THE AUTHOR'S THEORY
Mr. Darwin's theory of man's early social
condition--Either men lived in male communities, each
with his own female mates, or man was solitary, living
alone with his female mates and children--His adolescent
sons he drove away--The latter view accepted--It
involves practical exogamy--Misunderstood by M. Salomon
Reinach--Same results would follow as soon as totems were
evolved--Totemism begins in assumption, by groups of men,
of _the names_ of natural objects--Mr. Howitt states this
opinion--Savage belief in magical _rapport_ between men
and things of the same name--Mr. Frazer and Professor Rhys
died for this fact--Theory of Dr. Pikler--Totemism arises
in the need of names to be represented in pictographs--But
the pictograph is later than the name--Examples of magic
of names--Men led to believe in a connection of blood kin
between themselves and objects of the same names--These
objects regarded with reverence--Hence totemic exogamy
merely one aspect of the general totem name--Group
names were sobriquets of local groups, given by members
of other local groups--Proof that such names may be
accepted and gloried in--Cases of _tribal_ names given
from without and accepted--Mr. Hill-Tout on influence of
names--His objection to our theory answered--Mr. Howitt's
objections answered--American and Celtic cases of derisive
nicknames accepted--Two Australian totem names certainly
sobriquets--Religious aspect of totemism--Results from a
divine decree--Other myths--Recapitulation.
The problem has been to account for the world-wide development of
kinships, usually named after animals, plants, and other objects, and
for the rule that the members of these kins may never marry within the
kinship as limited by the name, Crow, Wolf, or whatever it may be.
Why, again, are these kinships regimented, in each tribe, into two
"phratries," exogamous, which also frequently bear animal names? No
system hitherto proposed seems satisfactory, for the reasons given in
the preceding critical chapters.
In trying to construct a more satisfactory system than those which have
been criticised, we must commence, like others, with an hypothesis
as to what kind of social animal man was when he began his career.
Now we really are not quite reduced to conjecture, for Mr. Howitt's
knowledge of savage life, in such a country as Australia, proves
that the economic conditions, the search for supplies, and the blunt
inefficiency of the earliest weapons, instruments, and hunting
methods must have forced men to live in _small_ separate groups. The
members, again, of each group, being animated by "individual likes and
dislikes" (including love, hate, jealousy, maternal affection, and the
associations of kindness between a male and those whom he provided for
and protected), must soon have evolved some discrimination of persons,
and certain practical restraints on amatory intercourse. In groups
necessarily very small, these germinal elements of later morality could
be evolved, as they could not be evolved in the gregarious communal
horde of theory.
Even when man's ancestors were hardly men, Mr. Darwin thus states his
opinion as to their social condition.
He says, "We may conclude, judging from what we know of the jealousy
of all Male Quadrupeds,... that promiscuous intercourse in a state of
Nature is extremely improbable. Therefore, looking far back in the
stream of Time, and judging from the social habits of man as he now
exists, the most probable view is (a) that he aboriginally lived in
small communities, each [man] with a single wife, or, if powerful,
with several, whom he jealously guarded from all other men. Or (b)
he may not have been a social animal, and yet have lived with several
wives, like the Gorilla--for all the natives agree that bat one adult
male is found in a band. When the young male grows up, a contest takes
place for the mastery, and the strongest, by killing or driving out the
others, establishes himself as head of the community.
"Younger males, being thus expelled and wandering about, would, when at
last successful in finding a partner, prevent too close interbreeding
within the limits of the same family."[1]
There is no communal horde in either of Mr. Darwin's conjectures, and
the males of these "families" were all exogamous in practice, all
_compelled_ to mate out of the group of consanguinity, except in the
case of the sire, or male head, who, of course, could mate with his own
daughters.
Were I forced to conjecture, I should adopt Mr. Darwin's second
hypothesis (b) because, given man so jealous, and in a brutal state so
very low as that postulated, he could not hope "jealously to guard his
women from all other men," if he lived in a community with other men.
There would be fights to the death (granting Mr. Darwin's hypothesis of
male jealousy, man being an animal who makes love at all seasons),[2]
and the little community would break up. No respect would be paid to
the Seventh Commandment, and Mr. Darwin's first conjectured community
would end in his second--given the jealousy and brutality and animal
passions of early man, as postulated by him.
On Mr. Darwin's second conjecture our system could be based. Small
"family" groups, governed by the will of the sire or master, whose
harem contains _all_ the young females in the group, would be
necessarily exogamous in practice--for the younger male members. The
sire would drive out all his adult sons as they came to puberty, and
such as survived and found mates would establish, when they could,
similar communities.
With efflux of time and development of intellect the rule, now
_conscious_, would become, "No marriage within this group of
contiguity;" the group of the hearth-mates. Therefore, the various
"family groups" would not be self-sufficing in the matter of wives,
and the males would have to seize wives by force or stealth from other
similar and hostile groups. Exogamy, in fact, so far as the rule was
obeyed, would exist, with raiding for wives. (This is the view of Mr.
Atkinson, in his _Primal Law_.)[3]
If, on the other hand, Mr. Darwin's second hypothesis as to the primal
state of man's brutal ancestors be rejected, economic and emotional
conditions, as stated by Mr. Howitt (ch. iv., _supra_), would still
keep on constantly breaking up, in everyday life, each supposed
communal horde of men into small individualistic groups, in which the
jealousy of the sire or sires might establish practical exogamy, by
preventing the young males from finding mates within the group. This
would especially be the case if the savage superstitions about sexual
separation and sexual taboo already existed, a point on which we can
have no certainty.[4] Young males would thus be obliged to win mates,
probably by violence, from other hostile camps. But, whether this were
so or not, things would inevitably come to this point later, as soon as
the totem belief was established, with the totemic taboo of exogamy,"
No marriage within the totem name and blood."
The establishment of totemic belief and practice cannot have been
sudden. Men cannot have, all in a moment, conceived that each group
possessed a protective and sacred animal or other object of one
blood with themselves. Not in a moment could they have drawn, on Dr.
