Queensland Aborigines_, pp. 56 ff.; Palmer, _Notes on some Australian
Tribes_, _J.A.I._, XIII (1884), pp. 302 ff.
[259] Nevertheless, some tribes are cited where the matrimonial classes
bear the names of animals or plants: this is the case with the Kabi
(Mathew, _Two Representative Tribes_, p. 150), the tribes observed by
Mrs. Bates (_The Marriage Laws and Customs of the West Australian
Aborigines_, in _Victorian Geographical Journal_, XXIII-XXIV, p. 47),
and perhaps in two tribes observed by Palmer. But these facts are very
rare and their significance badly established. Also, it is not
surprising that the classes, as well as the sexual groups, should
sometimes adopt the names of animals. This exceptional extension of the
totemic denominations in no way modifies our conception of totemism.
[260] Perhaps the same explanation is applicable to certain other tribes
of the South-East and the East where, if we are to believe the informers
of Howitt, totems specially attached to each matrimonial class are to be
found. This is the case among the Wiradjuri, the Wakelbura and the
Bunta-Murra on the Bulloo River (Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 210, 221, 226).
However, the evidence collected is suspect, according to his own
admission. In fact, it appears from the lists which he has drawn up,
that many totems are found equally in the two classes of the same
phratry.
The explanation which we propose, after Frazer (_Totemism and Exogamy_,
pp. 531 ff.), raises one difficulty. In principle, each clan and
consequently each totem, is represented equally in the two classes of a
single phratry, since one of the classes is that of the children and the
other that of the parents from whom the former get their totems. So when
the clans disappeared, the totemic interdictions which survived should
have remained in both matrimonial classes, while in the actual cases
cited, each class has its own. Whence comes this differentiation? The
example of the Kaiabara (a tribe of southern Queensland) allows us to
see how it may have come about. In this tribe, the children have the
totem of their mother, but it is particularized by some distinctive
mark. If the mother has the black eagle-hawk as totem, the child has the
white eagle-hawk (Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 229). This appears to be the
beginning of a tendency for the totems to differentiate themselves
according to the matrimonial classes.
[261] A tribe of only a few hundred members frequently has fifty or
sixty clans, or even many more. On this point, see Durkheim and Mauss,
_De quelques formes primitives de classification_, in the _Année
Sociologique_, Vol. VI, p. 28, n. 1.
[262] Except among the Pueblo Indians of the South-West, where they are
more numerous. See Hodge, _Pueblo Indian Clans_, in _American
Anthropologist_, 1st series, Vol. IX, pp. 345 ff. It may always be asked
whether the groups which have these totems are clans or sub-clans.
[263] See the tables arranged by Morgan, _Ancient Society_, pp. 153-185.
[264] Krause, _Die Tlinkit-Indianer_, p. 112; Swanton, _Social
Condition, Beliefs and Linguistic Relationship of the Tlingit Indians_,
in _XXVIth Rep._, p. 308.
[265] Swanton, _Contributions to the Ethnology of the Haida_, p. 62.
[266] "The distinction between the two clans is absolute in every
respect," says Swanton, p. 68; he gives the name clan to what we call
phratries. The two phratries, he says elsewhere, are like two foreign
nations in their relations to each other.
[267] Among the Haida at least, the totem of the real clans is altered
more than that of the phratries. In fact, usage permits a clan to sell
or give away the right of bearing its totem, as a result of which each
clan has a number of totems, some of which it has in common with other
clans (see Swanton, pp. 107 and 268). Since Swanton calls the phratries
clans, he is obliged to give the name of _family_ to the real clans, and
of _household_ to the regular families. But the real sense of his
terminology is not to be doubted.
[268] _Journals of two Expeditions in N.W. and W. Australia_, II, p.
228.
[269] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 165.
[270] _Indian Tribes_, I, p. 420; cf. I, p. 52. This etymology is very
doubtful. Cf. _Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico_
(_Smithsonian Inst. Bur. of Ethnol._, Pt. II, _s.v._, Totem, p. 787).
[271] Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes_, III, 184; Garrick Mallery, _Picture
Writing of the American Indians_, in _Tenth Report_, 1893, p. 377.
[272] Hearne, _Journey to the Northern Ocean_, p. 148 (quoted from
Frazer, _Totemism_, p. 30).
[273] Charlevoix, _Histoire et description de la Nouvelle France_, V, p.
329.
[274] Krause, _Tlinkit-Indianer_, p. 248.
[275] Erminnie A. Smith, _Myths of the Iroquois_, in _Sec. Rep. of the
Bur. of Ethnol._, p. 78.
[276] Dodge, _Our Wild Indians_, p. 225.
[277] Powell, _Wyandot Government_, in _First Rep. of the Bur. of
Ethnol._, 1881, p. 64.
[278] Dorsey, _Omaha Sociology_, in _Third Rep._, pp. 229, 240, 248.
[279] Krause, _op. cit._, pp. 130 f.
[280] Krause, p. 308.
[281] See a photograph of a Haida village in Swanton, _op. cit._, Pl.
IX. Cf. Tylor, _Totem Post of the Haida Village of Masset_, _J.A.I._,
New Series I, p. 133.
[282] Hill Tout, _Report on the Ethnology of the Statlumh of British
Columbia_, _J.A.I._, XXXV, p. 155.
[283] Krause, _op. cit._, p. 230; Swanton, _Haida_, pp. 129, 135 ff.;
Schoolcraft, _op. cit._, I, pp. 52-53, 337, 356. In the latter case the
totem is represented upside down, in sign of mourning. Similar usages
are found among the Creek (C. Swan, _in_ Schoolcraft, V, p. 265) and the
Delaware (Heckewelder, _An Account of the History, Manners and Customs
of the Indian Nations who once inhabited Pennsylvania_, pp. 246-247).
[284] Spencer and Gillen, _Nor. Tr._, pp. 168, 537, 540.
[285] _Ibid._, p. 174.
[286] Brough Smyth, _The Aborigines of Victoria_, I, p. 99 n.
[287] Brough Smyth, I, p. 284. Strehlow cites a fact of the same sort
among the Arunta (III, p. 68).
[288] _An Account of the English Colony in N.S. Wales_, II, p. 381.
[289] Krause, p. 237.
[290] Swanton, _Social Condition, Beliefs and Linguistic Relationship of
the Tlingit Indians, in XXVIth Rep._, pp. 435 ff.; Boas, _The Social
Organization and Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians_, p. 358.
[291] Frazer, _Totemism_, p. 26.
[292] Bourke, _The Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona_, p. 229; J. W.
Fewkes, _The Group of Tusayan Ceremonials called Katcinas_, in _XVth
Rep._, 1897, pp. 151-263.
[293] Müller, _Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen_, p. 327.
[294] Schoolcraft, _op. cit._, III, p. 269.
[295] Dorsey, _Omaha Sociol._, _Third Rep._, pp. 229, 238, 240, 245.
[296] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 451.
[297] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 257.
[298] The meaning of these relations will be seen below (Bk. II, ch.
iv).
[299] Spencer and Gillen, _Nor. Tr._, p. 296.
[300] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 744-746; cf. p. 129.
[301] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 66 n. It is true that other informers
contest this fact.
[302] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 744.
[303] Swanton, _Contributions to the Ethnology of the Haida_, pp. 41
ff., Pl. XX and XXI; Boas, _The Social Organization of the Kwakiutl_, p.
318; Swanton, _Tlingit_, Pl. XVI ff.--In one place, outside the two
ethnographic regions which we are specially studying, these tattooings
are put on the animals which belong to the clan. The Bechuana of South
Africa are divided into a certain number of clans; there are the people
of the crocodile, the buffalo, the monkey, etc. Now the crocodile
people, for example, make an incision in the ears of their cattle whose
form is like the jaws of this animal (Casalis, _Les Basoutos_, p. 221).
According to Robertson Smith, the same custom existed among the ancient
Arabs (_Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_, pp. 212-214).
[304] However, according to Spencer and Gillen, there are some which
have no religious sense (see _Nat. Tr._, pp. 41 f.; _Nor. Tr._, pp. 45,
54-56).
[305] Among the Arunta, this rule has exceptions which will be explained
below.
[306] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 162; _Nor. Tr._, pp. 179, 259,
292, 295 f.; Schulze, _loc. cit._, p. 221. The thing thus represented is
not always the totem itself, but one of those things which, being
associated to this totem, are regarded as being in the same family of
things.
[307] This is the case, for example, among the Warramunga, the Walpari,
the Wulmala, the Tjingilli, the Umbaia and the Unmatjera (_Nor. Tr._,
339, 348). Among the Warramunga, at the moment when the design is
executed, the performers address the initiated with the following words:
"That mark belongs to your place; do not look out along another place."
"This means," say Spencer and Gillen, "that the young man must not
interfere with ceremonies belonging to other totems than his own: it
also indicates the very close association which is supposed to exist
between a man and his totem and any spot especially connected with the
totem" (_Nor. Tr._, p. 584 and n.). Among the Warramunga, the totem is
transmitted from father to child, so each locality has its own.
[308] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 215, 241, 376.
[309] It will be remembered (see above, p. 107) that in this tribe, the
child may have a different totem than his father, his mother, or his
relatives in general. Now the relatives on both sides are the performers
designated for the ceremonies of initiation. Consequently, since in
principle a man can have the quality of performer or officiant only for
the ceremonies of his own totem, it follows that in certain cases the
rites by which the young man is initiated must be in connection with a
totem that is not his own. That is why the paintings made on the body of
the novice do not necessarily represent his own totem: cases of this
sort will be found in Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 229. That there
is an anomaly here is well shown by the fact that the circumcision falls
to the totem which predominates in the local group of the initiate, that
is to say, to the one which would be the totem of the initiate himself,
if the totemic organization were not disturbed, if among the Arunta it
were what it is among the Warramunga (see Spencer and Gillen, _ibid._,
p. 219).
The same disturbance has had another consequence. In a general way, its
effect is to extend a little the bonds attaching each totem to a special
group, since each totem may have members in all the local groups
possible, and even in the two phratries. The idea that these ceremonies
of a totem might be celebrated by an individual of another totem--an
idea which is contrary to the very principles of totemism, as we shall
see better after a while--has thus been accepted without too much
resistance. It has been admitted that a man to whom a spirit revealed
the formula for a ceremony had the right of presiding over it, even when
he was not of the totem in question himself (_Nat. Tr._, p. 519). But
that this is an exception to the rule and the product of a sort of
toleration is proved by the fact that the beneficiary of the formula
does not have the free disposition of it; if he transmits it--and these
transmissions are frequent--it can be only to a member of the totem
which the rite concerns (_Nat. Tr._, _ibid._).
[310] _Nat. Tr._, p. 140. In this case, the novice keeps the decoration
with which he has thus been adorned until it disappears of itself by the
effect of time.
[311] Boas, _General Report on the Indians of British Columbia in
British Association for the Advancement of Science, Fifth Rep. of the
Committee on the N.W. Tribes of the Dominion of Canada_, p. 41.
[312] There are also some among the Warramunga, but in smaller numbers
than among the Arunta; they do not figure in the totemic ceremonies,
though they do have a place in the myths (_Nor. Tr._, p. 163).
[313] Other names are used by other tribes. We give a generic sense to
the Arunta term because it is in this tribe that the churinga have the
most important place and have been studied the best.
[314] Strehlow, II, p. 81.
[315] There are a few which have no apparent design (see Spencer and
Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 144).
[316] _Nat. Tr._, pp. 139 and 648; Strehlow, II, p. 75.
