. /., xiv. 349.
9 Id., xii. 500. w J. A. I., xii. 45.
11 lb 12 Dawson, Austr. Abor., p. 26.
13 J. A. I., xiii. 337. 14 lb., 339.
84 TOTEMISM.
Queensland is divided into two phratries, Yungaru and
Wutaru, with, subphratries Gurgela, Burbia, Wungo, and
Kubera ; and the Yungaru phratry has for its totem the
alligator, and Wutaru the kangaroo ; 1 while the sub-
phratries have for their totems the emu (or the carpet
snake), iguana, opossum, and kangaroo (or scrub turkey). 2
As the subphratries of this tribe are said to be equivalent
to the subphratries of the Kamilaroi, it seems to follow
that the subphratries 3 of the Kamilaroi (Muri, Kubi, Ipai,
and Kumbo) have or once had totems also. Hence it ap-
pears that in tribes organized in phratries, subphratries,
and clans, each man has three totems — hisjDhra-tryJtotem,
'•'his sub phratry totem, and his clan totem. If we add a
sex totem and an individual totem, each man in the typical
Australian tribe has five distinct kinds of totems. What
degree of allegiance he owes to his subphratry totem and
phratry totem respectively we are not told ; indeed, the
very existence of such totems, as distinct from clan totems,
appears to have been generally overlooked. But we may
suppose that the totem bond diminishes in strength in
proportion to its extension; that therefore the clan totem
is the primary tie, of which the subphratry and phratry
totems are successively weakened repetitions.
1 Fison and Howitt, 38 sq., 40. The Rockhampton tribe (Queens-
land) has the same phratries, but its subphratries are different
(/. A. 1., xiii. 336).
2 Fison and Howitt, p. 41. The totems of the phratries and sub-
phratries are given by different authorities, who write the native names
of the subphratries differently. But they seem to be speaking of the
same tribe; at least Mr Fison understands them so.
8 The names of the Kamilaroi phratries, Dilbi and Kupathin, are
clearly identical with Dilebi and Cubatine, the names of the Kiabara
phratries (see above, p. 67), and the latter mean Flood-water and
Lightning. Are these phratric totems both of the Kamilaroi and
Kiabara ?
TOTEMISM.
85
In these totems superposed on totems may perhaps be
discerned a rudimentary classification of natural objects
under heads which bear a certain resemblance to genera,
species, &c. This classification is by some Australian tribes
extended so as to include the whole of nature. Thus the
Port Mackay tribe in Queensland (see above, p. 83 sq.) di-
vides all nature between the phratries ; the wind belongs to
one phratry and the rain to another ; the sun is Wutaru and
the moon is Yungaru ; the stars, trees, and plants are also
divided between the phratries. 1 As the totem of Wutaru
is kangaroo and of Yungaru alligator, this is equivalent to
making the sun a kangaroo and the moon an alligator.
The Mount Gambier tribe in South Australia is divided into two
phratries (Kumi and Kroki), which agaiD are subdivided into totem
clans. Everything in nature belongs to a totem clan, thus : 2 — ■
Phratries
Totem Clans.
Includes
Kumi. •«
Kroki. ■
I
1. Miila=Fish-Hawk.
2. Parangal = Pelican.
3. Wa=Crow.
4. WIla=Black Cockatoo.
5. Karato=A harmless Snake.
1. Werio= Tea-Tree.
2. Murna=An edible Koot.
3. Karaal= Black crestless Cock-
atoo.
Smoke, honeysuckle, trees, &c.
/Dogs, blackwood trees, fire, frost
1 (fern.)
/Rain, thunder, lightning, winter,
\ hail, clouds, &c.
Stars, moon, &c.
/ Fish, stringybark trees, seals,
\ eels, <fcc.
Ducks, wallabies, owls, cray-fish, &c.
/Bustards, quails, dolvich (a small
1 kangaroo).
J Kangaroo, sheoak trees, summer,
\ sun, autumn (fem.), wind (fern.).