Durkheim's lines, the inference that none must marry within the sacred
totem blood. Before any such faith and rule could be evolved, there
must have been dim beginnings of the belief (so surprising to us)
that each human group had some intimate connection with this, that,
or the other natural species, plants, or animals. We must first seek
for a cause of this belief in the connection of human groups with
animals, the idea of which connection must necessarily be prior to the
various customs and rules founded on the idea. Mr. Baldwin Spencer
remarks, "What gave rise in the first instance to the association of
particular men with particular plants and animals it does not seem
possible to say." Mr. Howitt asks, "How was it that men assumed _the
names of objects which, in fact, must have been the commencement of
totemism?_"[5] The answer may be very simple. It ought to be an answer
which takes for granted no superstition as already active; magic, for
instance, need not have yet been developed.
In criticising the theory of Mr. Baldwin Spencer, we have tried to show
that human groups would not work magic each for a separate animal,
unless they already believed in a connection of a mystic or peculiarly
intimate kind between themselves and their animal. Whether late or
early in evolution, the Arunta totem magic can only rest on the belief
in a specially close and mystical _rapport_ between the totem animal or
plant, and the human beings of the same name. How could the belief in
that _rapport_ arise?
Manifestly, if each group woke to the consciousness that it bore the
_name_ of a plant or animal, and did not know how it came to bear that
name, no more was needed to establish, in the savage mind, the belief
in an essential and valuable connection between the human group Emu,
and the Emu species of birds, and so on. As Mr. Howitt says, totemism
begins in the bearing of the name of an object by a human group.
It is difficult to understand how a fact so obvious as this--that the
community of name, if it existed, _and if its origin were unknown_,
would come to be taken by the groups as implying a mystic connection
between all who bore it, men or beasts--can have escaped the notice of
any one who is acquainted with the nature of savage thinking, and with
its survivals into civilised ritual and magic. Mr. Frazer has devoted
forty-two pages of his _Golden Bough_[6] to the record of examples of
this belief about names, in various forms. He quotes Professor Rhys to
the effect that probably "the whole Aryan family believed at one time,
not only that the name was a part of the man, but that it was that
part of him which is termed the soul, the breath of life, or whatever
you may choose to define it as being." So says Mr. Rhys in an essay on
Welsh Fairies.[7] This opinion rests on philological analysis of the
Aryan words for "name," and is certainly not understated.[8] But, if
the name is the soul of its bearer, and if the totem also is his soul,
then the name and the soul and the totem of a man are all one! There
we have the _rapport_ between man and totemic animal for which we are
seeking.
Whether "name" in any language indicates "soul" or not, the savage
belief in the intimate and wonder-working connection of names and
things is a well-ascertained fact. Now as things equal to the same
thing are equal to each other, animals and sets of men having the same
name are, in savage opinion, mystically connected with each other. That
is now the universal savage belief, though it need not have existed
when names were first applied to distinguish things, and men, and sets
of men. Examples of the belief will presently be given.
This essential importance, as regards the totemic problem, of the
names, has not escaped Professor Julius Pikler.[9] Men, says
Dr. Pikler, needed for each other, collectively, "ein bleibender
schriftlich fixierbarer _Name_ von Gemeinschaften und individuen." They
wanted permanent names of human communities and of the members of these
communities, names which could be expressed in pictographs, as in the
pictures of the Red Indian totem, reversed on grave-posts; or erect,
on pillars outside of the quarters of the totem kin in Red Indian
villages; or in tattooing, and so forth.
This is practically the theory of Mr. Max Müller.[10] Mr. Max Müller
wrote, "A totem is (i.) a clan mark, _then_ (ii.) a clan name, then
(iii.) the name of the ancestor of the clan, and lastly (iv.) the name
of something worshipped by the clan," This anticipated Dr. Pikler's
theory.[11]
It is manifest, of course, that the name necessarily comes into use
_before_, not as Mr. Max Müller thought, and as Dr. Pikler seems
to think, _after_ its pictorial representation, "the clan mark."
A kin must have accepted the name of "the Cranes," before it used
the Crane as its mark on a pillar in a village (villages being late
institutions), or on grave-posts, or in tattoo marks. A man setting
up an inn determines to call it "The Green Boar," "The White Hart,"
or "The Lochinvar Arms," before he has any of these animals, or the
scutcheon of the Gordons of Lochinvar, painted on the signboard. He
does not give his inn the name because it has the signboard; it has the
signboard because it has the name. In the same way, a community must
have had a name, say Eagle Hawk or Crow, before a savage could sketch,
or express by gesture, a Crow or Eagle Hawk, and expect the public to
understand that he meant to indicate, whether by pictograph or gesture
language, a member of that Eagle Hawk or Crow named community. Totemism
certainly is not, as Dr. Pikler argues, "die _Folge_ der Schriftart,
der Schrifttechnik jenes Menschen."[12]
The names came before the pictographs, not the pictographs before
the names, necessarily; but the animal or vegetable names had this
advantage, among others, that they could be expressed in terms of
pictograph, or of gesture language. You cannot express in art, without
writing, a _tribal_ name, such at least as are the _tribal_ names of
the men who say _Wonghi_ or _Kamil_ when they mean "No," or of other
tribes when they mean "What?"
Dr. Pikler says that "the germ of totemism is the _naming_," and here
we agree with him, but we cannot follow him when he adds that "the
naming is a consequence of the primitive _schriftteknik_," a result of
the representation in the pictograph. A man knows himself and is known
by others to be, by group name, a Crane, or a Rain-cloud, or a Bear,
before he makes his mark with the pictograph of the bird's footprint,
as [symbol], or of the Rain-cloud, as [symbol] or of the
Bear's-foot, as [symbol] [13]
So far we must differ, then, from Dr. Pikler; _naming is_ indeed the
original germ of totemism, but the names came before the pictographs
which represent the animals denoted by the names: it could not
possibly be otherwise. But when once the name of the community, Eagle
Hawk, Crow, Bear, Crane, Rain-cloud, or what not, is recognised and
accepted, then, as Dr. Pikler writes, "even the Greeks,[14] in ages of
philosophic thought relatively advanced, conceived that there was a
material connection between things and their names," and, in the same
way, savages, bearing an animal group-name, believed that there was
an important connection, in fact, between the men and the name-giving
animal, "and so conceived the idea of kinship with or descent from" the
name-giving animal.[15]
Totemism, as Dr. Pikler says, "has its original germ, not in religion,
but in the practical everyday needs of men," the necessity for
discriminating, by names, between group and group. "Totems, probably,
in origin, had nothing really religious about them," I had written.[16]
Thus, given a set of local groups[17] known by the names of Eagle
Hawk, Crow, Wolf, Raven, or what not, the idea that these groups were
intimately connected with the name-giving animals in each case was,
in the long run, sure to occur to the savage thinker. On that assumed
mystical connection, implied in the name, and suggested by the name,
is laid the foundation of all early totemic practice. For the magical
properties of the connection between the name and its bearer the reader
has only to refer to Mr. Frazer's assortment of examples, already
cited. We here give all that are needed for our purpose.