[317] Strehlow, who writes _tjurunga_, gives a slightly different
translation to the word. "This word," he says, "means that which is
secret and personal _(der eigene geheime_). _Tju_ is an old word which
means hidden or secret, and _runga_ means that which is my own." But
Kempe, who has more authority than Strehlow in this matter, translates
_tju_ by great, powerful, sacred (_Kempe, Vocabulary of the Tribes
inhabiting Macdonell Ranges_, s.v. _Tju_, in _Transactions of the R.
Society of Victoria_, Vol. XIII). At bottom, the translation of Strehlow
is not so different from the other as might appear at first glance, for
what is secret is hidden from the knowledge of the profane, that is, it
is sacred. As for the meaning given to _runga_, it appears to us very
doubtful. The ceremonies of the emu belong to all the members of that
clan; all may participate in them; therefore they are not personal to
any one of them.
[318] _Nat. Tr._, pp. 130-132; Strehlow, II, p. 78. A woman who has seen
a churinga or a man who has shown one to her are both put to death.
[319] Strehlow calls this place, defined in exactly the same terms as by
Spencer and Gillen, _arknanaua_ instead of _ertnatulunga_ (Strehlow, II,
p. 78).
[320] _Nor. Tr._, p. 270; _Nat. Tr._, p. 140.
[321] _Nat. Tr._, p. 135.
[322] Strehlow, II, p. 78. However, Strehlow says that if a murderer
takes refuge near an ertnatulunga, he is unpityingly pursued there and
put to death. We find some difficulty in conciliating this fact with the
privilege enjoyed by animals, and ask ourselves if the rigour with which
a criminal is treated is not something recent and should not be
attributed to a weakening of the taboo which originally protected the
ertnatulunga.
[323] _Nat. Tr._, p. 248.
[324] _Ibid._, pp. 545 f. Strehlow, II, p. 79. For example, the dust
detached by rubbing a churinga with a stone, when dissolved in water,
forms a potion which restores health to sick persons.
[325] _Nat. Tr._, pp. 545 f. Strehlow (II, p. 79) contests this fact.
[326] For example, the churinga of the yam totem, if placed in the soil,
make the yams grow (_Nor. Tr.,_ p. 275). It has the same power over
animals (Strehlow, II, pp. 76, 78; III, pp. 3, 7).
[327] _Nat. Tr._, p. 135; Strehlow, II, p. 79.
[328] _Nor. Tr._, p. 278.
[329] _Ibid._, p. 180.
[330] _Nor. Tr._, pp. 272 f.
[331] _Nat. Tr._, p. 135.
[332] One group borrows the churinga of another with the idea that these
latter will communicate some of the virtues which are in them and that
their presence will quicken the vitality of the individuals and of the
group (_Nat. Tr._, pp. 158 ff.).
[333] _Ibid._, p. 136.
[334] Each individual is united by a particular bond to a special
churinga which assures him his life, and also to those which he has
received as a heritage from his parents.
[335] _Nat. Tr._, p. 154; _Nor. Tr._, p. 193. The churinga are so
thoroughly collective that they take the place of the "message-sticks"
with which the messengers of other tribes are provided, when they are
sent to summon foreign groups to a ceremony (_Nat. Tr._, pp. 141 f.).
[336] _Ibid._, p. 326. It should be remarked that the bull-roarers are
used in the same way (Mathews, _Aboriginal Tribes of N.S. Wales and
Victoria_, in _Jour. of Roy. Soc. of N.S. Wales_, XXXVIII, pp. 307 f.).
[337] _Nat. Tr._, pp. 161, 259 ff.
[338] _Ibid._, p. 138.
[339] Strehlow, I, _Vorwort. in fine_; II, pp. 76, 77 and 82. For the
Arunta, it is the body of the ancestor itself; for the Loritja, it is
only an image.
[340] When a child has just been born, the mother shows the father the
spot where she believes that the soul of the ancestor entered her. The
father, accompanied by a few relatives, goes to this spot and looks for
the churinga which the ancestor is believed to have left at the moment
that he reincarnated himself. If it is found there, some old man of the
group undoubtedly put it there (this is the hypothesis of Spencer and
Gillen). If they do not find it, a new churinga is made in a determined
manner (_Nat. Tr._, p. 132. Cf. Strehlow, II, p. 80).
[341] This is the case among the Warramunga, the Urabunna, the Worgaia,
the Umbaia, the Tjingilli and the Guangi (_Nor. Tr._, pp. 258, 275 f.).
Then, say Spencer and Gillen, "_they were regarded as of especial value
because of their association with a totem_" (_ibid._, p. 276). There are
examples of the same fact among the Arunta (_Nat. Tr._, 156).
[342] Strehlow writes _tnatanja_ (I, pp. 4-5).
[343] The Kaitish, the Ilpirra, the Unmatjera; but it is rare among the
latter.
[344] The pole is sometimes replaced by very long churinga, placed end
to end.
[345] Sometimes another smaller one is hung from the top of the
nurtunja. In other cases, the nurtunja is in the form of a cross or a T.
More rarely, the central support is lacking (_Nat. Tr._, pp. 298-300,
360-364, 627).
[346] Sometimes there are even three of these cross-bars.
[347] _Nat. Tr,_, pp. 231-234, 306-310, 627. In addition to the nurtunja
and the waninga, Spencer and Gillen distinguish a third sort of sacred
post or flag, called the kanana (_Nat. Tr._, pp. 364, 370, 629), whose
functions they admit they have been unable to determine. They merely
note that it "is regarded as something common to the members of all the
totems." According to Strehlow (II, p. 23, n. 2) the kanana of which
Spencer and Gillen speak, is merely the nurtunja of the Wild Cat totem.
As this animal is the object of a tribal cult, the veneration of which
it is the object might easily be common to all the clans.
[348] _Nor. Tr._, p. 342; _Nat. Tr._, p. 309.
[349] _Nat. Tr._, p. 255.
[350] _Ibid._, ch. x and xi.
[351] _Ibid._, pp. 138, 144.
[352] See Dorsey, _Siouan Cults, XIth Rep._, p. 413; _Omaha Sociology,
Third Rep._, p. 234. It is true that there is only one sacred post for
the tribe, while there is a nurtunja for each clan. But the principle is
the same.
[353] _Nat. Tr._, pp. 232, 308, 313, 334, etc.; _Nor. Tr._, 182, 186,
etc.
[354] _Nat. Tr._, p. 346. It is true that some say that the nurtunja
represents the lance of the ancestor who was at the head of each clan in
Alcheringa times. But it is only a symbolic representation of it; it is
not a sort of relic, like the churinga, which is believed to come from
the ancestor himself. Here the secondary character of the explanation is
very noticeable.
[355] _Nat. Tr._, pp. 614 ff., esp. p. 617; _Nor. Tr._, p. 749.
[356] _Nat. Tr._, p. 624.
[357] _Ibid._, p. 179.
[358] _Ibid._, p. 181.
[359] See the examples given in Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, Fig.
131. Here are designs, many of which evidently have the object of
representing animals, plants, the heads of men, etc., though of course
all are very conventional.
[360] _Nat. Tr.,_ p. 617; _Nor. Tr.,_ p. 716 ff.
[361] _Nat. Tr._, p. 145; Strehlow, II, p. 80.
[362] _Nat. Tr._, p. 151.
[363] _Ibid._, p. 346.
[364] It cannot be doubted that these designs and paintings also have an
æsthetic character; here is the first form of art. Since they are also,
and even above all, a written language, it follows that the origins of
design and those of writing are one. It even becomes clear that men
commenced designing, not so much to fix upon wood or stone beautiful
forms which charm the senses, as to translate his thought into matter
(_cf._ Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes_, I, p. 405; Dorsey, _Siouan Cults_,
pp. 394 ff.).
[365] See the cases in Taplin, _The Narrinyeri_, p. 63; Howitt, _Nat.
Tr._, pp. 146, 769; Fison and Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 169;
Roth, _Superstition, Magic and Medicine_, § 150; Wyatt, _Adelaide and
Encounter Bay Tribe_, in Woods, p. 168; Meyer, _ibid._, p. 186.
[366] This is the case with the Warramunga (_Nor. Tr._, p. 168).
[367] For example, among the Warramunga, the Urabunna, the Wonghibon,
the Yuin, the Wotjobaluk, the Buandik, Ngeumba, etc.
[368] Among the Kaitish, if a man of the clan eats too much of his
totem, the members of the other phratry have recourse to a magic
operation which is expected to kill him (_Nor. Tr._, p. 284; cf. _Nat.
Tr._, p. 204; Langloh Parker, _The Euahlavi Tribe_, p. 20).
[369] _Nat. Tr._, p. 202, n.; Strehlow, II, p. 58.
[370] _Nor. Tr._, p. 173.
[371] _Nat. Tr._, pp. 207 ff.
[372] See above, p. 128.
[373] It should also be borne in mind that in these myths the ancestors
are never represented as nourishing themselves _regularly_ with their
totem. Consumption of this sort is, on the contrary, the exception.
Their ordinary food, according to Strehlow, was the same as that of the
corresponding animal (see Strehlow, I, p. 4).
[374] Also, this whole theory rests upon an entirely arbitrary
hypothesis: Spencer and Gillen, as well as Frazer, admit that the tribes
of central Australia, and especially the Arunta, represent the most
archaic and consequently the purest form of totemism. We shall presently
say why this conjecture seems to us to be contrary to all probability.
It is even probable that these authors would not have accepted their
thesis so readily if they had not refused to regard totemism as a
religion and if they had not consequently misunderstood the sacred
character of the totem.
[375] Taplin, _The Narrinyeri_, p. 64; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 145 and
147; Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 202; Grey, _loc. cit._; Curr,
III, p. 462.
[376] _Nor. Tr._, pp. 160, 167. It is not enough that the intermediary
be of another totem: as we shall see, every totem of a phratry is
forbidden in a certain measure for the members of the phratry who are of
a different totem.
[377] _Nor. Tr._, p. 167. We can now explain more easily how it happens
that when an interdiction is not observed, it is the other phratry which
revenges this sacrilege (see above, p. 129, n. 2). It is because it has
an interest in seeing that the rule is observed. In fact, they believe
that when the rule is broken, the totemic species may not reproduce
abundantly. Now the members of the other phratry consume it regularly:
therefore it is they who are affected. That is why they revenge
themselves.
[378] This is the case among the Loritja (Strehlow, II, pp. 60, 61), the
Worgaia, the Warramunga, the Walpari, the Mara, the Anula and the
Binbinga (_Nor. Tr._, pp. 166, 167, 171, 173). It may be eaten by a
Warramunga or a Walpari, but only when offered by a member of the other
phratry. Spencer and Gillen remark (p. 167, n.), that in this regard the
paternal and the maternal totems appear to be under different rules. It
is true that in both cases the offer must come from the other phratry.
But when it is a question of the paternal totem, or the totem properly
so-called, this phratry is the one to which the totem does not belong;
for the maternal totem, the contrary is the case. Probably the principle
was first established for the former, then mechanically extended to the
other, though the situation was different. When the rule had once become
established that the prohibition protecting the totem could be neglected
only on the invitation of the other phratry, it was applied also to the
maternal totem.
[379] For example, among the Warramunga (_Nor. Tr._, p. 166), the
Wotjobaluk, the Buandik, the Kurnai (Howitt, pp. 146 f.) and the
Narrinyeri (Taplin, _The Narrinyeri_, p. 63).
[380] Even this is not always the case. An Arunta of the Mosquito totem
must not kill this insect, even when it bothers him: he must confine
himself to driving it away (Strehlow, II, p. 58; cf. Taplin, p. 63).
