TOTEMIC BELIEFS--_end_
_The Individual Totem and the Sexual Totem_
Up to the present, we have studied totemism only as a public
institution: the only totems of which we have spoken are common to a
clan, a phratry or, in a sense, to a tribe;[488] an individual has a
part in them only as a member of a group. But we know that there is no
religion which does not have an individual aspect. This general
observation is applicable to totemism. In addition to the impersonal and
collective totems which hold the first place, there are others which are
peculiar to each individual, which express his personality, and whose
cult he celebrates in private.
I
In certain Australian tribes, and in the majority of the Indian tribes
of North America,[489] each individual personally sustains relations
with some determined object, which are comparable to those which each
clan sustains with its totem. This is sometimes an inanimate being or an
artificial object; but it is generally an animal. In certain cases, a
special part of the organism, such as the head, the feet or the liver,
fulfils this office.[490]
The name of the thing also serves as the name of the individual. It is
his personal name, his forename, which is added to that of the
collective totem, as the _praenomen_ of the Romans was to the _nomen
gentilicium_. It is true that this fact is not reported except in a
certain number of societies,[491] but it is probably general. In fact,
we shall presently show that there is an identity of nature between the
individual and the thing; now an identity of nature implies one of name.
Being given in the course of especially important religious ceremonies,
this forename has a sacred character. It is not pronounced in the
ordinary circumstances of profane life. It even happens that the word
designating this object in the ordinary language must be modified to a
greater or less extent if it is to serve in this particular case.[492]
This is because the terms of the usual language are excluded from the
religious life.
In certain American tribes, at least, this name is reinforced by an
emblem belonging to each individual and representing, under various
forms, the thing designated by the name. For example, each Mandan wears
the skin of the animal of which he is the namesake.[493] If it is a
bird, he decorates himself with its feathers.[494] The Hurons and
Algonquins tattoo their bodies with its image.[495] It is represented on
their arms.[496] Among the north-western tribes, the individual emblem,
just like the collective emblem of the clan, is carved or engraved on
the utensils, houses,[497] etc.; it serves as a mark of ownership.[498]
Frequently the two coats-of-arms are combined together, which partially
explains the great diversity of aspects presented by the totemic
escutcheons among these peoples.[499]
Between the individual and his animal namesake there exist the very
closest bonds. The man participates in the nature of the animal; he has
its good qualities as well as its faults. For example, a man having the
eagle as his coat-of-arms is believed to possess the gift of seeing into
the future; if he is named after a bear, they say that he is apt to be
wounded in combat, for the bear is heavy and slow and easily
caught;[500] if the animal is despised, the man is the object of the
same sentiment.[501] The relationship of the two is even so close that
it is believed that in certain circumstances, especially in case of
danger, the man can take the form of the animal.[502] Inversely, the
animal is regarded as a double of the man, as his _alter ego_.[503] The
association of the two is so close that their destinies are frequently
thought to be bound up together: nothing can happen to one without the
other's feeling a reaction.[504] If the animal dies, the life of the man
is menaced. Thus it comes to be a very general rule that one should not
kill the animal, nor eat its flesh. This interdiction, which, when
concerning the totem of the clan, allows of all sorts of attenuations
and modifications, is now much more formal and absolute.[505]
On its side, the animal protects the man and serves him as a sort of
patron. It informs him of possible dangers and of the way of escaping
them;[506] they say that it is his friend.[507] Since it frequently
happens to possess marvellous powers, it communicates them to its human
associate, who believes in them, even under the proof of bullets,
arrows, and blows of every sort.[508] This confidence of an individual
in the efficacy of his protector is so great that he braves the greatest
dangers and accomplishes the most disconcerting feats with an intrepid
serenity: faith gives him the necessary courage and strength.[509]
However, the relations of a man with his patron are not purely and
simply those of dependence. He, on his side, is able to act upon the
animal. He gives it orders; he has influence over it. A Kurnai having
the shark as ally and friend believes that he can disperse the sharks
who menace a boat, by means of a charm.[510] In other cases, the
relations thus contracted are believed to confer upon the man a special
aptitude for hunting the animal with success.[511]
The very nature of these relations seems clearly to imply that the being
to which each individual is thus associated is only an individual
itself, and not a species. A man does not have a species as his _alter
ego_. In fact, there are cases where it is certainly a certain
determined tree, rock or stone that fulfils this function.[512] It must
be thus every time that it is an animal, and that the existences of the
animal and the man are believed to be connected. A man could not be
united so closely to a whole species, for there is not a day nor, so to
speak, an instant when the species does not lose some one of its
members. Yet the primitive has a certain incapacity for thinking of the
individual apart from the species; the bonds uniting him to the one
readily extend to the other; he confounds the two in the same sentiment.