In Australia, each individual Arunta has a secret name, _Aritna
Churinga_, "never uttered except on the most solemn occasions," "never
to be spoken in the hearing of women, or of men, or of another group."
To speak the secret name in these circumstances would be as impious "as
the most flagrant case of sacrilege amongst white men."[18]
These ideas about the mystic quality of names are so familiar to all
students, that I did not deem it necessary to dwell on them in _Social
Origins_. But we should never take knowledge for granted, or rather,
for every student does know the facts, we should never take it for
granted that the knowledge will be applied. The facts prove, I repeat
that, to the early mind names, and the things known by names, are in
a mystic and transcendental connection of _rapport_. Other Australian
examples of the secrecy of a man's name, and of the power of magically
injuring him by knowledge of his name, are given by Mr. Howitt, Brough
Smyth, Lumholtz, Bulmer, Dawson, and others. It would appear that this
superstition as to names is later than the first giving of animal names
to totem groups, and that totem names were not given to groups by the
groups themselves (at least, were not given after the superstition
about names came in), for to blazon their own group names abroad would
be to give any enemy the power of injuring the group by his knowledge
of its name. Groups, had they possessed the name-belief, would have
carefully concealed their group names, if they could. There are a few
American cases in which kins talk of their totems by periphrases, but
every one knows the real names.
He who knew a group's name might make a magical use of his knowledge
to injure the group. But the group or kin-names being already known
to all concerned (having probably been given from without), when the
full totemic belief arose it was far too late for groups to conceal
the totem names, as an individual can and does keep his own private
essential name secret. The totem animal of every group was known to all
groups within a given radius. "It is a serious offence," writes Mr.
Howitt, "for a man to kill the totem of another person,"[19] that is,
with injurious intentions towards the person.
Mr. Frazer at one time thought that the totem was perhaps originally
the soul-box, or life-receptacle, of the totemist, and said: "How close
must be the concealment, how impenetrable the reserve in which he hides
the inner keep and citadel of his being." I could but reply, as Mr.
Hill-Tout also replies, that every savage knew the secret, knew what
beast was a man's totem. I added that I knew no cases of a custom of
injuring a man by killing his totem, "to his intention," but that I was
"haunted by the impression that I had met examples."[20] Mr. Howitt,
we see, mentions this kind of misdeed as punishable by native law. But
it was too late, we repeat, to hide the totem names. Men now can only
punish offenders who make a cruel magical use of their knowledge of an
enemy's totem.
An individual, however, we must repeat, can and does keep _his_
intimate essential personal name as dark as the secret name of the city
of Rome was kept. "An individual," says Mr. Howitt, "has of course
his own proper individual name, which, however, is often in abeyance,
because of the disinclination to use it, or even to make it generally
known, lest it might come into the knowledge and possession of some
enemy, who thus having it might thereby 'sing' its owner--in other
words, use it as an incantation."[21]
Thus, in Australia, the belief that names imply a mystic _rapport_
between themselves and the persons who bear them is proved to be
familiar, and it is acted upon by each individual who conceals his
secret name.
This being so, when the members of human groups found themselves, as
groups, all in possession of animal group-names, and had forgotten how
they got the names (all known groups having long been named), it was
quite inevitable that men, always speculative, should ask themselves,
"What is the nature of this connection between us and the animals
whose names we bear? It must be a connection of the closest and most
important kind." This conclusion, I repeat, was inevitable, given the
savage way of thinking about names. Will any anthropologist deny this
assertion?
Probably the mere idea of a mystic connection between themselves and
their name-giving animals set the groups upon certain superstitious
acts in regard to these animals. But being men, and as such
speculative, and expressing the results of their speculations in myths,
they would not rest till they had evolved a myth as to the precise
nature of the connection between themselves and their name-giving
animals, the connection indicated by the name.
Now, men who had arrived at this point could not be so inconceivably
unobservant as not to be aware of the blood connection between mother
and children, indicated in the obvious facts of birth. A group may
not have understood the facts of reproduction and procreation (as the
Arunta are said not to understand them),[22] but the facts of blood
connection, and of the relation of the blood to the life, could escape
no human beings.[23] As savages undeniably do not draw the line between
beasts and other things on one side, and men on the other, as we do,
it was natural for them to suppose that the animal bearing the group
name, and therefore _solidaire_ with the group, was united with it, as
the members of the group themselves were visibly united, namely, by
the blood bond. The animal in myth is thus men's ancestor, or brother,
or primal ancestral form. This belief would promote kindness to and
regard for the animal.
Next, as soon as the animal-named groups evolved the universally
diffused beliefs about the _wakan_ or _mana_, or mystically sacred
quality of the blood as the life, they would also develop the various
totem tabus, such as not to kill the totem animal, not to shed its
blood, and the idea that, by virtue of this tabu, a man must not marry
a maid who was of one blood with him in the totem. Even without any
blood tabu, the tabu on women of the same totem might arise. "An Oraon
clan, whose totem is the Kujzar-tree, will not sit in its shade." So
strong is the intertotemic avoidance.[24] The belief grew to the pitch
that a man must not "use" anything of his totem (χρῆσθαι γυναίκι),
and thus totemic exogamy, with the sanction of the sacred totem, was
established.[25]
Unessential to my system is the question, _how_ the groups got animal
names, as long as they got them and did not remember how they got
them, and as long as the names, according to their way of thinking,
indicated an essential and mystic _rapport_ between each group and
its name-giving animal. No more than these three things--a group
animal-name of unknown origin; belief in a transcendental connection
between all bearers, human and bestial, of the same name; and belief in
the blood superstitions--was needed to give rise to all the totemic
creeds and practices, including exogamy.