[381] Among the Kaitish and the Unmatjera (_Nor. Tr._, p. 160). It even
happens that in certain cases an old man gives a young one of a
different totem one of his churinga, so that he may kill the donor's
totem more easily (_ibid._, p. 272).
[382] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 146; Grey, _op. cit._, II, p. 228; Casalis,
_Basoutos_, p. 221. Among these latter, "one must be purified after
committing such a sacrilege."
[383] Strehlow, II, pp. 58, 59, 61.
[384] Dorsey, _Omaha Sociology, IIIrd Rep._, pp. 225, 231.
[385] Casalis, _ibid._
[386] Even among the Omaha, it is not certain that the interdictions of
contact, certain examples of which we have just cited, are really of a
totemic nature, for many of them have no direct connection with the
animal that serves as totem of the clan. Thus in the sub-clan of the
Eagle, the characteristic interdiction is against touching the head of a
buffalo (Dorsey, _op. cit._, p. 239); in another sub-clan with the same
totem, they must not touch verdigris, charcoal, etc. (_ibid._, p. 245).
We do not mention other interdictions mentioned by Frazer, such as those
of naming or looking at the animal or plant, for it is still less
certain that they are of totemic origin, except perhaps for certain
facts observed among the Bechuana (_Totemism_, pp. 12-13). Frazer admits
too readily--and in this regard, he has imitators--that the prohibitions
against eating or touching an animal depend upon totemic beliefs.
However, there is one case in Australia, where the sight of the animal
seems to be forbidden. According to Strehlow (II, p. 59), among the
Arunta and the Loritja, a man who has the moon as totem must not look at
it very long, or he would be likely to die at the hand of an enemy. But
we believe that this is a unique case. We must not forget, also, that
astronomical totems were probably not primitive in Australia, so this
prohibition may be the product of a complex elaboration. This hypothesis
is confirmed by the fact that among the Euahlayi, looking at the moon is
forbidden to all mothers and children, no matter what their totems may
be (L. Parker, _The Euahlayi_, p. 53).
[387] See Bk. III, ch. ii, § 2.
[388] Perhaps there is no religion which makes man an exclusively
profane being. For the Christian, the soul which each of us has within
him and which constitutes the very essence of our being, has something
sacred about it. We shall see that this conception of the soul is as old
as religious thought itself. The place of man in the hierarchy of sacred
things is more or less elevated.
[389] _Nat. Tr._, p. 202.
[390] Taplin, _The Narrinyeri_, pp. 59-61.
[391] Among certain clans of the Warramunga, for example (_Nor. Tr._, p.
162).
[392] Among the Urabunna (_Nor. Tr._, p. 147). Even when they tell us
that the first beings were men, these are really only semi-human, and
have an animal nature at the same time. This is the case with certain
Unmatjera (_ibid._, pp. 153-154). Here we find ways of thought whose
confusion disconcerts us, but which must be accepted as they are. We
would denature them if we tried to introduce a clarity that is foreign
to them (cf. _Nat. Tr._, p. 119).
[393] Among the Arunta (_Nat. Tr._, pp. 388 ff.); and among certain
Unmatjera (_Nor. Tr._, p. 153).
[394] _Nat. Tr._, p. 389. Cf. Strehlow, I, pp. 2-7.
[395] _Nat. Tr._, p. 389; Strehlow, I, pp. 2 ff. Undoubtedly there is an
echo of the initiation rites in this mythical theme. The initiation also
has the object of making the young man into a complete man, and on the
other hand, it also implies actual surgical operations (circumcision,
sub-incision, the extraction of teeth, etc.). The processes which served
to form the first men would naturally be conceived on the same model.
[396] This the case with the nine clans of the Moqui (Schoolcraft,
_Indian Tribes_, IV, p. 86), the Crain clan among the Ojibway (Morgan,
_Ancient Society_, p. 180), and the Nootka clans (Boas, _VIth Rep. on
the N.W. Tribes of Canada_, p. 43), etc.
[397] It is thus that the Turtle clan of the Iroquois took form. A group
of turtles had been forced to leave the lake where they dwelt and seek
another home. One of them, which was larger than the others, stood this
exercise very badly owing to the heat. It made such violent efforts that
it got out of its shell. The process of transformation, being once
commenced, went on by itself and the turtle finally became a man who was
the ancestor of the clan (Erminnie A. Smith, _The Myths of the Iroquois,
IInd Report_, p. 77). The Crab clan of the Choctaw was formed in a
similar manner. Some men surprised a certain number of crabs that lived
in the neighbourhood, took them home with them, taught them to talk and
to walk, and finally adopted them into their society (Catlin, _North
American Indians_, II, p. 128).
[398] For example, here is a legend of the Tsimshian. In the course of a
hunt, an Indian met a black bear which took him to its home, and taught
him to catch salmon and build canoes. The man stayed with the bear for
two years, and then returned to his native village. But the people were
afraid of him, because he was just like a bear. He could not talk or eat
anything except raw food. Then he was rubbed with magic herbs and
gradually regained his original form. After that, whenever he was in
trouble, he called upon his bear friends, who came to aid him. He built
a house and painted a bear on the foundation. His sister made a blanket
for the dance, upon which a bear was designed. That is why the
descendants of this sister had the bear as their emblem (Boas,
_Kwakiutl_, p. 323. Cf. _Vth Rep. on the N.W. Tribes of Canada_, pp. 23,
29 ff.; Hill Tout, _Report on the Ethnology of the Statlumh of British
Columbia_, in _J.A.I._, 1905, XXXV, p. 150).
Thus we see the inconveniences in making this mystical relationship
between the man and the animal the distinctive characteristic of
totemism, as M. Van Gennep proposes (_Totémisme et méthode comparative_,
in _Revue de l'histoire des religions_, Vol. LVIII, July, 1908, p. 55).
This relationship is a mythical representation of otherwise profound
facts; but it may be omitted without causing the disappearance of the
essential traits of totemism. Undoubtedly there are always close bonds
between the people of the clan and the totemic animal, but these are not
necessarily bonds of blood-relationship, though they are frequently
conceived in this form.
[399] There are also some Tlinkit myths in which the relationship of
descent between the man and the animal is still more carefully stated.
It is said that the clan is descended from a mixed union, if we may so
speak, that is to say, one where either the husband or the wife was an
animal of the species whose name the clan bears (see Swanton, _Social
Condition, Beliefs, etc., of the Tlinkit Indians_, _XXVIth Rep._, pp.
415-418).
[400] _Nat. Tr._, p. 284.
[401] _Ibid._, p. 179.
[402] See Bk. III, ch. ii. Cf. _Nat. Tr._, pp. 184, 201.
[403] _Ibid._, pp. 204, 262, 284.
[404] Among the Dieri and the Parnkalla. See Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp.
658, 661, 668, 669-671.
[405] Among the Warramunga, the blood from the circumcision is drunk by
the mother (_Nor. Tr._, p. 352). Among the Binbinga, the blood on the
knife which was used in the sub-incision must be licked off by the
initiate (_ibid._, p. 368). In general, the blood coming from the
genital organs is regarded as especially sacred (_Nat. Tr._, p. 464;
_Nor. Tr._, p. 598).
[406] _Nat. Tr._, p. 268.
[407] _Ibid._, pp. 144, 568.
[408] _Ibid._, pp. 442, 464. This myth is quite common in Australia.
[409] _Nat. Tr._, p. 627.
[410] _Ibid._, p. 466.
[411] _Ibid._ It is believed that if all these formalities are not
rigorously observed, grave calamities will fall upon the individual.
[412] _Nat. Tr._, p. 538; _Nor. Tr._, p. 604.
[413] After the foreskin has been detached by circumcision, it is
sometimes hidden, just like the blood; it has special virtues; for
example, it assures the fecundity of certain animal and vegetable
species (_Nor. Tr._, pp. 353 f.). The whiskers are mixed with the hair,
and treated as such (_ibid._, pp. 604, 544). They also play a part in
the myths (_ibid._, p. 158). As for the fat, its sacred character is
shown by the use made of it in certain funeral rites.
[414] This is not saying that the woman is absolutely profane. In the
myths, at least among the Arunta, she plays a religious rôle much more
important than she does in reality (_Nat. Tr._, pp. 195 f.). Even now
she takes part in certain initiation rites. Finally, her blood has
religious virtues (see _Nat. Tr._, p. 464; cf. _La prohibition de
l'inceste et ses origines_, _Année Sociol._, I, pp. 41 ff.).
It is upon this complex situation of the woman that the exogamic
restrictions depend. We do not speak of them here because they concern
the problem of domestic and matrimonial organization more directly than
the present one.
[415] _Nat. Tr._, p. 460.
[416] Among the Wakelbura, according to Howitt, p. 146; among the
Bechuana, according to Casalis, _Basoutos_, p. 221.
[417] Among the Buandik and Kurnai (Howitt, _ibid._); among the Arunta
(Strehlow, II, p. 58).
[418] Howitt, _ibid._
[419] In the Tully River district, says Roth (_Superstition, Magic and
Medicine_, in _North Queensland Ethnography_, No. 5, § 74), as an
individual goes to sleep or gets up in the morning, he pronounces in a
rather low voice the name of the animal after which he is named himself.
The purpose of this practice is to make the man clever or lucky in the
hunt, or be forewarned of the dangers to which he may be exposed from
this animal. For example, a man who has a species of serpent as his
totem is protected from bites if this invocation has been made
regularly.
[420] Taplin, _Narrinyeri_, p. 64; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 147; Roth,
_loc. cit._
[421] Strehlow, II, p. 58.
[422] Howitt, p. 148.
[423] _Nor. Tr._, pp. 159-160.
[424] _Ibid._
[425] _Ibid._, p. 225; _Nat. Tr._, pp. 202, 203.
[426] A. L. P. Cameron, _On Two Queensland Tribes_, in _Science of Man,
Australasian Anthropological Journal_, 1904, VII, 28, col. I.
[427] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 170.
[428] _Notes on some Australian Tribes_, _J.A.I._, XIII, p. 300.
[429] In Curr, _Australian Race_, III, p. 45; Brough Smyth, _The
Aborigines of Victoria_, I, p. 91; Fison and Howitt, _Kamilaroi and
Kurnai_, p. 168.
[430] Durkheim and Mauss, _De quelques formes primitives de
classification_, in _Année Sociol._, VI, pp. 1 ff.
[431] Curr, III, p. 461.
[432] Curr and Fison were both informed by the same person, D. S.
Stewart.
[433] Mathews, _Aboriginal Tribes of N.S. Wales and Victoria_, in
_Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of N.S. Wales_, XXXVIII,
pp. 287 f.; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 121.
[434] The feminine form of the names given by Mathews is Gurogigurk and
Gamatykurk. These are the forms which Howitt reproduces, with a slightly
different orthography. The names are also equivalent to those used by
the Mount Gambier tribe (Kumite and Kroki).
[435] The native name of this clan is Dyàlup, which Mathews does not
translate. This word appears to be identical with Jallup, by which
Howitt designates a sub-clan of the same tribe, and which he translates
"mussel." That is why we think we can hazard this translation.
[436] This is the translation of Howitt; Mathews renders the word
Wartwurt, "heat of the midday sun."
[437] The tables of Mathews and Howitt disagree on many important
points. It even seems that clans attributed by Howitt to the Kroki
phratry are given to the Gamutch phratry by Mathews, and inversely. This
proves the great difficulties that these observations present. But these
differences are without interest for our present question.
[438] Mrs. Langloh Parker, _The Euahlayi Tribe_, pp. 12 ff.
[439] The facts will be found below.
[440] Carr, III, p. 27. Cf. Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 112. We are merely
mentioning the most characteristic facts. For details, one may refer to
the memoir already mentioned on _Les classifications primitives_.