Thus the entire species becomes sacred for him.[513]
This protector is naturally given different names in different
societies: _nagual_ among the Indians of Mexico,[514] _manitou_ among
the Algonquins and _okki_ among the Hurons,[515] _snam_ among certain
Salish,[516] _sulia_ among others,[517] _budjan_ among the Yuin,[518]
_yunbeai_ among the Euahlayi,[519] etc. Owing to the importance of these
beliefs and practices among the Indians of North America, some have
proposed creating a word _nagualism_ or _manitouism_ to designate
them.[520] But in giving them a special and distinctive name, we run the
risk of misunderstanding their relations with the rest of totemism. In
fact, the same principle is applied in the one case to the clan and in
the other to the individual. In both cases we find the same belief that
there are vital connections between the things and the men, and that
the former are endowed with special powers, of which their human allies
may also enjoy the advantage. We also find the same custom of giving the
man the name of the thing with which he is associated and of adding an
emblem to this name. The totem is the patron of the clan, just as the
patron of the individual is his personal totem. So it is important that
our terminology should make the relationship of the two systems
apparent; that is why we, with Frazer, shall give the name _individual
totemism_ to the cult rendered by each individual to his patron. A
further justification of this expression is found in the fact that in
certain cases the primitive himself uses the same word to designate the
totem of the clan and the animal protector of the individual.[521] If
Tylor and Powell have rejected this term and demanded different ones for
these two sorts of religious institutions, it is because the collective
totem is, in their opinion, only a name or label, having no religious
character.[522] But we, on the contrary, know that it is a sacred thing,
and even more so than the protecting animal. Moreover, the continuation
of our study will show how these two varieties of totemism are
inseparable from each other.[523]
Yet, howsoever close the kinship between these two institutions may be,
there are important differences between them. While the clan believes
that it is the offspring of the animal or plant serving it as totem, the
individual does not believe that he has any relationship of descent with
his personal totem. It is a friend, an associate, a protector; but it is
not a relative. He takes advantage of the virtues it is believed to
possess; but he is not of the same blood. In the second place, the
members of a clan allow neighbouring clans to eat of the animal whose
name they bear collectively, under the simple condition that the
necessary formalities shall be observed. But, on the contrary, the
individual respects the species to which his personal totem belongs and
also protects it against strangers, at least in those parts where the
destiny of the man is held to be bound up with that of the animal.
But the chief difference between these two sorts of totems is in the
manner in which they are acquired.