Now, we can prove that the origin of the totem names of savage groups
is unknown to the savages, because they have invented many various
myths to account for the origin of the names. If they knew, they would
not have invented such myths. That, by their way of thinking, the name
denotes a transcendental connection, which must be exploited, between
themselves and their name-giving animals we have proved.
In _Social Origins_ I ventured a guess as to how the group names first
arose, namely, in sobriquets given by group to group.[26] I showed
that in France, England, the Orkneys, and I may now add Guernsey, and
I believe Crete, villagers are known by animal names or sobriquets, as
in France--Cows, Lizards, Pigeons, Frogs, Dogs; in Orkney--Starlings,
Oysters, Crabs, Seals, Auks, Cod, and so forth. I also gave the names
of ancient Hebrew villages, recorded in the Book of Judges, such as
Lions, Jackals, Hornets, Stags, Gazelles, Wild Asses, Foxes, Hyænas,
Cows, Lizards, Scorpions, and so forth. I also proved that in rural
England, and in the Sioux tribe of Red Indians, rapidly ceasing to be
totemic, the group sobriquets were usually "Eaters of" this or that
animal, or (where totemism survived among the Sioux) "_not_ Eaters of"
this or that.[27] I thus established the prevalence in human nature,
among peasants and barbarians, of giving animal group-sobriquets. "In
Cornwall," writes an informant (Miss Alleyne), "it seems as if the
inhabitants do not care to talk about these things for some reason or
another," and "the names are believed to be very ancient." When once
attention is drawn to this curious subject, probably more examples will
be discovered.
I thus demonstrated (and I know no earlier statement of the fact) the
existence in the European class least modified by education of the
tendency to give such animal group-sobriquets. The same principle
even now makes personal names derived from animals most common among
individuals in savage countries, the animal name usually standing, not
alone, but qualified, as Wolf the Unwashed, in the Saga; Sitting Bull,
and so on. As we cannot find a race just becoming totemic, we cannot,
of course, _prove_ that their group animal-names were given thus from
without, but the process is undeniably a _vera causa_, and does operate
as we show.
As to this suggestion about the sources of the animal names borne
by the groups, Dr. Durkheim remarks that it is "conjectural."[28]
Emphatically it is, like the Doctor's own theories, nor can any theory
on this matter be other than guess-work. But we do not escape from the
difficulty by merely saying that the groups "adopted" animal names for
themselves; for that also is a mere conjecture. Perhaps they did, but
why? Is it not clear that, given a number of adjacent groups, each one
group has far more need of names for its neighbours than of a name
for itself? "We" are "we"; all the rest of mankind are "wild blacks,"
"barbarians," "outsiders." But there are a score of sets of outsiders,
and "we," "The Men," need names for each and every one of them. "We"
are "The Men," but the nineteen other groups are also "The Men"--in
their own opinion. To us they are something else ("they" are not
"we"), and we are something else to them; _we_ are not _they_; we all
need differentiation, and we and they, by giving names to outsiders,
differentiate each other. The names arose from a primitive necessity
felt in everyday life.
That such sobriquets, given from without, may come to be accepted, and
even gloried in, has been doubted, but we see the fact demonstrated
in such modern cases as "the sect called Christians" (so called from
without), and in _Les Gueux, Huguenots,_ Whigs, Tories, Cavaliers,
Cameronians ("_that nickname_," cries Patrick Walker (1720),
"why do they not call them Cargillites, if they will give them a
nickname?")[29] I later prove that two ancient and famous Highland
clans have, from time immemorial, borne clan names which are derisive
nicknames. Several examples of party or local nicknames, given,
accepted, and rejoiced in, have been sent to me from North Carolina.
Another example, much to the point, may be offered. The "nations,"
that is, aggregates of friendly tribes, in Australia, let us say the
Kamilaroi, are usually known by names derived from their word for
"No," such as _Kamil_ (Kamilaroi), _Wira_ (Wirajuri), _Wonghi_ (Wonghi
tribe), _Kabi_ (Kabi tribe). Can any one suppose that these names were
given from within? Clearly they were given from without and accepted
from within. One of the Wonghi or of the Wiraidjuri or Kamilaroi
tribe is "proud of the title." Messrs. Spencer and Gillen write, "It
is possible that the names of the tribes were originally applied to
them by outsiders, and were subsequently adopted by the members of the
tribes themselves, but the evidence is scanty and inconclusive."[30]
There can hardly be any evidence but what we know of human nature. Do
the French call themselves _Oui Oui_? Not much I but the natives of New
Caledonia call them _Oui Oui_.[31]
Moreover, to return to totem names, savage groups would have no
reason for resenting, as derisive, animal names given from without.
Considering the universal savage belief in the mystic wisdom and
_wakan_, or power, of animals, there was no kind of objection among
savages to being known by animal group-names. I repeat that the names
were rather honour-giving than derisive. This has not been understood
by my critics. They have said that among European villages, and among
the Sioux of to-day, group nicknames are recognised, but not gloried in
or even accepted meekly. My answer is obvious. Our people have not the
savage ideas about animals.
Here it may be proper to reply to this objection as urged by Mr.
Hill-Tout. That scholar might seem, in one passage of his essay on
"Totemism: Its Origin and Import," to agree fully with these ideas of
mine. He says, "To adopt or _receive_ the name of an animal or plant,
or other object, was, in the mind of the savage, to be endowed with
the essence or spirit of that object, to be under its protection, to
become one with it in a very special and mysterious sense." That is
exactly my own opinion. The very early groups _received_ animal names,
I suggest, and when they had forgotten how they received them, believed
themselves, as Mr. Hill-Tout says they naturally would do, to be "under
the protection" of their name-giving animals, "and one with them in a
very special and mysterious sense." Mr. Hill-Tout proceeds to give
many examples of the process from America.[32]
It might appear, then, that Mr. Hill-Tout accepts my theory, namely,
that group names, of forgotten origin, are the germs of totemism. But
he rejects it, partly, no doubt, because he owns a different theory.