[441] _Ibid._, pp. 34 ff.
[442] Swanton, _The Haida_, pp. 13-14, 17, 22.
[443] This is especially clear among the Haida. Swanton says that with
them every animal has two aspects. First, it is an ordinary animal to be
hunted and eaten; but it is also a supernatural being in the animal's
form, upon which men depend. The mythical beings corresponding to cosmic
phenomena have the same ambiguity (Swanton, _ibid._, 16, 14, 25).
[444] See above, p. 142. This is the case among the Gournditch-mara
(Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 124), in the tribes studied by Cameron near the
Dead Lake, and among the Wotjobaluk (_ibid._, pp. 125, 250).
[445] J. Mathews, _Two Representative Tribes_, p. 139; Thomas, _Kinship
and Marriage_, pp. 53 f.
[446] Among the Osage, for example (see Dorsey, _Siouan Sociology_, in
_XVth Rep._, pp. 233 ff.).
[447] At Mabuiag, an island in Torrès' Strait (Haddon, _Head Hunters_,
p. 132), the same opposition is found between the two phratries of the
Arunta: one includes the men of a water totem, the other those of earth
(Strehlow, I, p. 6).
[448] Among the Iroquois there is a sort of tournament between the two
phratries (Morgan, _Ancient Society_, p. 94). Among the Haida, says
Swanton, the members of the two phratries of the Eagle and the Crow "are
frequently considered as avowed enemies. Husband and wife (who must be
of different phratries) do not hesitate to betray each other" (_The
Haida_, p. 62). In Australia this hostility is carried into the myths.
The two animals serving the phratries as totems are frequently
represented as in a perpetual war against each other (see J. Mathews,
_Eaglehawk and Crow, a study of Australian Aborigines_, pp. 14 ff.). In
games, each phratry is the natural rival of the other (Howitt, _Nat.
Tr._, p. 770).
[449] So Thomas has wrongly urged against our theory of the origin of
the phratries its inability to explain their opposition (_Kinship and
Marriage_, p. 69). We do not believe that it is necessary to connect
this opposition to that of the profane and the sacred (see Hertz, _La
prééminence de la main droite_, in the _Revue Philosophique_, Dec.,
1909, p. 559). The things of one phratry are not profane for the other;
both are a part of the same religious system (see below, p. 155).
[450] For example, the clan of the Tea-tree includes the grasses, and
consequently herbivorous animals (see _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 169).
This is undoubtedly the explanation of a particularity of the totemic
emblems of North America pointed out by Boas. "Among the Tlinkit," he
says, "and all the other tribes of the coast, the emblem of a group
includes the animals serving as food to the one whose name the group
bears" (_Fifth Rep. of the Committee, etc., British Association for the
Advancement of Science_, p. 25).
[451] Thus, among the Arunta, frogs are connected with the totem of the
gum-tree, because they are frequently found in the cavities of this
tree; water is related to the water-hen; with the kangaroo is associated
a sort of parrot frequently seen flying about this animal (Spencer and
Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 146-147, 448).
[452] One of the signs of this primitive lack of distinction is that
territorial bases are sometimes assigned to the classes just as to the
social divisions with which they were at first confounded. Thus, among
the Wotjobaluk in Australia and the Zuñi in America, things are ideally
distributed among the different regions of space, just as the clans are.
Now this regional distribution of things and that of the clans coincide
(see _De quelques formes primitives de classification_, pp. 34 ff.).
Classifications keep something of this special character even among
relatively advanced peoples, as for example, in China (_ibid._, pp. 55
ff.).
[453] Bridgmann, _in_ Brough Smyth, _The Aborigines of Victoria_, I, p.
91.
[454] Fison and Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 168; Howitt, _Further
Notes on the Australian Class Systems, J.A.I._, XVIII, p. 60.
[455] Curr, III, p. 461. This is about the Mount Gambier tribe.
[456] Howitt, _On some Australian Beliefs, J.A.I._, XIII, p. 191, n. 1.
[457] Howitt, _Notes on Australian Message Sticks, J.A.I._, XVIII, p.
326; _Further Notes, J.A.I._, XVIII, p. 61, n. 3.
[458] Curr, III, p. 28.
[459] Mathews, _Ethnological Notes on the Aboriginal Tribes of N.S.
Wales and Victoria_, in _Journ. and Proceed. of the Royal Soc. of N.S.
Wales_, XXXVIII, p. 294.
[460] Cf. Curr, III, p. 461; and Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 146. The
expressions _Tooman_ and _Wingo_ are applied to the one and the other.
[461] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 123.
[462] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 447 ff.; cf. Strehlow, III,
pp. xii ff.
[463] Fison and Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 169.
[464] Curr, III, p. 462.
[465] Mrs. Parker, _The Euahlayi Tribe_, p. 20.
[466] Spencer and Gillen, _Nor. Tr._, p. 151; _Nat. Tr._, p. 447;
Strehlow, III, p. xii.
[467] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 449.
[468] However, there are certain tribes in Queensland where the things
thus attributed to a social group are not forbidden for the members of
the group: this is notably the case with the Wakelbura. It is to be
remembered that in this society, it is the matrimonial classes that
serve as the framework of the classification (see above, p. 144). Not
only are the men of one class allowed to eat the animals attributed to
this class, but _they may eat no others_. All other food is forbidden
them (Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 113; Curr, III, p. 27).
But we must not conclude from this that these animals are considered
profane. In fact, it should be noticed that the individual not only has
the privilege of eating them, but that he is compelled to do so, for he
cannot nourish himself otherwise. Now the imperative nature of this rule
is a sure sign that we are in the presence of things having a religious
nature, only this has given rise to a positive obligation rather than
the negative one known as an interdiction. Perhaps it is not quite
impossible to see how this deviation came about. We have seen above (p.
140) that every individual is thought to have a sort of property-right
over his totem and consequently over the things dependent upon it.
Perhaps, under the influence of special circumstances, this aspect of
the totemic relation was developed, and they naturally came to believe
that only the members of the clan had the right of disposing of their
totem and all that is connected with it, and that others, on the
contrary, did not have the right of touching it. Under these
circumstances, a tribe could nourish itself only on the food attributed
to it.
[469] Mrs. Parker uses the expression "multiplex totems."
[470] As examples, see the Euahlayi tribe in Mrs. Parker's book (pp. 15
ff.) and the Wotjobaluk (Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 121 ff.; cf. the
above-mentioned article of Mathews).
[471] See the examples in Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 122.
[472] See our _De quelques formes primitives de classification_, p. 28,
n. 2.
[473] Strehlow, II, pp. 61-72.
[474] _Nat. Tr._, p. 112.
[475] See especially _Nat. Tr._, p. 447, and _Nor. Tr._, p. 151.
[476] Strehlow, III, pp. xiii-xviii. It sometimes happens that the same
secondary totems are attached to two or three principal totems at the
same time. This is undoubtedly because Strehlow has not been able to
establish with certainty which is the principal totem.
Two interesting facts which appear from this table confirm certain
propositions which we had already formulated. First, the principal
totems are nearly all animals, with but rare exceptions. Also, stars are
always only secondary or associated totems. This is another proof that
these latter were only slowly advanced to the rank of totems and that at
first the principal totems were preferably chosen from the animal
kingdom.
[477] According to the myth, the associate totems served as food to the
men of the principal totem in the fabulous times, or, when these are
trees, they gave their shade (Strehlow, III, p. xii; Spencer and Gillen,
_Nat. Tr._, p. 403). The fact that the associate totems are believed to
have been eaten does not imply that they are considered profane; for in
the mythical period, the principal totem itself was consumed by the
ancestors, the founders of the clan, according to the belief.
[478] Thus in the Wild Cat clan, the designs carved on the churinga
represent the Hakea tree, which is a distinct totem to-day (Spencer and
Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 147 f.). Strehlow (III, p. xii, n. 4) says that
this is frequent.
[479] Spencer and Gillen, _Nor. Tr._, p. 182; _Nat. Tr._, pp. 151 and
297.
[480] _Nat. Tr._, pp. 151 and 158.
[481] _Ibid._, pp. 448 and 449.
[482] Thus Spencer and Gillen speak of a pigeon called Inturrita,
sometimes as a principal totem (_Nat. Tr._, p. 410), sometimes as an
associate totem (_ibid._, p. 448).
[483] Howitt, _Further Notes_, pp. 63-64.
[484] Thus it comes about that the clan has frequently been confounded
with the tribe. This confusion, which frequently introduces trouble into
the writings of ethnologists, has been made especially by Curr (I, pp.
61 ff.).
[485] This is the case especially among the Warramunga (_Nor. Tr._, p.
298).
[486] See, for example, Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 380 and
_passim_.
[487] One might even ask if tribal totems do not exist sometimes. Thus,
among the Arunta, there is an animal, the wild cat, which serves as
totem to a particular clan, but which is forbidden for the whole tribe;
even the people of other clans can eat it only very moderately (_Nat.
Tr._, p. 168). But we believe that it would be an abuse to speak of a
tribal totem in this case, for it does not follow from the fact that the
free consumption of an animal is forbidden that this is a totem. Other
causes can also give rise to an interdiction. The religious unity of the
tribe is undoubtedly real, but this is affirmed with the aid of other
symbols. We shall show what these are below (Bk. II, ch. ix).
[488] The totems belong to the tribe in the sense that this is
interested as a body in the cult which each clan owes to its totem.
[489] Frazer has made a very complete collection of the texts relative
to individual totemism in North America (_Totemism and Exogamy_, III,
pp. 370-456).
[490] For example, among the Hurons, the Iroquois, the Algonquins
(Charlevoix, _Histoire de la Nouvelle France_, VI, pp. 67-70; Sagard,
_Le grand voyage au pays des Hurons_, p. 160), or among the Thompson
Indians (Teit, _The Thompson Indians of British Columbia_, p. 355).
[491] This is the case of the Yuin (Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 133), the
Kurnai (_ibid._, p. 135), several tribes of Queensland (Roth,
_Superstition, Magic and Medicine, North Queensland Ethnography_,
Bulletin No. 5, p. 19; Haddon, _Head-Hunters_, p. 193); among the
Delaware (Heckewelder, _An Account of the History ... of the Indian
Nations_, p. 238), among the Thompson Indians (Teit, _op. cit._, p.
355), and among the Salish Statlumh (Hill Tout, _Rep. of the Ethnol. of
the Statlumh_, _J.A.I._, XXXV. pp. 147 ff.).
[492] Hill Tout, _loc. cit._, p. 154.
[493] Catlin, _Manners and Customs_, etc., London, 1876, I, p. 36.
[494] _Lettres édifiantes et curieuses_, new edition, VI, pp. 172 ff.
[495] Charlevoix, _op. cit._, VI, p. 69.
[496] Dorsey, _Siouan Cults, XIth Rep._, p. 443.
[497] Boas, _Kwakiutl_, p. 323.
[498] Hill Tout, _loc. cit._, p. 154.
[499] Boas, _Kwakiutl_, p. 323.
[500] Miss Fletcher, _The Import of the Totem, a Study from the Omaha
Tribe_ (_Smithsonian Rep. for 1897_, p. 583).--Similar facts will be
found in Teit, _op. cit._, pp. 354, 356; Peter Jones, _History of the
Ojibway Indians_, p. 87.
[501] This is the case, for example, with the dog among the Salish
Statlumh, owing to the condition of servitude in which it lives (Hill
Tout, _loc. cit._, p. 153).
[502] Langloh Parker, _Euahlayi_, p. 21.
[503] "The spirit of a man," says Mrs. Parker (_ibid._), "is in his
Yuanbeai (his individual totem), and his Yuanbeai is in him."