The collective totem is a part of the civil status of each individual:
it is generally hereditary; in any case, it is birth which designates
it, and the wish of men counts for nothing. Sometimes the child has the
totem of his mother (Kamilaroi, Dieri, Urabunna, etc.); sometimes that
of his father (Narrinyeri, Warramunga, etc.); sometimes the one
predominating in the locality where his mother conceived (Arunta,
Loritja). But, on the contrary, the individual totem is acquired by a
deliberate act:[524] a whole series of ritual operations are necessary
to determine it. The method generally employed by the Indians of North
America is as follows. About the time of puberty, as the time for
initiation approaches, the young man withdraws into a distant place, for
example, into a forest. There, during a period varying from a few days
to several years, he submits himself to all sorts of exhausting and
unnatural exercises. He fasts, mortifies himself and inflicts various
mutilations upon himself. Now he wanders about, uttering violent cries
and veritable howls; now he lies extended, motionless and lamenting,
upon the ground. Sometimes he dances, prays and invokes his ordinary
divinities. At last, he thus gets himself into an extreme state of
super-excitation, verging on delirium. When he has reached this
paroxysm, his representations readily take on the character of
hallucinations. "When," says Heckewelder, "a boy is on the eve of being
initiated, he is submitted to an alternating régime of fasts and medical
treatment; he abstains from all food and takes the most powerful and
repugnant drugs: at times, he drinks intoxicating concoctions until his
mind really wanders. Then he has, or thinks he has, visions and
extraordinary dreams to which he was of course predisposed by all this
training. He imagines himself flying through the air, advancing under
the ground, jumping from one mountain-top to another across the valleys,
and fighting and conquering giants and monsters."[525] If in these
circumstances he sees, or, as amounts to the same thing, he thinks he
sees, while dreaming or while awake, an animal appearing to him in an
attitude seeming to show friendly intentions, then he imagines that he
has discovered the patron he awaited.[526]
Yet this procedure is rarely employed in Australia.[527] On this
continent, the personal totem seems to be imposed by a third party,
either at birth[528] or at the moment of initiation.[529] Generally it
is a relative who takes this part, or else a personage invested with
special powers, such as an old man or a magician. Sometimes divination
is used for this purpose. For example, on Charlotte Bay, Cape Bedford or
the Proserpine River, the grandmother or some other old woman takes a
little piece of umbilical cord to which the placenta is still attached
and whirls it about quite violently. Meanwhile the other old women
propose different names. That one is adopted which happens to be
pronounced just at the moment when the cord breaks.[530] Among the
Yarrai-kanna of Cape York, after a tooth has been knocked out of the
young initiate, they give him a little water to rinse his mouth and ask
him to spit in a bucket full of water. The old men carefully examine the
clot formed by the blood and saliva thus spit out, and the natural
object whose shape it resembles becomes the personal totem of the young
man.[531] In other cases, the totem is transmitted from one individual
to another, for example from father to son, or uncle to nephew.[532]
This method is also used in America. In a case reported by Hill Tout,
the operator was a shaman,[533] who wished to transmit his totem to his
nephew. "The uncle took the symbol of his _snam_ (his personal totem),
which in this case was a dried bird's skin, and bade his nephew breathe
upon it. He then blew upon it also himself, uttered some mystic words
and the dried skin seemed to Paul (the nephew) to become a living bird,
which flew about them a moment or two and then finally disappeared.
Paul was then instructed by his uncle to procure that day a bird's skin
of the same kind as his uncle's and wear it on his person. This he did,
and that night he had a dream, in which the _snam_ appeared to him in
the shape of a human being, disclosed to him its mystic name by which it
might be summoned, and promised him protection."[534]
Not only is the individual totem acquired and not given, but ordinarily
the acquisition of one is not obligatory. In the first place, there are
a multitude of tribes in Australia where the custom seems to be
absolutely unknown.[535] Also, even where it does exist, it is
frequently optional. Thus among the Euahlayi, while all the magicians
have individual totems from which they get their powers, there are a
great number of laymen who have none at all. It is a favour given by the
magician, but which he reserves for his friends, his favourites and
those who aspire to becoming his colleagues.[536] Likewise, among
certain Salish, persons desiring to excel especially either in fighting
or in hunting, or aspirants to the position of shaman, are the only ones
who provide themselves with protectors of this sort.[537] So among
certain peoples, at least, the individual totem seems to be considered
an advantage and convenient thing rather than a necessity. It is a good
thing to have, but a man can do without one. Inversely, a man need not
limit himself to a single totem; if he wishes to be more fully
protected, nothing hinders his seeking and acquiring several,[538] and
if the one he has fulfils its part badly, he can change it.[539]
But while it is more optional and free, individual totemism contains
within it a force of resistance never attained by the totemism of the
clan. One of the chief informers of Hill Tout was a baptized Salish;
however, though he had sincerely abandoned the faith of his fathers, and
though he had become a model catechist, still his faith in the efficacy
of the personal totems remained unshaken.[540] Similarly, though no
visible traces of collective totemism remain in civilized countries, the
idea that there is a connection between each individual and some
animal, plant or other object, is at the bottom of many customs still
observable in many European countries.[541]
II
Between collective totemism and individual totemism there is an
intermediate form partaking of the characteristics of each: this is
sexual totemism. It is found only in Australia and in a small number of
tribes. It is mentioned especially in Victoria and New South Wales.[542]
Mathews, it is true, claims to have observed it in all the parts of
Australia that he has visited, but he gives no precise facts to support
this affirmation.[543]
Among these different peoples, all the men of the tribe on the one hand,
and all the women on the other, to whatever special clan they may
belong, form, as it were, two distinct and even antagonistic societies.