His reasons for objecting, however, as offered, are that, while I
prove that modern villages give each other collective animal names, I
do _not_ prove that the villagers--styled Grubs, Mice, Geese, Crows,
and so on--accept and rejoice in these names, as totemists rejoice
in being Grubs, Mice, Crows, and so forth. But I never said that the
modern villagers delighted in being called Mice or Cuckoos! They very
much resent such appellations. The group names of modern villagers were
cited merely to prove that the habit of giving such collective names
survives in Folk Lore, not to prove that modern villagers accept them
gladly. The reason why they resent them is that our country folk are
not savages, and have not the beliefs about the mystic force of names
and the respect for animals which Mr. Hill-Tout justly ascribes to
savages.
A native of Dingley Dell may call all natives of Muggleton
"Potato-grubs," and the Muggleton people, from time immemorial, may
have called the Dingley Dell folk "Rooks." But, not being savages, they
do not think--as Mr. Hill-Tout's savages do--that "to receive the name
of an animal is to be under its protection, to become one with it in
a very special and mysterious sense," and they do not, like savages,
think nobly of grubs and rooks. The distinction is obvious, except to
critics. Mr. Hill-Tout thus accepts my premises as regards savages
and their ideas about names, but rejects my conclusion, because modern
villagers do not reason like savages! As to villagers, my evidence
was only meant to show the wide diffusion, from ancient Israel to the
Orkneys, of the habit of giving animal names to village groups. For
evidence of the effect which that habit would have on savages, I have
now cited Mr. Hill-Tout himself. He has merely misunderstood a very
plain argument,[33] which he advanced as representing his own opinion
(pp. 64-66). But then Mr. Hill-Tout has a counter theory.
Is my argument intelligible? A modern villager resents the bawling out
of "Mouse" as he passes, Mouse being the collective nickname of his
village, because he does not think nobly of Mice. The savage does think
nobly of all animals, and so has no reason for resenting, but rather
for glorying in, his totem name, whether Mouse or Lion. These facts
were plainly asserted in _Social Origins_, p. 169, to no avail.
Mr. Howitt, in his turn, does not approve of my idea, thus stated by
him, that "the plant and animal names would be impressed upon each
group from without, and some of them would stick, would be stereotyped,
and each group would come to answer to its nickname." He replies--
"To me, judging of the possible feelings of the ancestors of the
Australians by their descendants of the present time, it seems most
improbable that any such nicknames would have been adopted and have
given rise to totemism, nor do I know of a single instance in which
such names have been adopted."[34] Mr. Howitt, of course, could not
possibly find kinships now adopting animal and other such names given
from without, because all kinships where totemism exists have got such
names already, and with the names a sacred body of customs. But does he
suppose that the many local tribes calling themselves by their word for
"No" (as _Kabi, Kamil, Wonghi,_ and so on), originally gave these names
to themselves, saying, "We are the people who, when we mean 'No,' say
'Wonghi'"? That seems to me hardly credible! Much more probably tribes
who used Kamil or Kabi for "No" gave the name of _Wonghi_ to a tribe
who used _Wonghi_ in place of their _Kamil_ or _Kabi_. In that case the
tribes, as tribes, have adopted names given from without.
Again, I consider that the feelings of that noble savage, the Red
Indian, are at least as sensitive to insult as those of Mr. Howitt's
blacks. Now it so happens that the Blackfoot Indians of North America,
who apparently have passed out of totemism, have "_gentes_, a _gens_
being a body of consanguineal kinsmen in the male line," writes Mr. G.
B. Grinnell.[35] These clans, no longer totemic, needed names, and some
of their names, at least, are most insulting nicknames. Thus we have
Naked Dogs, Skunks, They Don't Laugh, Buffalo Dung, All Crazy Dogs,
Fat Roasters, and--Liars! No men ever gave such names to their own
community. In a diagram of the arrangement of these clans in camp, made
about 1850, we find the _gentes_ of the Pi-kun'-I under such pretty
titles as we have given.[36]
To return from America to Australia, the Narrinyeri tribe, like the
Sioux and Blackfeet, have reckoning of descent in the male line,
and, like the Sioux, have local settlements (called "clans" by Mr.
Howitt), and these local settlements have names. Does Mr. Howitt think
it likely that one such "clan" called itself "Where shall we go?" and
another called itself "Gone over there"?[37] These look to me like
names given by other groups. Tribes, local groups ("clans"), and totem
kins having names already, I cannot expect to show Mr. Howitt the names
of such sets of people in the act of being given from without and
accepted. But, as regards individuals, they "often have what may be
called a nickname, arising from some strongly marked feature in their
figures, or from fancied resemblance to some animal or plant."[38] The
individuals "answer to" such nicknames, I suppose, but they cannot
evolve, in a lifetime, respect for the plant or animal that yields the
nickname, because they cannot forget how they come to bear it.
Obvious at a glance as such replies to such objections are, it seems
that they have not occurred to the objectors.
If we want to discover clans adopting and glorying in names which are
certainly, in origin, derisive nicknames, we find Clan Diarmaid, whose
name, Campbell, means "Wry Mouth,"[38] and Clan Cameron, whose name
means "Crooked Nose."[39] Moreover, South African tribes believe that
tribal _siboko_, as Baboon and Alligator, may, and did, arise out of
nicknames; for, as we have seen, their myths assert that nicknames are
the origin of such tribal and now honourable names. I cannot prove, of
course, that the process of adopting a name given from without occurred
among prehistoric men, but I have demonstrated that, among all sorts
and conditions of men in our experience, the process is a _vera causa_.
Dismissing my theory, Mr. Howitt, in place of it, "could more easily
imagine that these early savages might, through dreams, have developed
the idea of relationship with animals, or even with plants."[40] They
might; a man, as in the case given, might dream of a lace lizard, and
believe that he was one. He might even be named, as an individual,
"Lace Lizard," but that does not help us. Totem names, as Mr. Fison
insists, are, and always were, group names. But Mr. Howitt "gets no
forrarder," if he means that the children of his Lace Lizard become a
totem kin of Lace Lizards, for under a system of female descent the
man's children would not be Lace Lizards. Does Mr. Howitt know of a
single instance in a tribe with female kin where the children of a man
who, on dream evidence, believed himself to be a Kangaroo, were styled
Kangaroos? He must adopt the line of saying that, while totemism was
being evolved, women did the dreaming of being Hakea flowers, Witchetty
Grubs, Kangaroos, Emus, and so forth, and bequeathed the names to their
children. But he will not find that process going on in any known
instance, I fear.