[504] Langloh Parker, _Euahlayi_, p. 20. It is the same among certain
Salish (Hill Tout, _Ethn. Rep. on the Stseelis and Skaulits Tribes_,
_J.A.I._, XXXIV, p. 324). The fact is quite general among the Indians of
Central America (Brinton, _Nagualism, a Study in Native American
Folklore and History_, in _Proceed. of the Am. Philos. Soc._, XXXIII, p.
32).
[505] Parker, _ibid._; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 147; Dorsey, _Siouan
Cults, XIth Rep._, p. 443. Frazer has made a collection of the American
cases and established the generality of the interdiction (_Totemism and
Exogamy_, III, p. 450). It is true that in America, as we have seen, the
individual must kill the animal whose skin serves to make what
ethnologists call his medicine-sack. But this usage has been observed in
five tribes only; it is probably a late and altered form of the
institution.
[506] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 135, 147, 387; _Australian Medicine Men_,
_J.A.I._, XVI, p. 34; Teit, _The Shuswap_, p. 607.
[507] Meyer, _Manners and Customs of the Aborigines of the Encounter Bay
Tribe_, in Woods, p. 197.
[508] Boas, _VIth Rep. on the North-West Tribes of Canada_, p. 93; Teit,
_The Thompson Indians_, p. 336; Boas, _Kwakiutl_, p. 394.
[509] Facts will be found in Hill Tout, _Rep. of the Ethnol. of the
Statlumh_, _J.A.I._, XXXV, pp. 144, 145. Cf. Langloh Parker, _op. cit._,
p. 29.
[510] According to information given by Howitt in a personal letter to
Frazer (_Totemism and Exogamy_, I, p. 495, and n. 2).
[511] Hill Tout, _Ethnol. Rep. on the Stseelis and Skaulits Tribes_,
_J.A.I._, XXXIV, p. 324.
[512] Howitt, _Australian Medicine Men_, _J.A.I._, XVI, p. 34; Lafitau,
_M[oe]urs des Sauvages Amériquains_, I, p. 370; Charlevoix, _Histoire de
la Nouvelle France_, VI, p. 68. It is the same with the _atai_ and
_tamaniu_ in Mota (Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 250 f.).
[513] Thus the line of demarcation between the animal protectors and
fetishes, which Frazer has attempted to establish, does not exist.
According to him, fetishism commences when the protector is an
individual object and not a class (_Totemism_, p. 56); but it frequently
happens in Australia that a determined animal takes this part (see
Howitt, _Australian Medicine Men_, _J.A.I._, XVI, p. 34). The truth is
that the ideas of fetish and fetishism do not correspond to any definite
thing.
[514] Brinton, _Nagualism_, in _Proceed. Amer. Philos. Soc._, XXXIII, p.
32.
[515] Charlevoix, VI, p. 67.
[516] Hill Tout, _Rep. on the Ethnol. of the Statlumh of British
Columbia_, _J.A.I._, XXXV, p. 142.
[517] Hill Tout, _Ethnol. Rep. on the Stseelis and Skaulits Tribes_,
_J.A.I._, XXXIV, pp. 311 ff.
[518] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 133.
[519] Langloh Parker, _op. cit._, p. 20.
[520] J. W. Powell, _An American View of Totemism_, in _Man_, 1902, No.
84; Tylor, _ibid._, No. 1; Andrew Lang has expressed analogous ideas in
_Social Origins_, pp. 133-135. Also Frazer himself, turning from his
former opinion, now thinks that until we are better acquainted with the
relations existing between collective totems and "guardian spirits," it
would be better to designate them by different names (_Totemism and
Exogamy_, III, p. 456).
[521] This is the case in Australia among the Yuin (Howitt, _Nat. Tr._,
p. 81), and the Narrinyeri (Meyer, _Manners and Customs of the
Aborigines of the Encounter Bay Tribe_, in Woods, pp. 197 ff.).
[522] "The totem resembles the patron of the individual no more than an
escutcheon resembles the image of a saint," says Tylor (_op. cit._, p.
2). Likewise, if Frazer has taken up the theory of Tylor, it is because
he refuses all religious character to the totem of the clan (_Totemism
and Exogamy_, III, p. 452).
[523] See below, chapter ix of this book.
[524] Yet according to one passage in Mathews, the individual totem is
hereditary among the Wotjobaluk. "Each individual," he says, "claims
some animal, plant or inanimate object as his special and personal
totem, which he inherits from his mother" (_Journ. and Proc. of the Roy.
Soc. of N.S. Wales_, XXXVIII, p. 291). But it is evident that if all the
children in the same family had the personal totem of their mother,
neither they nor she would really have personal totems at all. Mathews
probably means to say that each individual chooses his individual totem
from the list of things attributed to the clan of his mother. In fact,
we shall see that each clan has its individual totems which are its
exclusive property; the members of the other clans cannot make use of
them. In this sense, birth determines the personal totem to a certain
extent, but to a certain extent only.
[525] Heckewelder, _An Account of the History, Manners and Customs of
the Indian Nations who once inhabited Pennsylvania, in Transactions of
the Historical and Literary Committee of the American Philosophical
Society_, I, p. 238.
[526] See Dorsey, _Siouan Cults, XIth Rep._, p. 507; Catlin, _op. cit._,
I, p. 37; Miss Fletcher, _The Import of the Totem, in Smithsonian Rep._
for 1897, p. 580; Teit, _The Thompson Indians_, pp. 317-320; Hill Tout,
_J.A.I._, XXXV, p. 144.
[527] But some examples are found. The Kurnai magicians see their
personal totems revealed to them in dreams (Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 387;
_On Australian Medicine Men_, in _J.A.I._, XVI, p. 34). The men of Cape
Bedford believe that when an old man dreams of something during the
night, this thing is the personal totem of the first person he meets the
next day (W. E. Roth, _Superstition, Magic and Medicine_, p. 19). But it
is probable that only supplementary and accessory totems are acquired in
this way; for in this same tribe another process is used at the moment
of initiation, as we said in the text.
[528] In certain tribes of which Roth speaks (_ibid._); also in certain
tribes near to Maryborough (Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 147).
[529] Among the Wiradjuri (Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 406; _On Australian
Medicine Men_, in _J.A.I._, XVI, p. 50).
[530] Roth, _loc. cit._
[531] Haddon, _Head Hunters_, pp. 193 ff.
[532] Among the Wiradjuri (same references as above, n. 4).
[533] In general, it seems as though these transmissions from father to
son never take place except when the father is a shaman or a magician.
This is also the case among the Thompson Indians (Teit, _The Thompson
Indians_, p. 320) and the Wiradjuri, of whom we just spoke.
[534] Hill Tout (_J.A.I._, XXXV, pp. 146 f.). The essential rite is the
blowing upon the skin: if this were not done correctly, the transmission
would not take place. As we shall presently see, the breath is the soul.
When both breathe upon the skin of the animal, the magician and the
recipient each exhale a part of their souls, which are thus fused, while
partaking at the same time of the nature of the animal, who also takes
part in the ceremony in the form of its symbol.
[535] N. W. Thomas, _Further Remarks on Mr. Hill Tout's Views on
Totemism_, in _Man_, 1904, p. 85.
[536] Langloh Parker, _op. cit._, pp. 20, 29.
[537] Hill Tout, in _J.A.I._, XXXV, pp. 143 and 146; _ibid._, XXXIV, p.
324.
[538] Parker, _op. cit._, p. 30; Teit, _The Thompson Indians_, p. 320;
Hill Tout, in _J.A.I._, XXXV, p. 144.
[539] Charlevoix, VI, p. 69.
[540] Hill Tout, _ibid._, p. 145.
[541] Thus at the birth of a child, a tree is planted which is cared for
piously; for it is believed that its fate and the child's are united.
Frazer, in his _Golden Bough_, gives a number of customs and beliefs
translating this same idea in different ways. (Cf. Hartland, _Legend of
Perseus_, II, pp. 1-55.)
[542] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 148 ff.; Fison and Howitt, _Kamilaroi and
Kurnai_, pp. 194, 201 ff.; Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, p. 52.
Petrie also mentions it in Queensland (_Tom Petrie's Reminiscences of
Early Queensland_, pp. 62 and 118).
[543] _Journ. and Proc. of the Roy. Soc. of N.S. Wales_, XXXVIII, p.
339. Must we see a trace of sexual totemism in the following custom of
the Warramunga? When a dead person is buried, a bone of the arm is kept.
If it is a woman, the feathers of an emu are added to the bark in which
it is wrapped up; if it is a man, the feathers of an owl (_Nor. Tr._, p.
169).
[544] Some cases are cited where each sexual group has two sexual
totems; thus the Wurunjerri unite the sexual totems of the Kurnai (the
emu-wren and the linnet) to those of the Wotjobaluk (the bat and the
_nightjar_ owl). See Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 150.
[545] _Totemism_, p. 51.
[546] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 215.
[547] Threlkeld, quoted by Mathews, _loc. cit._, p. 339.
[548] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 148, 151.
[549] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 200-203; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 149;
Petrie, _op. cit._, p. 62. Among the Kurnai, these bloody battles
frequently terminate in marriages of which they are, as it were, a sort
of ritual precursor. Sometimes they are merely plays (Petrie, _loc.
cit._).
[550] On this point, see our study on _La Prohibition de l'inceste et
ses origines_, in the _Année Sociologique_, I, pp. 44 ff.
[551] However, as we shall presently see (ch. ix), there is a connection
between the sexual totems and the great gods.
[552] _Primitive Culture_, I, p. 402; II, p. 237; _Remarks on Totemism,
with especial reference to some modern theories concerning it_, in
_J.A.I._, XXVIII, and I, New Series, p. 138.
[553] _Het Animisme bij den Volken van den indischen Archipel_, pp.
69-75.
[554] Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, II, p. 6.
[555] Tylor, _ibid._, II, pp. 6-18.
[556] G. McCall Theal, _Records of South-Eastern Africa_, VII. We are
acquainted with this work only through an article by Frazer, _South
African Totemism_, published in _Man_, 1901, No. III.
[557] Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 32 f., and a personal letter by
the same author cited by Tylor in _J.A.I._, XXVIII, p. 147.
[558] This is practically the solution adopted by Wundt (_Mythus und
Religion_, II, p. 269).
[559] It is true that according to Tylor's theory, a clan is only an
enlarged family; therefore whatever may be said of one of these groups
is, in his theory, applicable to the other (_J.A.I._, XXVIII, p. 157).
But this conception is exceedingly contestable; only the clan
presupposes a totem, which has its whole meaning only in and through the
clan.
[560] For this same conception, see A. Lang, _Social Origins_, p. 150.
[561] See above, p. 63.
[562] _Primitive Culture_, II, p. 17.
[563] Wundt, who has revived the theory of Tylor in its essential lines,
has tried to explain this mysterious relationship of the man and the
animal in a different way: it was the sight of the corpse in
decomposition which suggested the idea. When they saw worms coming out
of the body, they thought that the soul was incarnate in them and
escaped with them. Worms, and by extension, reptiles (snakes, lizards,
etc.), were therefore the first animals to serve as receptacles for the
souls of the dead, and consequently they were also the first to be
venerated and to play the rôle of totems. It was only subsequently that
other animals and plants and even inanimate objects were elevated to the
same dignity. But this hypothesis does not have even the shadow of a
proof. Wundt affirms (_Mythus und Religion_, II, p. 296) that reptiles
are much more common totems than other animals; from this, he concludes
that they are the most primitive. But we cannot see what justifies this
assertion, in the support of which the author cites no facts. The lists
of totems gathered either in Australia or in America do not show that
any special species of animal has played a preponderating rôle. Totems
vary from one region to another with the flora and fauna. Moreover, if
the circle of possible totems was so closely limited at first, we cannot
see how totemism was able to satisfy the fundamental principle which
says that the two clans or sub-clans of a tribe must have two different
totems.