With reference to this classification Mr D. S. Stewart, the
authority for it, says, " I have tried in vain to find some reason for
the arrangement. I asked, 'To what division does a bullock
belong ? ' After a pause came the answer, ' It eats grass : it is
Boortwerio. ' I then said, ' A cray-fish does not eat grass ; why is
it Boortwerio?' Then came the standing reason for all puzzling
questions : V That is what our fathers said it was. ' '\ 3 Mr Stewart's
1 Brough Smyth, i. 91; Fison and Howitt, 168; cf. J. A. I.,
xiii. 300.
2 Fison and Howitt, loo. cit. 3 Fison and Howitt, 169.
86 TOTEMISM.
description of the respect paid by a tribesman to the animals of
the same "subdivision" as himself has been already quoted (see
above, p. 7) ; it seems to imply that a man is debarred from
killing not only his clan totem (when that is an animal) but also
all the animals which are classed under his clan. The natural
objects thus classed under and sharing the respect due to the totem
may be conveniently called, as Mr Howitt proposes, 1 subtotems.
Again, the Wakelbnra tribe (Elgin Downs, Queensland) is divided
into two phratries (Mallera and Wuthera), four subphratries
(Kurgila, Banbe, Wungo, and Obu), and totem clans. Everything
in nature is classed under its phratry and subphratry. Thus the
broad-leaved box-tree is of the Mallera phratry and the Banbe sub-
phratry, and so is the dingo or native dog. When a man of this
tribe dies his corpse must be covered with the boughs of a tree
which belongs to the same phratry and subphratry as himself ;
thus if he is Mallera-Banbe he is covered with boughs of the
broad-leaved box- tree, for it also is Mallera-Banbe. 3 So in sum-
moning an assembly the message stick carried by the messenger
must be of the same tribal division as the sender and the bearer of
the message. 3 Of a group of tribes in N. S. Wales it is said that
everything in nature is divided among the tribesmen, some claiming
the trees, others the plains, others the sky, stars, wind, rain, and
so forth. 4 Again, the Wotjoballuk tribe in north-western Victoria
has a system of subtotems, thus : 5 —
Phratries.
Totem Clans.
Subtotems.
Krokitch. i
Ganmtch. J
1. Hot Wind.
2. White crestless Cockatoo.
3. Belonging to the Sun.
4. Deaf Adder.
5. Black Cockatoo.
6. Pelican.
Each totem has subordinate to it
a number of objects, animal or
vegetable } e.g., kangaroo } red
gum-tree, <fec.
Do.
Of the subtotems in this tribe Mr Howitt says, " They appear to
me to be totems in a state of development. Hot wind has at least
five of them, white cockatoo has seventeen, and so on for the others.
That these subtotems are now in process of gaining a sort of inde-
pendence may be shown by the following instance': a man who is
Krokitch-Wartwut (hot wind) claimed to own all the five subtotems
of hot wind (three snakes and two birds), yet of these there was
1 In Smithson. Rep. for 1883, p. 818.
2 /. A. I., xiii. 191, 337. 3 lb., 438)!.
4 /. A. I., xiv. 350. 6 SmitJison. Rep., loc. cit.
TOTEMISM. 87
one which he specially claimed as " belonging " to him, namely,
Moiwuk (carpet-snake). Thus his totem, hot wind, seems to have
been in process of subdivision into minor totems, and this man's
division might have become hot wind carpet-snake had not
civilization rudely stopped the process by almost extinguishing
the tribe."
Combining this important evidence as to the growth of
totems with the evidence already noticed of the process by
which clans tend to become phratries, we get a view of the
growth, maturity, and decay of totems. As subtotems
they are growing ; as clan totems they are grown ; as sub-
phratric and phratric totems they are in successive stages !
of decay. As fast as one totem attains its full develop-^
ment, and then, beaten out thinner and thinner, melts into
the vast reservoir of nature from which it sprang, it is !
followed at equal intervals by another and another ; till
all things in nature are seen to be, as it were, in motion,
and after a period of mustering and marshalling to fall
into their places in the grand totem march. 1
When, through the change of female to male kinship, and
the settlement of a tribe in fixed abodes, society has ceased
to present the appearance of a constantly shifting kaleido-
scope of clans, and has shaken down into a certain stability
and permanence of form, it might be expected that with
the longer memory which accompanies an advance in
culture the totems which have been generalized into the
divinities of larger groups should no longer pass into
oblivion, but should retain ah elevated rank in the religious
hierarchy, with the totems of the subordinate tribal divi-
sions grouped under them either as subordinate divinities
1 In America, as in Australia, the totems seem always to have been
in a state of flux. Mr Beauchamp has shown this for the Iroquois
{American Antiquarian, viii. 82 s^.).