The processes of my hypothesis, though necessarily conjectural, are
at least _veræ causæ_, are in human nature, as we know it. A curious
new example of totems, certainly based on sobriquets not derived from
animals, occurs among the Warramanga tribe of Central Australia.
One totem kin is merely called "The Men" (_Kati_), the name which,
in dozens of cases, a tribe gives to itself. Another totem kin is
called "The Laughing Boys" (_Thaballa_), a name which is obviously
a nickname, and not given from within. The _Thaballa_ have found it
necessary to evolve a myth about descent from a giggling boy and his
giggling playmates, and to practise magic for their behoof, as they are
supposed not to be dead. All this has clearly been done by the Laughing
Boy totem kin merely to keep themselves in line with other totem kins
named from lower animal form.[41] _This_ totem name can have been
nothing but a group nickname.[42]
I have next to explain the nature of the superstitious regard paid by
totemists to their name-giving animals.
My guess, says Dr. Durkheim, is "difficult for those who know the
religious character of the totem, the cult of which it is our object to
explain. How could a sobriquet become the centre of a regular religious
system?"
Dr. Durkheim calls the system "religious," and adds that I "leave on
one side this religious aspect of totemism: but to do so is to leave on
one side the essential factor in the phenomenon to be explained."
Now, as a matter of fact, I left no element of Australian totemism "on
one side." I mentioned every totemic tabu and magical practice that
was known to me. But I do not (it is really a mere question of words)
describe the beliefs as "religious." Dr. Durkheim does; he describes
them, as we saw, almost in the terms of the Creed of St. Athanasius.
But I find, in Australia, no case of such religious usages as praying
to, or feeding, or burying, the totem. Such really "religious" rites
are performed, in Samoa, for example, where an animal, once probably a
totem, is now regarded as the shrine or vehicle of an ancestral spirit,
who has become a kind of god,[43] and, in Egypt, the animal gods had
once, it seems all but certain, been totems. In Australia, to be sure,
two totems, Eagle Hawk and Crow, were creators, in some myths. So far,
totemic conceptions may be called "religious" conceptions, more or
less, and if Dr. Durkheim likes to call totems "gods," as he does, he
has a right to do so. The difference here, then, is one of terminology.
We can also show how totems in Australia become involved in really
religious conceptions, as I understand "religion," if we may cite Mr.
Howitt's evidence. Mr. Howitt says: "This is certain, that when the
aboriginal legends purport to account for the origin of totemy, that
is to say the origin of the social divisions which are named after
animals, it is not the totems themselves to whom this is attributed,
nor to the black fellows, but it is said that the institutions of these
divisions _and the assumption of the animal names_, were in consequence
of some injunction of the great supernatural being, such as Bunjil,
given through the mouth of the wizard of the tribe."[44] "Any tradition
of the origin of the two classes" (phratries) "is one which attributes
it to a supernatural agency."[45] Accepting Mr. Howitt's evidence
(always welcomed on other points), one source of the "religious"
character of totemism is at once revealed. The totemist obeys the
decree of Bunjil, or Baiame, as the Cretans obeyed the divine decrees
given by Zeus to Minos.
Though I had not observed this statement by Mr. Howitt, still, in
_Social Origins_, I have quoted five cases in which a supernormal being
or beings, licensed, or actually ordained, the totemic rules, thereby
giving them, in my sense of the phrase, a real religious sanction.
Rules with a religious sanction, vouched for by a myth which explained
the divine origin of a name, might well become "the centre of a
veritable religious system."[46]
As another example of the myth that totems are of divine or supernormal
institution, Mrs. Langloh Parker gives the following case from the
Euahlayi tribe, on the Queensland border of north-west New South Wales.
Their nearest Kamilaroi neighbours live a hundred and fifty miles away,
but they call their "over-god," or "All Father," by the Kamilaroi word
Baiame, pronounced "Byamee"; in other respects they "have only a few
words the same as the Kamilaroi." These words, however, indicate, I
think, a previous community of language.
Mrs. Langloh Parker writes, on this matter of the divine institution
of totems, "A poor old blind black fellow of over eighty came back
here the other day. He told me some more legends, in one of which was
a curiously interesting bit about the totems. The legend was about
Byamee, and it spoke of him as having a totem name for every part of
his body--even to a different one for each finger and toe. No one had
a totem name at that time, but when Byamee was going away for good he
gave each division of the tribe one of his totems, and said that every
one hereafter was to have a totem name which they were to take, men
and women alike, from their mother; all having the same totem must
never marry each other, but be as brothers and sisters, however far
apart were their hunting grounds. That is surely some slight further
confirmation of Byamee as one apart, for no one else ever had all the
totems in one person; though a person has often a second or individual
totem of his own, not hereditary, given him by the _wirreenuns_
(sorcerers or medicine men), called his _yunbeai_, any hurt to which
injures him, and which he may never eat--his hereditary totem he may."
In such cases, myths give a "religious" origin for totemism.
Tribes which have religious myths, attributing totemism to the
decree of a superhuman being, may also have other myths giving quite
other explanations. Thus the Dieri were said to have a fable to the
effect that Mura-Mura, "the creator," enjoined totemism, to regulate
marriage.[47] Later, Mr. Howitt learned that "_in the plural form_
Mura-Mura means the deceased ancestors themselves."[48] In fact, in
the plural, the Mura-Mura answer more or less to the _Alcheringa_ men
of the Arunta, to that potent, magical, partly human, partly divine,
partly bestial, race, which, like the Greek Titans, appears in so many
mythologies, and "airs" the world for the reception of man. It is usual
to find a divine word, like Mura-Mura, in the plural, meaning this kind
of race, while in the singular, the term seems to denote a deity.[49]
Whether there be such a singular form of Mura-Mura in Dieri, with the
sense of deity, I know not. Mr. Gason, an initiated man, says that _he_
(Mura-Mura) made men out of Lizards. Ancestral spirits are not here in
question.