[564] "Sometimes men adore certain animals," says Tylor, "because they
regard them as the reincarnation of the divine souls of the ancestors;
this belief is a sort of bridge between the cult rendered to shades and
that rendered to animals" (_Primitive Culture_, II, p. 805, cf. 309, _in
fine_). Likewise, Wundt presents totemism as a section of animalism (II,
p. 234).
[565] See above, p. 139.
[566] _Introduction to the History of Religions_, pp. 97 ff.
[567] See above, p. 28.
[568] Jevons recognizes this himself, saying, "It is to be presumed that
in the choice of an ally he would prefer ... the kind or species which
possessed the greatest power" (p. 101).
[569] 2nd Edition, III, pp. 416 ff.; see especially p. 419, n. 5. In
more recent articles, to be analysed below, Frazer exposes a different
theory, but one which does not, in his opinion, completely exclude the
one in the _Golden Bough_.
[570] _The Origin of the Totemism of the Aborigines of British
Columbia_, in _Proc. and Transact. of the Roy. Soc. of Canada_, 2nd
series, VII, § 2, pp. 3 ff. Also, _Report on the Ethnology of the
Statlumh_, _J.A.I._, XXXV, p. 141. Hill Tout has replies to various
objections made to his theory in Vol. IX of the _Transact. of the Roy.
Soc. of Canada_, pp. 61-99.
[571] Alice C. Fletcher, _The Import of the Totem_, in _Smithsonian
Report for 1897_, pp. 577-586.
[572] _The Kwakiutl Indians_, pp. 323 ff., 336-338, 393.
[573] _The Development of the Clan System_, in _Amer. Anthrop._, N.S.
VI, 1904, pp. 477-486.
[574] _J.A.I._, XXXV, p. 142.
[575] _Ibid._, p. 150. Cf. _Vth Rep. on the ... N.W. Tribes of Canada_,
_B.A.A.S._, p. 24. A myth of this sort has been quoted above.
[576] _J.A.I._, XXXV, p. 147.
[577] _Proc. and Transact., etc._, VII, § 2, p. 12.
[578] See _The Golden Bough_,[2] III, pp. 351 ff. Wilken had already
pointed out similar facts in _De Simsonsage_, in _De Gids_, 1890; _De
Betrekking tusschen Menschen-Dieren en Plantenleven_, in _Indische
Gids_, 1884, 1888; _Ueber das Haaropfer_, in _Revue Coloniale
Internationale_, 1886-1887.
[579] For example, Eylmann in _Die Eingeborenen der Kolonie
Südaustralien_, p. 199.
[580] Mrs. Parker says in connection with the Euahlayi, that if the
Yunbeai does "confer exceptional force, it also exposes one to
exceptional dangers, for all that hurts the animal wounds the man"
(_Euahlayi_, p. 29).
[581] In a later work (_The Origin of Totemism_, in _The Fortnightly
Review_, May, 1899, pp. 844-845), Frazer raises this objection himself.
"If," he says, "I deposit my soul in a hare, and my brother John (a
member of another clan) shoots that hare, roasts and swallows it, what
becomes of my soul? To meet this obvious danger it is necessary that
John should know the state of my soul, and that, knowing it, he should,
whenever he shoots a hare, take steps to extract and restore to me my
soul before he cooks and dines upon the animal." Now Frazer believes
that he has found this practice in use in Central Australia. Every year,
in the course of a ceremony which we shall describe presently, when the
animals of the new generation arrive at maturity, the first game to be
killed is presented to men of that totem, who eat a little of it; and it
is only after this that the men of the other clans may eat it freely.
This, says Frazer, is a way of returning to the former the souls they
may have confided to these animals. But, aside from the fact that this
interpretation of the fact is wholly arbitrary, it is hard not to find
this way of escaping the danger rather peculiar. This ceremony is
annual; long days may have elapsed since the animal was killed. During
all this time, what has become of the soul which it sheltered and the
individual whose life depended on this soul? But it is superfluous to
insist upon all the inconceivable things in this explanation.
[582] Parker, _op. cit._, p. 20; Howitt, _Australian Medicine Men_, in
_J.A.I._, XVI, pp. 34, 49 f.; Hill Tout, _J.A.I._, XXXV, p. 146.
[583] According to Hill Tout himself, "The gift or transmission (of a
personal totem) can only be made or effected by certain persons, such as
shamans, or those who possess great mystery power" (_J.A.I._, p. 146).
Cf. Langloh Parker, _op. cit._, pp. 29-30.
[584] Cf. Hartland, _Totemism and some recent Discoveries_, in
_Folk-Lore_, XI, pp. 59 ff.
[585] Except perhaps the Kurnai; but even in this tribe, there are
sexual totems in addition to the personal ones.
[586] Among the Wotjobaluk, the Buandik, the Wiradjuri, the Yuin and the
tribes around Maryborough (Queensland). See Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp.
114-147; Mathews, _J. of the R. Soc. of N.S. Wales_, XXXVIII, p. 291.
Cf. Thomas, _Further Notes on Mr. Hill Tout's Views on Totemism_, in
_Man_, 1904, p. 85.
[587] This is the case with the Euahlayi and the facts of personal
totemism cited by Howitt, _Australian Medicine Men_, in _J.A.I._, XVI,
pp. 34, 35, 49-50.
[588] Miss Fletcher, _A Study of the Omaha Tribe_, in _Smithsonian
Report for 1897_, p. 586; Boas, _The Kwakiutl_, p. 322. Likewise, _Vth
Rep. of the Committee ... of the N.W. Tribes of the Dominion of Canada,
B.A.A.S._, p. 25; Hill Tout, _J.A.I._, XXXV, p. 148.
[589] The proper names of the _gentes_, says Boas in regard to the
Tlinkit, are derived from their respective totems, each gens having its
special names. The connection between the name and the (collective)
totem is not very apparent sometimes, but it always exists (_Vth Rep. of
the Committee, etc._, p. 25). The fact that individual forenames are the
property of the clan, and characterize it as surely as the totem, is
also found among the Iroquois (Morgan, _Ancient Society_, p. 78), the
Wyandot (Powell, _Wyandot Government_, in _Ist Rep._, p. 59), the
Shawnee, Sauk and Fox (Morgan, _Ancient Society_, pp. 72, 76-77) and the
Omaha (Dorsey, _Omaha Sociology_, in _IIIrd Rep._, pp. 227 ff.). Now the
relation between forenames and personal totems is already known (see
above, p. 157).
[590] "For example," says Mathews, "if you ask a Wartwurt man what totem
he is, he will first tell his personal totem, and will probably then
enumerate those of his clan" (_Jour. of the Roy. Soc. of N.S. Wales_,
XXXVIII, p. 291).
[591] _The Beginnings of Religion and Totemism among the Australian
Aborigines_, in _Fortnightly Review_, July, 1905, pp. 162 ff., and
Sept., p. 452. Cf. the same author, _The Origin of Totemism_, _ibid._,
April, 1899, p. 648, and May, p. 835. These latter articles, being
slightly older, differ from the former on one point, but the foundation
of the theory is not essentially different. Both are reproduced in
_Totemism and Exogamy_, I, pp. 89-172. In the same sense, see Spencer
and Gillen, _Some Remarks on Totemism as applied to Australian Tribes_,
in _J.A.I._, 1899, pp. 275-280, and the remarks of Frazer on the same
subject, _ibid._, pp. 281-286.
[592] "Perhaps we may ... say that it is but one remove from the
original pattern, the absolutely original form of totemism"
(_Fortnightly Review_, Sept., 1905. p. 455).
[593] On this point, the testimony of Strehlow (II, p. 52) confirms that
of Spencer and Gillen. For a contrary opinion, see A. Lang, _The Secret
of the Totem_, p. 190.
[594] A very similar idea had already been expressed by Haddon in his
_Address to the Anthropological Section_ (_B.A.A.S._, 1902, pp. 8 ff.).
He supposes that at first, each local group had some food which was
especially its own. The plant or animal thus serving as the principal
item of food became the totem of the group.
All these explanations naturally imply that the prohibitions against
eating the totemic animal were not primitive, but were even preceded by
a contrary prescription.
[595] _Fortnightly Review_, Sept., 1905, p. 458.
[596] _Fortn. Rev._, May, 1899, p. 835, and July, 1905, pp. 162 ff.
[597] Though considering totemism only a system of magic, Frazer
recognizes that the first germs of a real religion are sometimes found
in it (_Fortn. Rev._, July, 1905, p. 163). On the way in which he thinks
religion developed out of magic, see _The Golden Bough_,^2 I, pp. 75-78.
[598] _Sur le totemisme_, in _Année Soc._, V, pp. 82-121. Cf., on this
same question, Hartland, _Presidential Address_, in _Folk-Lore_, XI, p.
75; A. Lang, _A Theory of Arunta Totemism_, in _Man_, 1904, No. 44;
_Conceptional Totemism and Exogamy_, _ibid._, 1907, No. 55; _The Secret
of the Totem_, ch. iv; N. W. Thomas, _Arunta Totemism_, in _Man_, 1904,
No. 68; P. W. Schmidt, _Die Stellung der Aranda unter der Australischen
Stämmen_, in _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1908, pp. 866 ff.
[599] _Die Aranda_, II, pp. 57-58.
[600] Schulze, _loc cit._, pp. 238-239.
[601] In the conclusion of _Totemism and Exogamy_ (IV, pp. 58-59),
Frazer says, it must be admitted, that there is a totemism still more
ancient than that of the Arunta: it is the one observed by Rivers in the
Banks Islands (_Totemism in Polynesia and Melanesia_, in _J.A.I._,
XXXIX, p. 172). Among the Arunta it is the spirit of an ancestor who is
believed to impregnate the mother; in the Banks Islands, it is the
spirit of an animal or vegetable, as the theory supposes. But as the
ancestral spirits of the Arunta have an animal or vegetable form, the
difference is slight. Therefore we have not mentioned it in our
exposition.
[602] _Social Origins_, London, 1903, especially ch. viii, entitled _The
Origin of Totem Names and Beliefs_, and _The Secret of the Totem_,
London, 1905.
[603] In his _Social Origins_ especially, Lang attempts to reconstitute
by means of conjecture the form which these primitive groups should
have; but it seems superfluous to reproduce these hypotheses, which do
not affect his theory of totemism.
[604] On this point, Lang approaches the theory of Julius Pickler (see
Pickler and Szomolo, _Der Ursprung des Totemismus. Ein Beitrag zur
materialistirchen Geschichtstheorie_, Berlin, 36 pp. in 8vo). The
difference between the two hypotheses is that Pickler attributes a
higher importance to the pictorial representation of the name than to
the name itself.
[605] _Social Origins_, p. 166.
[606] _The Secret of the Totem_, p. 121; cf. pp. 116, 117.
[607] _The Secret of the Totem_, p. 136.
[608] _J.A.I._, Aug., 1888, pp. 53-54; cf. _Nat. Tr._, pp. 89, 488, 498.
[609] "With reverence," as Lang says (_The Secret of the Totem_, p.
111).
[610] Lang adds that these taboos are the basis of exogamic practices.
[611] _Ibid._, p. 125.
[612] However, we have not spoken of the theory of Spencer. But this is
because it is only a part of his general theory of the transformation of
the ancestor-cult into the nature-cult. As we have described that
already, it is not necessary to repeat it.