88 TOTEMISM.
or as different manifestations of the general tribal gods.
This appears to have been the state of totemism in Poly-
nesia, where geographical conditions favoured an isolation
and hence a permanence of the local groups such as was
scarcely attainable by savages on the open plains of Aus-
tralia or the prairies and savannahs of America. 1 Hence
in Polynesia we find a. considerable approximation to a
totem Olympus. In Samoa there were general village
gods as well as gods of particular families; and the same
deity is incarnate in the form of different animals. One
god, for example, is incarnate in the lizard, the owl, and
the centipede; 2 another in the bat, domestic fowl, pigeon,
and prickly sea urchin; 3 another in the bat, the sea-eel, the
cuttle-fish, the mullet, and the turtle ; 4 another in the owl
and the mullet; 5 another in the bird Porphyris Samoensis,
the pigeon, the rail-bird, and the eel; 6 another in the turtle,
sea-eel, octopus, and garden lizard. 7 It seems a fair
conjecture that such multiform deities are tribal or phratric
totems, with the totems of the tribal or phratric sub-
divisions tacked on as incarnations. |As the attribution of
human qualities to the totem is of the essence of totemism,
it is plain that a deity generalized from or including under
him a number of distinct animals and plants must, as his
animal and vegetable attributes contradict and cancel each
other, tend more and more to throw them off and to retain
1 Mr Horatio Hale says that the American totem clans " were not
permanent, but were constantly undergoing changes, forming, dividing,
coalescing, vanishing" (H. Hale, The Iroquois Book of Rites, p. 51).
On the rapid disintegration of North American tribes whenever ex-
ternal pressure is removed, see Dodge, Our Wild Indians, p. 45 sq.
2 Turner, Samoa, 46 sq. s lb., 51.
4 lb., 56 sq. 8 lb., 60 sq.
6 lb., 64 sq. 7 lb., 72.
TOTEMISM. 89
only those human qualities which to the savage apprehen-
sion are the common element of all the totems whereof he
is the composite product. In short, the tribal totem tends
to pass into an anthropomorphic god. And as he rises
more and more into human form, so the subordinate
totems sink from the dignity of incarnations into the
humbler character of favourites and clients ; until, at a
later age, the links which bound them to the god having
wholly faded from memory, a generation of mythologists
arises who seek to patch up the broken chain by the cheap
method of symbolism.- But symbolism is only the decorous
though transparent veil which a refined age loves to throw
over its own ignorance of the past, f
Apart from the social changes which have favoured the
passage of totemism into a higher form of faith, we can
detect in the totemic philosophy itself some advances
towards the formation of a deity distinct from and superior
to all the individuals of the totem species. Thus some
North American Indians think that each species of animal
has an elder brother, who is the origin of all the animals
of the species, and is besides marvellously great and
powerful. The elder brothers of birds are in the sky ;
the elder brothers of animals are in the waters. 1 The
Patagonians, who are divided into clans of the Tiger, Lion,
Guanoco, Ostrich, and so on, think that these clans have
each its appropriate deity living in vast caverns under-
ground, with whom the souls of dead clansmen go to dwell. 2
The Peruvians thought that " of all the beasts of the earth,
1 Rel. des Jes., 1634, 13; cf. Lettr. tdif., vi. 334; Charlevoix,
Hist, de la Jfom. Fr., v. 443, vi. 78.