Mr. Howitt now knows a Dieri myth by which totems were not divinely
decreed, but were children of a Mura-Mura, or _Alcheringa_ female
Titan. Or, in another myth, as animals, they came out of the earth in
an isle, in a lake, and "being revived by the heat of the sun, got up
and went away as human beings in every direction."[50]
Such are the various myths of the Dieri. Another myth attributes
exogamy to a moral reformatory movement, which, of course, could only
be imagined by men living under exogamy already.
In other cases, as in America among the north-western peoples, a myth
of ancestral friendship with the totem animal is narrated. That myth
is conditioned by the prevailing animistic belief that a man's soul
is reincarnated in a man, a beast's, in a beast, though some tribes
hold that a soul always incarnates itself in but one species. The
Arunta myth is that semi-bestial forms became human, and that the
souls of these totem ancestors are reincarnated in human children.
As a rule, the totem, being explained in myth as a direct ancestor
of the totemist, or a kinsman, or as the animal out of which he was
evolved, receives such consideration as ancestral spirits, where they
have a cult, obtain,... more or less religious. All these facts are
universally known. There is here no conjecture. I do not need to guess
that such more or less religious myths of the origin of the connection
between totem and totemist would probably be evolved. They actually
were evolved, and a large collection of them may be found in Mr.
Frazer's _Totemism_.
In but one case known to me, a non-religious and thoroughly natural
cause of the totem name is given. Two totem kins are said to be so
called "from having, in former times, principally subsisted on a small
fish, and a very small opossum." _These are but two out of seven kins,
in one Australian tribe_. In the other five cases the totem kins,
according to the myth, are descended from their totem animals, and, of
course, owe to them, in each case, friendly kinship and regard.[51]
_Enfin_, it suffices for me to record all the known facts of totemic
tabu and practice, in Australia, and, as long as I give them, it
matters very little whether I call them "religious" or not. They
certainly are on the frontiers of religion: it is more important to
explain their evolution than to dispute about the meaning of a term,
"religion," which every one defines as he pleases. To the evolution of
totemic marriage rules out of a certain belief as to the name-giving
animals of groups, we next turn.
So far we have reached these results: we guess that for the sake of
distinction groups gave each other animal and plant names. These
became stereotyped, we conjecture, and their origin was forgotten.
The belief that there must necessarily be some connection between
animals and men of the same names led to speculation about the nature
of the connection. The usual reply to the question was that the men
and animals of the same names were akin by blood. That kinship, _with
animals_, being peculiarly mysterious, was peculiarly sacred. From
these ideas arose tabus, and among others, that of totemic exogamy.
The nature and origin of the supposed connection or _rapport_ between
each human group and its name-giving animal is thus explained in a way
consistent with universally recognised savage modes of thinking, and
with the ordinary process by which collective names, even in modern
times, are given from without. Dr. Pikler, Major Powell, Mr. Herbert
Spencer, Lord Avebury, Mr. Howitt, and others have recognised that
the names are the germ of totemism. But both Mr. Herbert Spencer and
Lord Avebury appear to think that the name Eagle Hawk or Crow, or
Wolf or Raven, was originally that of a male ancestor, who founded
a clan that inherited his name. Thus a given Donald, of the Islay
family, marrying a MacHenry heiress, gave the name "MacDonald" to the
MacHenrys of Glencoe. But this theory is impossible, as we must repeat,
in conditions of inheriting names through women, and such were the
conditions under which totemism arose. The animal name, now totemic,
from the first was a group name, as Mr. Fison argued long ago. "The
Australian divisions show that the totem is, in the first place, _the
badge of a group, not of an individual_.... And even if it were first
given to an individual, his family, _i.e._ his children, could not
inherit it from him."[52] These are words of gold.
[1] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, it pp. 361-363. 1871.
[2] I do not extend conjecture to a period when "our human or
half-human ancestors" may hare had a rutting season, like stags. Cf.
Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_, pp. 27, 28.
[3] Here I cannot but remark on the almost insuperable difficulty of
getting savants to understand an unfamiliar idea. M. Salomon Reinach
writes, "Another theory (Atkinson, Letourneau) explains exogamy as
the result of the sexual jealousy of the male, chief of the primitive
group. (Cf. _L'Année Sociologique_, 1904, pp. 407, 434.) He is supposed
to have tabooed all the women of the clan, reserving them for himself.
This conception of a chief not only polygamous but _omnigamous_"
(_pasigamous_ must be meant!) "is founded on no known ethnological
fact." (Cultes, Mythes et Religions, i. 161, Note I, 1905.) Mr.
Atkinson does not speak of a "clan" at all. The "clan," in French,
American, and some English anthropologists' terminology, is a totem
kin with exogamy and female reckoning of descent. Mr. Atkinson speaks,
in the first instance, of "family groups," "the cyclopean family," and
a sire with his female mates and children. Such a sire is no more and
no less "omnigamous" than a Turk in his harem, except that, as his
condition is "semi-brutish," his daughters (as in Panama, in 1699) are
not tabooed to him. Ethnology cannot now find this state of things of
course; it is a theory of Mr. Darwin's, based on the known habits of
the higher mammals.
[4] See Mr. Crawley's "_The Mystic Rose_" for this theory of sexual
taboo.
[5] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 153.
[6] _Golden Bough_, 2, i. pp. 404-446.
[7] _Nineteenth Century_, xxx. p. 566 sq.
[8] See examples in "Cupid and Psyche," in my _Custom and Myth_, and
Mr. Clodd's _Tom Tid Tot_, pp. 91-93.
[9] _Der Ursprung des Totemismus_. Von Dr. Julius Pikler, Professor der
Rechtsphilosophie an der Universität Budapest. K. Koffmann, Berlin,
_s.a._ Apparently of 1900. This tract, "The Origin of Totemism,"
written in 1899, did not come to my knowledge till after this chapter
was drafted.
[10] _Contributions to the Science of Mythology_, i. p. 201.
[11] Cf. _Social Origins_, pp. 141, 142.
[12] _Ursprung des Totemismus_, p. 7.
[13] See Colonel Mallery on Pictographs, _Report of Bureau of
Ethnology_, 1888-1889, pp. 56-61.