[613] Except that Lang ascribes another source to the idea of the great
gods: as we have already said, he believes that this is due to a sort of
primitive revelation. But Lang does not make use of this idea in his
explanation of totemism.
[614] For example, in a Kwakiutl myth, an ancestral hero pierces the
head of an enemy by pointing a finger at him (Boas, _Vth Rep. on the
North. Tribes of Canada_, _B.A.A.S._, 1889, p. 30).
[615] References supporting this assertion will be found on p. 128, n.
1, and p. 320, n. 1.
[616] See Bk. III, ch. ii.
[617] See, for example, Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 482; Schürmann, _The
Aboriginal Tribes of Port Lincoln_, in Woods, _Nat. Tr. of S.
Australia_, p. 231.
[618] Frazer has even taken many facts from Samoa which he presents as
really totemic (See _Totemism_, pp. 6, 12-15, 24, etc.). It is true that
we have charged Frazer with not being critical enough in the choice of
his examples, but so many examples would obviously have been impossible
if there had not really been important survivals of totemism in Samoa.
[619] See Turner, _Samoa_, p. 21 and ch. iv and v.
[620] Alice Fletcher, _A Study of the Omaha Tribe_, in _Smithsonian
Rep._ for 1897, pp. 582 f.
[621] Dorsey, _Siouan Sociology_, in _XVth Rep._, p. 238.
[622] _Ibid._, p. 221.
[623] Riggs and Dorsey, _Dakota-English Dictionary_, in _Contrib. N.
Amer. Ethnol._, VII, p. 508. Many observers cited by Dorsey identify the
word wakan with the words wakanda and wakanta, which are derived from
it, but which really have a more precise signification.
[624] _XIth Rep._, p. 372, § 21. Miss Fletcher, while recognizing no
less clearly the impersonal character of the wakanda, adds nevertheless
that a certain anthropomorphism has attached to this conception. But
this anthropomorphism concerns the various manifestations of the
wakanda. Men address the trees or rocks where they think they perceive
the wakanda, as if they were personal beings. But the wakanda itself is
not personified (_Smithsonian Rep. for 1897_, p. 579).
[625] Riggs, _Tah-Koo Wah-Kon_, pp. 56-57, quoted from Dorsey, _XIth
Rep._, p. 433, § 95.
[626] _XIth Rep._, p. 380, § 33.
[627] _Ibid._, p. 381, § 35.
[628] _Ibid._, p. 376, § 28; p. 378, § 30; cf. p. 449, § 138.
[629] _Ibid._, p. 432, § 95.
[630] _Ibid._, p. 431, § 92.
[631] _Ibid._, p. 433, § 95.
[632] _Orenda and a Definition of Religion_, in _American
Anthropologist_, 1902, p. 33.
[633] _Ibid._, p. 36.
[634] Tesa, _Studi del Thavenet_, p. 17.
[635] Boas, _Kwakiutl_, p. 695.
[636] Swanton, _Social Condition, etc, of the Tlinkit Indians_, _XXVIth
Rep._, 1905, p. 451, n. 2.
[637] Swanton, _Contributions to the Ethnology of the Haida_, p. 14; cf.
_Social Condition, etc._, p. 479.
[638] In certain Melanesian societies (Banks Islands, North New
Hebrides) the two exogamic phratries are found which characterize the
Australian organization (Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 23 ff.). In
Florida, there are regular totems, called _butos_ (_ibid._, p. 31). An
interesting discussion of this point will be found in Lang, _Social
Origins_, pp. 176 ff. On the same subject, and in the same sense, see W.
H. R. Rivers, _Totemism in Polynesia and Melanesia_, in _J.A.I._, XXXIX,
pp. 156 ff.
[639] _The Melanesians_, p. 118, n. 1. Cf. Parkinson, _Dreissig Jahre in
der Südsee_, pp. 178, 392, 394, etc.
[640] An analysis of this idea will be found in Hubert and Mauss,
_Théorie Générale de la Magie_, in _Année Sociol._, VII, p. 108.
[641] There are not only totems of clans but also of guilds (A.
Fletcher, _Smithsonian Rep. for 1897_, pp. 581 ff.).
[642] Fletcher, _op. cit._, pp. 578 f.
[643] _Ibid._, p. 583. Among the Dakota, the totem is called Wakan. See
Riggs and Dorsey, _Dakota Grammar, Texts and Ethnol._, in _Contributions
N. Amer. Ethn._, 1893, p. 219.
[644] _James's Account of Long's Expedition in the Rocky Mountains_, I,
p. 268. (Quoted by Dorsey, _XIth Rep._, p. 431, § 92.)
[645] We do not mean to say that in principle every representation of
religious forces in an animal form is an index of former totemism. But
when we are dealing with societies where totemism is still apparent, as
is the case with the Dakota, it is quite natural to think that these
conceptions are not foreign to it.
[646] See below, same book, ch. ix, § 4, pp. 285 ff.
[647] The first spelling is that of Spencer and Gillen; the second, that
of Strehlow.
[648] _Nat. Tr._, p. 548, n. 1. It is true that Spencer and Gillen add:
"The idea can be best expressed by saying that an Arungquiltha object is
possessed of an evil spirit." But this free translation of Spencer and
Gillen is their own unjustified interpretation. The idea of the
arungquiltha in no way implies the existence of spiritual beings, as is
shown by the context and Strehlow's definition.
[649] _Die Aranda_, II, p. 76, n.
[650] Under the name Boyl-ya (see Grey, _Journal of Two Expeditions_,
II, pp. 337-338).
[651] See above, p. 42. Spencer and Gillen recognize this implicitly
when they say that the arungquiltha is a "supernatural force." Cf.
Hubert and Mauss, _Théorie Générale de la Magie_, in _Année Sociol._,
VII, p. 119.
[652] Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 191 ff.
[653] Hewitt, _loc. cit._, p. 38.
[654] There is even ground for asking whether an analogous notion is
completely lacking in Australia. The word churinga, or tjurunga as
Strehlow writes, has a very great similarity, with the Arunta. Spencer
and Gillen say that it designates "all that is secret or sacred. It is
applied both to the object and to the quality it possesses" (_Nat. Tr._,
p. 648, s.v. churinga). This is almost a definition of mana. Sometimes
Spencer and Gillen even use this word to designate religious power or
force in a general way. While describing a ceremony among the Kaitish,
they say that the officiant is "_full of churinga_," that is to say,
they continue, of the "magic power emanating from the objects called
churinga." Yet it does not seem that the notion of churinga has the same
clarity and precision as that of the mana in Melanesia or of the wakan
among the Sioux.
[655] Yet we shall see below (this book, ch. viii and ix) that totemism
is not foreign to all ideas of a mythical personality. But we shall show
that these conceptions are the product of secondary formations: far from
being the basis of the beliefs we have just analysed, they are derived
from them.
[656] _Loc. cit._, p. 38.
[657] _Rep. Peabody Museum_, III, p. 276, n. (quoted by Dorsey, _XIth
Rep._, p. 435).
[658] See above, p. 35.
[659] In the expressions such as [Greek: Zeus yei] or _Ceres
succiditur_, it is shown that this conception survived in Greece as well
as in Rome. In his _Götternamen_, Usener has clearly shown that the
primitive gods of Greece and Rome were impersonal forces thought of only
in terms of their attributes.
[660] _Définition du phénomène religieux_, in _Année Sociol._, II, pp.
14-16.
[661] _Preanimistic Religion_, in _Folk-Lore_, 1900, pp. 162-182.
[662] _Ibid._, p. 179. In a more recent work, _The Conception of Mana_
(in _Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History of
Religions_, II, pp. 54 ff.), Marrett tends to subordinate still further
the animistic conception of mana, but his thought on this point remains
hesitating and very reserved.
[663] _Ibid._, p. 168.
[664] This return of preanimism to naturism is still more marked in
Clodd, _Preanimistic Stages of Religion_ (_Trans. Third Inter. Congress
for the H. of Rel._, I, p. 33).
[665] _Théorie générale de la Magie_, in _Année Sociol._, VII, pp. 108
ff.
[666] _Der Ursprung der Religion und Kunst_, in _Globus_, 1904, Vol.
LXXXVI, pp. 321, 355, 376, 389; 1905, Vol. LXXXVII, pp. 333, 347, 380,
394, 413.
[667] _Globus_, LXXXVII, p. 381.
[668] He clearly opposes them to all influences of a profane nature
(_Globus_, LXXXVI, p. 379a).
[669] It is found even in the recent theories of Frazer. For if this
scholar denies to totemism all religious character, in order to make it
a sort of magic, it is just because the forces which the totemic cult
puts into play are impersonal like those employed by the magician. So
Frazer recognizes the fundamental fact which we have just established.
But he draws different conclusions because he recognizes religion only
where there are mythical personalities.
[670] However, we do not take this word in the same sense as Preuss and
Marrett. According to them, there was a time in religious evolution when
men knew neither souls nor spirits: a _preanimistic_ phase. But this
hypothesis is very questionable: we shall discuss this point below (Bk.
II, ch. viii and ix).
[671] On this same question, see an article of Alessandro Bruno, _Sui
fenomeni magico-religiosi della communità primitive_, in _Rivista
italiana di Sociologia_, XII Year, Fasc. IV-V, pp. 568 ff., and an
unpublished communication made by W. Bogoras to the XIV Congress of the
Americanists, held at Stuttgart in 1904. This communication is analysed
by Preuss in the _Globus_, LXXXVI, p. 201.
[672] "All things," says Miss Fletcher, "are filled with a common
principle of life," _Smiths. Rep. for 1897_, p. 579.
[673] Hewitt, in _American Anthropologist_, 1902, p. 36.
[674] _The Melanesians_, pp. 118-120.
[675] _Ibid._, p. 119.
[676] See above, p. 103.
[677] Pickler, in the little work above mentioned, had already
expressed, in a slightly dialectical manner, the sentiment that this is
what the totem essentially is.
[678] See our _Division du travail social_, 3rd ed., pp. 64 ff.
[679] _Ibid._, p. 76.
[680] This is the case at least with all moral authority recognized as
such by the group as a whole.
[681] We hope that this analysis and those which follow will put an end
to an inexact interpretation of our thought, from which more than one
misunderstanding has resulted. Since we have made constraint the
_outward sign_ by which social facts can be the most easily recognized
and distinguished from the facts of individual psychology, it has been
assumed that according to our opinion, physical constraint is the
essential thing for social life. As a matter of fact, we have never
considered it more than the material and apparent expression of an
interior and profound fact which is wholly ideal: this is _moral
authority_. The problem of sociology--if we can speak of _a_
sociological problem--consists in seeking, among the different forms of
external constraint, the different sorts of moral authority
corresponding to them and in discovering the causes which have
determined these latter. The particular question which we are treating
in this present work has as its principal object, the discovery of the
form under which that particular variety of moral authority which is
inherent in all that is religious has been born, and out of what
elements it is made. It will be seen presently that even if we do make
social pressure one of the distinctive characteristics of sociological
phenomena, we do not mean to say that it is the only one. We shall show
another aspect of the collective life, nearly opposite to the preceding
one, but none the less real (see p. 212).
[682] Of course this does not mean to say that the collective
consciousness does not have distinctive characteristics of its own (on
this point, see _Représentations individuelles et représentations
collectives_, in _Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale_, 1898, pp. 273
ff.).
[683] This is proved by the length and passionate character of the
debates where a legal form was given to the resolutions made in a moment
of collective enthusiasm. In the clergy as in the nobility, more than
one person called this celebrated night the dupe's night, or, with
Rivarol, the St. Bartholomew of the estates (see Stoll, _Suggestion und
Hypnotismus in der Völkerpsychologie_, 2nd ed., p. 618, n. 2).