Now each of these two sexual corporations believes that it is united by
mystical bonds to a determined animal. Among the Kurnai, all the men
think they are brothers, as it were, of the emu-wren (Yeer[)u]ng), all
the women, that they are as sisters of the linnet (Djeetg[)u]n); all the
men are Yeer[)u]ng and all the women are Djeetg[)u]n. Among the
Wotjobaluk and the Wurunjerri, it is the bat and the _nightjar_ (a
species of screech-owl) respectively who take this rôle. In other
tribes, the woodpecker is substituted for the _nightjar_. Each sex
regards the animal to which it is thus related as a sort of protector
which must be treated with the greatest regard; it is also forbidden to
kill and eat it.[544]
Thus this protecting animal plays the same part in relation to the
sexual society that the totem of the clan plays to this latter group. So
the expression sexual totemism, which we borrow from Frazer,[545] is
justified. This new sort of totem resembles that of the clan
particularly in that it, too, is collective; it belongs to all the
people of one sex indiscriminately. It also resembles this form in that
it implies a relationship of descent and consanguinity between the
animal patron and the corresponding sex: among the Kurnai, all the men
are believed to be descended from Yeer[)u]ng and all the women from
Djeetg[)u]n.[546] The first observer to point out this curious
institution described it, in 1834, in the following terms: "Tilmun, a
little bird the size of a thrush (it is a sort of woodpecker), is
supposed by the women to be the first maker of women. These birds are
held in veneration by the women only."[547] So it was a great ancestor.
But in other ways, this same totem resembles the individual totem. In
fact, it is believed that each member of a sexual group is personally
united to a determined individual of the corresponding animal species.
The two lives are so closely associated that the death of the animal
brings about that of the man. "The life of a bat," say the Wotjobaluk,
"is the life of a man."[548] That is why each sex not only respects its
own totem, but forces the members of the other to do so as well. Every
violation of this interdiction gives rise to actual bloody battles
between the men and the women.[549]
Finally, the really original feature of these totems is that they are,
in a sense, a sort of tribal totems. In fact, they result from men's
representing the tribe as descended as a whole from one couple of
mythical beings. Such a belief seems to demonstrate clearly that the
tribal sentiment has acquired sufficient force to resist, at least to a
considerable extent, the particularism of the clans. In regard to the
distinct origins assigned to men and to women, it must be said that its
cause is to be sought in the separate conditions in which the men and
the women live.[550]
It would be interesting to know how the sexual totems are related to the
totems of the clans, according to the theory of the Australians, what
relations there were between the two ancestors thus placed at the
commencement of the tribe, and from which one each special clan is
believed to be descended. But the ethnographical data at our present
disposal do not allow us to resolve these questions. Moreover, however
natural and even necessary it may appear to us, it is very possible that
the natives never raised it. They do not feel the need of co-ordinating
and systematizing their beliefs as strongly as we do.[551]