2 T. Falkner, Description of Patagonia (Hereford, 1774), p. 114. j
90 TOTEMISM.
there is one alone in heaven like unto them, that which
hath care of their procreation and increase." 1 In all such
views the strict totemic standpoint is abandoned. ( Pure
totemism is democratic ; it is a religion of equality and
fraternity ; one individual of the totem species is as good
as another. When, therefore, one individual of the totem
species is, as elder brother, guardian spirit, or what not,
raised to a position of superiority over all the rest, totemism
is practically given up, and religion, like society, is advanc-
ing to the monarchical stage.|
While totemism as a religion tends to pass into the
worship first of animal gods and next of anthropomorphic
gods with animal attributes, totem clans tend, under the
same social conditions, to pass into local clans. Amongst
the Kurnai, shut in between the mountains and the sea,
phratries and clans have been replaced by exogamous local
groups, which generally take their names from the districts,
but in some cases from men of note. 2 The Coast Murring
tribe in New South Wales has also substituted exogamous
local groups for kinship divisions; but, though their totems
are decadent and anomalous, they still keep a dying grip
on the people, for a man cannot marry a woman of the
permitted locality if she is of the same totem as himself. 3
The totem clans of the Bechuanas have made some pro-
gress towards becoming local groups ; for the clans as a
rule keep together in their own districts, which are known
accordingly as " the dwelling of the men of the chamois,''
" the abode of the men of the monkey, &c." 4 In America,
1 Acosta, History of the Indies, ii. p. 305 (Hakluyt Society).
2 Fison and Howitt, 224 sq. 3 J. A. I., xiii. 437.
4 Casalis, The Basutos, p. 212.
TOTEMISM. 91
if we cannot detect the substitution of local for kindred
groups, we can at least see a step towards it in that relaxa-
tion of the rule of exogamy which has been observed in
widely separated tribes. For example, among the Omahas,
who have male descent, a man may marry a woman of the
same totem as himself provided she be of another tribe. 1
Geographical Diffusion of Totemism. — In Australia
totemism is almost universal. 2 In North America it may
be roughly said to prevail, or have prevailed, among all the
tribes east of the Eocky Mountains, 8 and among all the
Indian (but not the Eskimo) tribes on the north-west coast
as far south as the United States frontier. On the other
hand, highly competent authorities have failed to find it
among the tribes of western Washington, north-western
Oregon, and California. 4 In Panama it exists apparently
1 Third Rep., 257. For general statements of the relaxation of
exogamy, see Baer and Helmersen, Beitr. z. Kenntn. des russischen
Reiches, i. 104 ; P. Jones, Hist. Ojebway Indians, 138 ; Collect.
Minnesota Hist. Soc., v. p. 42; Smithson. Rep . for 1866, 315 ; Dall,
Alaska, 196 sq.; Im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, 175.
The Dacotas (Sioux) seem to have lost the totem system since 1767
(see Morgan, A. S., 154; J. Carver, Travels, 255 sq., London, 1781 ;
Keating, Expedition to the Source of the Missouri River, ii. 157;
James in Tanner's Narrative, 313 sq.; Collect. Minnes. Hist. Soc.,
v. p. 43). In Australia, though the exogamy of the clan seems to
remain intact, the exogamy of the subphratry is relaxed in the case
(apparently exceptional) of the Kamilaroi permission to marry a half
sister on the father's side (see Fison and Howitt, p. 42 sq.).
2 Perhaps the only known exceptions are the Kurnai in eastern,
and the Gournditch-mora in western Victoria. For the latter see
Fison and Howitt, p. 275. Of the aborigines on the lower Murray it
is said that " they are not divided into clans, castes, or grades, but
live on a footing of perfect equality " (Beveridge in Trans. Roy. Soc.
Victoria, vi. p. 21). But probably this does not exclude the existence
of totem clans.
3 Gatschet, Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, 153; H. Hale,
Tlie Iroquois Rook of Rites, p. 51.
i George Gibbs in Contrib. to N. American Eihnol., i. 184; S.
Powers, Tr. of Calif., 5.
92 TOTEMISM.
among the Guaymies : each tribe, family, and individual
has a guardian animal, the most prevalent being a kind of
parrot. 1 In South America totemism is found among the
Goajiros on the borders of Colombia and Venezuela, 2 the
Arawaks in Guiana, 3 the Bosch negroes also in Guiana, 4
and the Patagonians. 5 Finding it at such distant points of
the continent, we should expect it to be widely prevalent ;
but with our meagre knowledge of the South American
Indians this is merely conjecture. The aborigines of Peru
and the Salivas on the Orinoco believed in the descent of
their tribes from animals, plants, and natural objects, such
as the sun and earth ; 6 but this, though a presumption, is
not a proof of totemism.