[684] See Stoll, _op. cit._, pp. 353 ff.
[685] _Ibid._, pp. 619, 635.
[686] _Ibid._, pp. 622 ff.
[687] The emotions of fear and sorrow are able to develop similarly and
to become intensified under these same conditions. As we shall see, they
correspond to quite another aspect of the religious life (Bk. III, ch.
v).
[688] This is the other aspect of society which, while being imperative,
appears at the same time to be good and gracious. It dominates us and
assists us. If we have defined the social fact by the first of these
characteristics rather than the second, it is because it is more readily
observable, for it is translated into outward and visible signs; but we
have never thought of denying the second (see our _Règles de la Méthode
Sociologique_, preface to the second edition, p. xx, n. 1).
[689] Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 50, 103, 120. It is also
generally thought that in the Polynesian languages, the word _mana_
primitively had the sense of authority (see Tregear, _Maori Comparative
Dictionary_, s.v.).
[690] See Albert Mathiez, _Les origines des cultes révolutionnaires_
(1789-1792).
[691] _Ibid._, p. 24.
[692] _Ibid._, pp. 29, 32.
[693] _Ibid._, p. 30.
[694] _Ibid._, p. 46.
[695] See Mathiez, _La Théophilanthropie et la Culte décadaire_, p. 36.
[696] See Spencer and Gillen, _Nor. Tr._, p. 33.
[697] There are even ceremonies, for example, those which take place in
connection with the initiation, to which members of foreign tribes are
invited. A whole system of messages and messengers is organized for
these convocations, without which the great solemnities could not take
place (see Howitt, _Notes on Australian Message-Sticks and Messengers_,
in _J.A.I._, 1889; _Nat. Tr._, pp. 83, 678-691; Spencer and Gillen,
_Nat. Tr._, p. 159; _Nor. Tr._, p. 551).
[698] The corrobbori is distinguished from the real religious ceremonies
by the fact that it is open to women and uninitiated persons. But if
these two sorts of collective manifestations are to be distinguished,
they are, none the less, closely related. We shall have occasion
elsewhere to come back to this relationship and to explain it.
[699] Except, of course, in the case of the great bush-beating hunts.
[700] "The peaceful monotony of this part of his life," say Spencer and
Gillen (_Nor. Tr._, p. 33).
[701] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 683. He is speaking of the demonstrations
which take place when an ambassador sent to a group of foreigners
returns to camp with news of a favourable result. Cf. Brough Smyth, I,
p. 138; Schulze, _loc. cit._, p. 222.
[702] See Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 96 f.; _Nor. Tr._, p. 137;
Brough Smyth, II, p. 319.--This ritual promiscuity is found especially
in the initiation ceremonies (Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 267,
381; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 657), and in the totemic ceremonies (_Nor.
Tr._, pp. 214, 298, 237). In these latter, the ordinary exogamic rules
are violated. Sometimes among the Arunta, unions between father and
daughter, mother and son, and brothers and sisters (that is in every
case, relationship by blood) remain forbidden (_Nat. Tr._, pp. 96 f.).
[703] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 535, 545. This is extremely common.
[704] These women were Kingilli themselves, so these unions violated the
exogamic rules.
[705] _Nor. Tr._, p. 237.
[706] _Nor. Tr._, p. 391. Other examples of this collective
effervescence during the religious ceremonies will be found in _Nat.
Tr._, pp. 244-246, 365-366, 374, 509-510 (this latter in connection with
a funeral rite). Cf. _Nor. Tr._, pp. 213, 351.
[707] Thus we see that this fraternity is the logical consequence of
totemism, rather than its basis. Men have not imagined their duties
towards the animals of the totemic species because they regarded them as
kindred, but have imagined the kinship to explain the nature of the
beliefs and rites of which they were the object. The animal was
considered a relative of the man because it was a sacred being like the
man, but it was not treated as a sacred being because it was regarded as
a relative.
[708] See below, Bk. III, ch i, § 3.
[709] At the bottom of this conception there is a well-founded and
persistent sentiment. Modern science also tends more and more to admit
that the duality of man and nature does not exclude their unity, and
that physical and moral forces, though distinct, are closely related. We
undoubtedly have a different conception of this unity and relationship
than the primitive, but beneath these different symbols, the truth
affirmed by the two is the same.
[710] We say that this derivation is sometimes indirect on account of
the industrial methods which, in a large number of cases, seem to be
derived from religion through the intermediacy of magic (see Hubert and
Mauss, _Théorie générale de la Magie_, _Année Sociol._, VII, pp. 144
ff.); for, as we believe, magic forces are only a special form of
religious forces. We shall have occasion to return to this point several
times.
[711] At least after he is once adult and fully initiated, for the
initiation rites, introducing the young man to the social life, are a
severe discipline in themselves.
[712] Upon this particular aspect of primitive societies, see our
_Division du travail social_, 3rd ed., pp. 123, 149, 173 ff.
[713] We provisionally limit ourselves to this general indication: we
shall return to this idea and give more explicit proof, when we speak of
the rites (Bk. III).
[714] On this point, see Achelis, _Die Ekstase_, Berlin, 1902,
especially ch. i.
[715] Cf. Mauss, _Essai sur les variations saisonnières des sociétés
eskimos_, in _Année Sociol._, IX, p. 127.
[716] Thus we see how erroneous those theories are which, like the
geographical materialism of Ratzel (see especially his _Politische
Geographie_), seek to derive all social life from its material
foundation (either economic or territorial). They commit an error
precisely similar to the one committed by Maudsley in individual
psychology. Just as this latter reduced all the psychical life of the
individual to a mere epiphenomenon of his physiological basis, they seek
to reduce the whole psychical life of the group to its physical basis.
But they forget that ideas are realities and forces, and that collective
representations are forces even more powerful and active than individual
representations. On this point, see our _Représentations individuelles
et représentations collectives_, in the _Revue de Métaphysique et de
Morale_, May, 1898.
[717] See above, pp. 188 and 194.
[718] Even the _excreta_ have a religious character. See Preuss, _Der
Ursprung der Religion und Kunst_, especially ch. ii, entitled _Der
Zauber der Defäkation_ (_Globus_, LXXXVI, pp. 325 ff.).
[719] This principle has passed from religion into magic: it is the
_totem ex parte_ of the alchemists.
[720] On this point see _Règles de la méthode sociologique_, pp. 5 ff.
[721] Procopius of Gaza, _Commentarii in Isaiam_, 496.
[722] See Thévenot, _Voyage au Levant_, Paris, 1689, p. 638. The fact
was still round in 1862.
[723] Lacassagne, _Les Tatouages_, p. 10.
[724] Lombroso, _L'homme criminel_, I, p. 292.
[725] Lombroso, _ibid._, I, pp. 268, 285, 291 f.; Lacassagne, _op.
cit._, p. 97.
[726] See above, p. 127.
[727] For the authority of the chiefs, see Spencer and Gillen, _Nat.
Tr._, p. 10; _Nor. Tr._, p. 25; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 295 ff.
[728] At least in Australia. In America, the population is more
generally sedentary; but the American clan represents a relatively
advanced form of organization.
[729] To make sure of this, it is sufficient to look at the chart
arranged by Thomas, _Kinship and Marriage in Australia_, p. 40. To
appreciate this chart properly, it should be remembered that the author
has extended, for a reason unknown to us, the system of totemic
filiation in the paternal line clear to the western coast of Australia,
though we have almost no information about the tribes of this region,
which is, moreover, largely a desert.
[730] The stars are often regarded, even by the Australians, as the land
of souls and mythical personages, as will be established in the next
chapter: that means that they pass as being a very different world from
that of the living.
[731] _Op. cit._, I, p. 4. Cf. Schulze, _loc. cit._, p. 243.
[732] Of course it is to be understood that, as we have already pointed
out (see above, p. 155), this choice was not made without a more or less
formal agreement between the groups that each should take a different
emblem from its neighbours.
[733] The mental state studied in this paragraph is identical to the one
called by Lévy-Bruhl the law of participation (_Les fonctions mentales
dans les sociétés inférieures_, pp. 76 ff.). The following pages were
written when this work appeared and we publish them without change; we
confine ourselves to adding certain explanations showing in what we
differ from M. Lévy-Bruhl in our understanding of the facts.
[734] See above, p. 230.
[735] Another cause has contributed much to this fusion; this is the
extreme contagiousness of religious forces. They seize upon every object
within their reach, whatever it may be. Thus a single religious force
may animate the most diverse things which, by that very fact, become
closely connected and classified within a single group. We shall return
again to this contagiousness, when we shall show that it comes from the
social origins of the idea of sacredness (Bk. III, ch. i, _in fine_).
[736] Lévy-Bruhl, _op. cit._, pp. 77 ff.
[737] _Ibid._, p. 79.
[738] See above, p. 146.
[739] This is the case with the Gnanji; see _Nor. Tr._, pp. 170, 546;
cf. a similar case in Brough Smyth, II, p. 269.
[740] _Australian Aborigines_, p. 51.
[741] There certainly was a time when the Gnanji women had souls, for a
large number of women's souls still exist to-day. However, they never
reincarnate themselves; since in this tribe the soul animating a
new-born child is an old reincarnated soul, it follows from the fact
that women's souls do not reincarnate themselves, that women cannot have
a soul. Moreover, it is possible to explain whence this absence of
reincarnation comes. Filiation among the Gnanji, after having been
uterine, is now in the paternal line: a mother no longer transmits her
totem to her child. So the woman no longer has any descendants to
perpetuate her; she is the _finis familiæ suæ_. To explain this
situation, there are only two possible hypotheses; either women have no
souls, or else they are destroyed after death. The Gnanji have adopted
the former of these two explanations; certain peoples of Queensland have
preferred the latter (see Roth, _Superstition, Magic and Medicine_, in
_N. Queensland Ethnog._, No. 5, § 68).
[742] "The children below four or five years of age have neither soul
nor future life," says Dawson. But the fact he thus relates is merely
the absence of funeral rites for young children. We shall see the real
meaning of this below.
[743] Dawson, p. 51; Parker, _The Euahlayi_, p. 35; Eylmann, p. 188.
[744] _Nor. Tr._, p. 542; Schürmann, _The Aboriginal Tribes of Port
Lincoln_, in Woods, p. 235.
[745] This is the expression used by Dawson, p. 50.
[746] Strehlow, I, p. 15, n. 1; Schulze, _loc. cit._, p. 246; this is
the theme of the myth of the vampire.
[747] Strehlow, I, p. 15; Schulze, p. 244; Dawson, p. 51. It is true
that it is sometimes said that souls have nothing corporeal; according
to certain testimony collected by Eylmann (p. 188), they are _ohne
Fleisch und Blut_. But these radical negations leave us sceptical. The
fact that offerings are not made to the souls of the dead in no way
implies, as Roth thinks (_Superstition, Magic_, etc., § 65), that they
do not eat.
[748] Roth, _ibid._, § 65; _Nor. Tr._, p. 530. It sometimes happens that
the soul emits odours (Roth, _ibid._, § 68).
[749] Roth, _ibid._, § 67; Dawson, p. 51.
[750] Roth, _ibid._, § 65.
[751] Schürmann, _Aborig. Tr. of Port Lincoln_, in Woods, p. 235.
[752] Parker, _The Euahlayi_, pp. 29, 35; Roth, _ibid._, §§ 65, 67, 68.
[753] Roth, _ibid._, § 65; Strehlow, I, p. 15.
[754] Strehlow, I, p. 14, n. 1.