[14] "From two inscriptions found at Elensis it appears that the names
of the priests were committed to the depths of the sea, probably they
were engraved on tablets of bronze or lead, and thrown into deep water
in the Gulf of Salamis. ... A clearer illustration of the confusion
between the incorporeal and the corporeal, between the name and its
material embodiment, could hardly be found than in this practice of
civilised Greece." (_Golden Bough_, 2, i p. 441.) Cf. Budge, _Egyptian
Magic_, pp. 160-162, 1901. "The Egyptians regarded the creation as the
result of the utterance of the name of the god Neb-er-tcher by himself
Isis could not do her will on him till she learned the _name_ of the
god Ra." Messrs. Spencer and Gillen tell us that the great sky-dwelling
Being of the Kaitish tribe "made himself and gave himself his name." He
made himself very inadequately, according to the myth, which may rest
on a false etymology, and the meaning of his name is not pretty, but
it would not surprise one if, by uttering his name, he made himself.
(_Northern Tribes_, p. 498.)
[15] _Der Ursprung des Totemismus_, pp. 10, 11.
[16] _Social Origins_, p. 138.
[17] I am sure to be told that in Chapter III. I declared _local_
totem groups to be the result of reckoning in the male line, and not
primitive, and that, here, I make the primitive animal-named group
local. My reply is that in this passage I am not speaking of _totem_
groups, but of _local groups bearing animal names_, a very different
thing. A group may have borne an animal name long before it evolved
totemic beliefs about the animal, and recognised it as a totem. No
group that was _not_ local could get a name to itself, at this early
stage of the proceedings. The "local habitation" precedes the "name."
[18] Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 139.
[19] _J. A. I._, p. 53, August 1888.
[20] _Social Origins_, pp. 145, 146, and Note 1.
[21] _J. A. I._, August 1888, p. 51. _South-Eastern Tribes_, p. 736.
[22] Other tribes decidedly do understand. Can the _Churinga nanja_
and reincarnation beliefs have set up nescience of obvious facts among
the Arunta? "The children originate solely from the male parent, and
only owe their infantine nurture to the mother," according to certain
Australian tribes _with female descent_. (Howitt, _J. A. I._, 1882, p.
502. _South-Eastern Tribes_, pp. 283, 284. So, too, the Euahlayi. Mrs.
Langloh Parker's MS.)
[23] Cf. _Golden Bough_, 2, i. pp. 360-362.
[24] Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 254.
[25] On this point of the blood tabu see Dr. Durkheim, _L'Année
Sociologique_, i. pp. 47-57. Also M. Reinach, _L'Anthropologie_, vol.
x. p. 65. The point was laid before me long ago by Mr. Arthur Platt,
when he was editing the papers of Mr. J. F. McLennan. Dr. Durkheim
charges me (_Folk Lore_, December 1903) with treating these tabus
"vaguely" in _Social Origins_. I merely referred the reader more than
once, as in _Social Origins_, p. 57, Note I, to Dr. Durkheim's own
exposition, also to M. Reinach, _L'Anthropologie_, x. p. 65. The theory
of the sacredness of the blood is not absolutely necessary. The totem
tabu often excludes all contact with the totem by the totemist.
[26] The passage will be found in _Social Origins_, pp. 166-175.
[27] _Social Origins_, pp. 295-301.
[28] _Folk Lore_, December 1903, p. 423.
[29] _Vindication of Cameron's Name_. "Saints of the Covenant," i. p.
251.
[30] _Northern Tribes_, p. 10, Note 2.
[31] J. J. Atkinson. The natives call _us_ "White Men." We do not call
ourselves "God dams," but Jeanne d'Arc did.
[32] _Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada_, vol. ix., vii. pp. 64, 66.
[33] _Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada_, ut supra, pp. 96, 97.
[34] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 154.
[35] _Blackfoot Lodge Tales_, p. 208, 1893.
[36] _Op. cit._, p. 225.
[37] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 131.
[38] Spencer and Gillen, _Central Tribes_, p. 638.
[39] Macbain, _Gaelic Etymological Dictionary_.
[40] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 154.
[41] _Northern Tribes_, pp. 207-210.
[42] I am unable to understand how Mr. Howitt can say that he knows
no Australian case of such nicknames being adopted. Mentioning Mr.
Haddon's theory that groups were named each after its special variety
of food, he says "this receives support from the fact that analogous
names obtain now in certain tribes, _e.g._ the Yum." (_Op. cit._, p.
154.) I understand Mr. Haddon to mean that these names were sobriquets
given from without and accepted. If so, Mr. Howitt does know such cases
after all. Unluckily he gives no instances in treating of Yuin names,
unless names of individuals derived from their skill in catching or
spearing this or that bird or fish are intended. These exist among
the more elderly Kunaï. (_Op. cit._, p. 738.) But Mr. Haddon was not
thinking of such individual names of senior men, but of group names. On
his theory Wolves and Ravens were so styled because wolves and ravens
were their chief articles of diet.
[43] See Turner's _Samoa_, and Mr. Tylor, _J. A. I._, N.S., i. p. 142.
[44] _J. A. I._, August 1888, pp. 53, 54. Also volume xiii. p. 498.
Cf., too _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 89, 488, 498.
[45] _J. A. I._, August 1888, p. 67.
[46] _Bureau of Ethnology Report_, 1892, 1893, Part I. pp. 22, 23.
Howitt, _Organisation of Australian Tribes_, p. 134 Information from
Mrs. Langloh Parker. These sources give Menomini, Dieri, Murring,
Woeworung, and Euahlayi myths, attributing totemic rules and names to
divine institution.
[47] Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 25.
[48] _J. A. I._, 1888, p. 498. Cf. _Native Tribes of South-East
Australia_, pp. 482-484. Mura-Mura, till further notice, are mythical
ancestors, not reincarnated.
[49] _Making of Religion_, p. 232, 1898.
[50] _Assoc. Adv. Science_, p. 531, and Note 30, 1902. For other
discrepant myths, cf. _Native Tribes of S.E. Australia_, pp. 475, 482.
[51] Grey, _Vocabulary of the Dialects of South-Western Australia_.
That only two of seven totems in one tribe were explained is usually
overlooked.
[52] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 165, 1880.