In Africa we have seen that totemism prevails in Sene-
gambia, among the Bakalai on the equator, and among the
Damaras and Bechuanas in southern Africa. 7 There are
traces of totemism elsewhere in Africa. In Ashantee dif-
ferent animals are worshipped in different districts, which
points to totemism. 8 In eastern Africa the Gallas are
divided into two exogamous sections and have certain for-
1 A. Pinart in Revue d' ' Ethnographie, vi. p. 36.
2 Simons in Proc. R. Geoff. &oc., Dec. 1885, pp. 786, 796.
3 Brett, Ind. Tribes of Guiana, 98 ; Im Thurn, Among the Indians
of Guiana, 175 sq.
4 Crevaux, Voyages dans VAmerique dv, Sud, p. 59. One clan has
the red ape for its totem, others the turtle, crocodile, &c.
6 Palkner, Descr. of Patagonia, 114.
6 Garcilasso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas, pt.
i. bk. i. chs. 9, 10, 11, 18 ; Gumilla, Hist, de VOrenoque, i.
175 sq.
7 Revue d'Mhnologie, iii. 396 sq., v. 81 ; Du Chaillu, Equat. Afr.,
308 sq. ; Id., Journey to Ashango Land, 427, 429 ; C. J. Anderson,
Lake Ngami, 221 sq. ; Livingstone, Trav. in S. Africa, 13 ; Casalis,
The Basutos, 211 ; J. Mackenzie, Ten Tears North of the Orange
River, 393 ; J. A. I., xvi. 83 sq.
8 Bowdich, Mission to Ashantee, ed. 1873, p. 216.
TOTEMISM. 93
bidden foods. 1 In Abyssinia certain districts or families
will not eat of certain animals or parts of animals. 2 The
territory of the Hovas in Madagascar is divided and sub-
divided into districts, the names of the subdivisions re-
ferring " rather to clans and divisions of people than to
place." One of these names is " the powerful bird," i.e.,
either the eagle or the vulture. The same clan is found
occupying separate districts. 3 One Madagascar tribe regard
a species of lemur as " an embodiment of the spirit of their
ancestors, and therefore they look with horror upon killing
them." 4 Other Malagasy tribes and families refrain from
eating pigs and goats; 6 others will not eat certain vegetables
nor even allow them to be carried into their houses. 6 The
only occasion when the Sakalava tribe in Madagascar kill
a bull is at the circumcision of a child, who is placed on
the bull's back during the customary invocation. 7
In Bengal, as we have seen, there are numerous totem
tribes among the non-Aryan races. In Siberia the Yakuts
are divided into totem clans ; the clansmen will not kill
their totems (the swan, goose, raven, &c.) ; 8 and the clans
are exogamous. 9 The Altaians, also in Siberia, are divided
into twenty-four clans, which, though interfused with each
1 Charles New, Life, Wanderings, and Ldbows in Eastern Africa,
272, 274.
2 Mansfield Parkyns, Life in Abyssinia, 293; Tr. Ethnol. Soc.,
new series, vi. 292.
3 Ellis, Hist, of Madagascar, i. 87.
4 Folk-Lore Record, ii. 22. 5 lb.
6 lb., 30. 7 H., iv. 45.
8 Strahlenberg, Description of the North and Eastern Parts of
Europe and Asia, but more particularly of Russia, Siberia, and
Great Tartary, London, 1738, p. 383.
9 Middendorf, Siber. Reise, p. 72, quoted by Lubbock, Origin of
Civilization, p. 135. The present writer has been unable to find the
passage of Middendorf referred to.
94 TOTEMISM.
other, retain strongly the clan feeling ; the clans are ex-
ogamous ; each has its own patron divinity and religious
ceremonies ; and the only two names of clans of these and
kindred tribes of which the meanings are given are names
of animals. 1 There are traces of totemism in China. 2 In
Polynesia it existed, as we have seen, in Samoa. In
Melanesia it appears in Fiji, 3 the New Hebrides, 4 and
the Solomon Islands. 5 Amongst the Dyaks there are
traces of totemism in the prohibition of the flesh of certain
animals to certain tribes, respect for certain plants, &c. 6
It exists in the islands of Ambon, Uliase, Leti, Moa,
Lakor, Keisar (Makisar), Wetar, and the Aaru and Babar
archipelagoes. 7 In the Philippine Islands there are traces
of it in the reverence for certain animals, the belief that
the souls of ancestors dwell in trees, &c. 8
With regard to ancient nations, totemism may be re-
garded as certain for the Egyptians, and highly probable
for the Semites, 9 Greeks, and Latins. If proved for one
Aryan people, it might be regarded as proved for all; since
1 W. Badloff, Aus Siberien, i. 216, 258. The Ostiaks, also in
Siberia, are divided into exogamous clans, and they reverence the bear
(Castren, Vorleswngen ueber die Altaischen Vblker, 107, 115, 117).
This, however, by no means amounts to a proof of totemism.
2 Morgan, A. 8., p. 364 sq. One of the aboriginal tribes of China
worships the image of a dog (Gray, China, ii. 306).
3 Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, ed. I860, i. 219 sq.
4 Turner, Samoa, 334. e Fison and Howitt, p. 37 n.
6 Low, Sarawak, 265 sq., 272-27 '4, 306; Journal of Vie Indian
Archipelago, iii. p. 590; St John, Life in the Forests of the Far Bast,
i. 186 sq., 203; cf. Wilken in hid. Gids, June 1884, p. 988 sq ■
Ausland, 16th June 1884, p. 470.
7 Eiedel, De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Papua en Selebes
pp. 32, 61, 253, 334, 341, 376 sq., 414, 432.
8 Blumentritt, Der Ahnencultus und die religibsen Anschauungen
der Malaien des Philippinen Archipel, 159 sq.
9 See W. Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early
Arabia.
TOTEMISM. 95
totemism could scarcely have been developed by any one
Aryan branch after the dispersion, and there is no evid-
ence or probability that it ever was borrowed. Prof.
Sayce finds totemism among the ancient Babylonians, but
his evidence is not conclusive. 1
Origin of Totemism. — No satisfactory explanation of the
origin of totemism has yet been given. Mr Herbert
Spencer finds the origin of totemism in a " misinterpreta-
tion of nicknames " : savages first named themselves after
natural objects ; and then, confusing these objects with
their ancestors of the same names, reverenced them as they
already reverenced their ancestors. 2 The objection to this
view is that it attributes to verbal misunderstandings far
more influence than, in spite of the so-called comparative
mythology, they ever seem to have exercised. Sir John
Lnbboek also thinks that totemism arose from the habit
of naming persons and families after animals ; but in
dropping the intermediate links of ancestor-worship and
verbal misunderstanding, he has stripped the theory of all
that lent it even an air of plausibility. 3
Lastly, it may be observed that, considering the far-
reaching effects produced on the fauna and flora of a dis-
trict by the preservation or extinction of a single species
of animals or plants, it appears probable that the tend-
ency of totemism to preserve certain species of plants and
animals must have largely influenced the organic life of the
countries where it has prevailed. But this question, with
the kindred question of the bearing of totemism on the
1 A. H. Sayce, The Religion of the Ancient Babylonians (Hibbert
Lectures, 1887), p. 279 sq.
2 Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 367.
3 Lubbock, Origin of Civilization, p. 260.
96 TOTEMISM.
original domestication of animals and plants, is beyond the
scope of the present article.
Literature. — Apart from the original authorities which have been
referred to, the literature on totemism is very scanty. The
importance of totemism for the early history of society was first
recognized by Mr J. F. M'Lennan in papers published in the Fort-
nightly Review (October and November 1869, February 1870). The
subject has since been treated of by E. B. Tylor, Early History of
Mankind, p. 284 sq. ; Sir John Lubbock, Origin of Civilization,
260 sq. ; A. Lang, Custom and Myth, p. 260, &c. ; E. Clodd, Myths
and Dreams, p. 99 sq. ; W. Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage
in Early Arabia. See also Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th ed. , article
"Sacrifice," vol. xxi. p. 135.
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