names, but local or descriptive names, like the Tlingit according to
Dr. Swanton. In several instances it is easy to prove that exogamous
"clans," now bearing local or other descriptive names, have previously
borne totemic names. This result has often been attained by the
circumstance that _with male descent of the totem name_, a regular
_local_ clan is formed. Such a clan then comes to be known by a
territorial description (just as lairds were in Scotland) and the
totemic name may drop out of use. If so, the clan becomes exogamous
under a territorial or other name, and is no longer a totem clan.
But this explanation cannot apply to the Tlingit, with female descent,
for with female descent, unless the men go to the women's homes, no
local clan of descent is possible. I have shown that I do not pretend
to know precisely what are the facts of the Tlingit system, as accounts
contradict each other. But in other American cases, as in those of
the Apaches and Navahos, the tribes "are divided into a large number
of exogamous clans with descent in the female line, but the names of
the clans appear to be local, not totemic...."[59] Such names are Lone
Tree, Red Flat, House of the Cliffs, Bend in a Canyon, and so forth.
Are such names inherited? Is every child of a woman of Red Flat called
"Red Flat"? Persons of the same clan or phratry (from eight to twelve
phratries) may not intermarry. The phratries "have no formal names";
speaking of his phratry a man will often refer to it by the title of
its oldest or most numerous clan--and that, it seems, is always a local
name, "Dr. Washington Matthews," says Mr. Frazer, "who spoke with
authority on the subject, was of opinion that the Navahos clans were
originally and indeed till quite recently local exogamous groups and
not true clans." What else can they be? But Dr. Washington Matthews
found a legend which suggests that the Navahos were once totemic. If
this be an explanatory myth its point is to explain _why the clans
have now local names_, and why do the clans think that the fact needs
explanation? " It is said that when they set out on their journey each
clan was provided with a different pet, such as a bear, a puma, a deer,
a snake, and a porcupine, and that when the clans received their local
names these pets were set free."[60] That is, place-names ousted totem
names.
It appears to me that when a tribe acquires settled habits and lives
in villages, territorial names may oust totem names, and exogamy may
become, as among the Navaho, local, just as it becomes local in several
Australian tribes with male descent. But nothing in my theory compels
me to suppose that every people has passed through totemic exogamy.
Exogamy, in my view, was prior to totemism; totem names were a later
way of designating local groups which were already exogamous.[61] "The
rule would be, No marriage within the local group." The totemic names
were a later addition, and I can think of no reason why all peoples
should necessarily accept totemic names; only, as it chances, the
enormous majority among the lower races have done so.
Perhaps the Navaho and Apaches never had totemic names for their
exogamous local groups. They are not known to exhibit any sign or
vestige of totemism beyond the legend or myth of the wild animal pets.
All such cases of exogamous units bearing non-totemic names, in tribes
of female descent, where no vestige of totemism is found, are outside
of the field of totemism. Why should we treat people as totemic who
have no totems? If we held the opinion that totemism was the cause
of exogamy, the position would be different. At one time I thought
that the totem and the totem blood taboo, clinched, as it were, and
sanctified a pre-existing exogamy. But as I never found that marriage
within the totem was automatically punished by sickness or death;
(as, in many tribes, the offence of eating the totem is supposed to
be); I saw that marriage within the totem was a breach of secular law,
punished capitally by "the State." There is no taboo in the case. But
as we repudiate the opinion that totemism was the cause of exogamy, in
studying totemism we have no concern with peoples who are exogamous but
show no trace of having ever been totemic.
[59] _T. and E._, vol. iii, p. 243.
[60] _T. and E._ vol. iii. p. 245. note 5, citing Washington Matthews.
_J. A. F._ iii., 1890, p. 105, and _Navaho Legends_, p. 31, 1897.
[61] _Secret of the Totem_, pp. 114, 115.
VIII.
The case of the Tlingit is quite different. Here the phratries have
totemic names; the "clans" in the phratries are said, by early
authorities, to have totemic names; the "crests" (mainly the same
animals as those said to give names to the Tlingit "clans") are readily
to be explained by totemism evolving into heraldry.
But, if the Tlingit clans have not totemic names, then it would appear
that, among a people of dwellers in towns, local names of local groups
have succeeded to totemic names of totemic kins. This can only occur
where people have settled habitations, towns or villages, or where
totem kins have been localised by male descent.
We know that, even among some of the Australian tribes with male
descent, totem kins become local groups, and thus the predominant
totem of each such group becomes attached to a locality, as among the
Narran-ga of Yorke Peninsula. They had two pairs of phratries of animal
names:
Emu. Eagle Hawk.
Red Kangaroo. Shark.
In each such phratry was a number of totem kins, the same totem
never appearing in more than one phratry (or "class" in Mr. Howitt's
term). Each class or phratry was limited to a certain territory: Emu
to the north, Red Kangaroo to the east, Eagle Hawk to the west, and
Shark to the extreme point of the peninsula (south). The totems,
passing from father to son, were thus localised. They ceased to be
exogamous--obviously because each man, to find a wife eligible on
exogamous principles, had to travel to a place inconveniently remote.
Thus the only restriction on marriage was "forbidden degrees" of
consanguinity.[62]
All this is easily intelligible. Male descent fixed phratries and
totems to localities. By the old rule, if Emu phratry had to marry
into Shark phratry, the localities were at the extreme ends of the
peninsula, north and south; the other two phratries were as far asunder
as the cast of the peninsula is from the west. Consequently, though the
old machinery of exogamy existed, the practice of exogamy was dropped:
persons might marry within their own totem kins. But we are not told
whether all four "classes" inter-married, or each "class" only with one
other, because the old rule had fallen into disuse before the coming of
Europeans.
Mr. Howitt gives a case of "the transfer of the prohibition of marriage
within the totem, to the totem clan--that is, to the locality." In
this case, that of the Narrinyeri, with male descent, most "clans"
have a local name, or a nickname, and have totems. But three such
units or "clans" out of twenty retain their totem names--Whale, Coot,
Mullet--thus indicating that totemic preceded local names. A local
"clan" may have as many as three totems, but in thirteen cases out
of twenty each local clan had but one totem. Among nicknames are
"Gone over there," and "Where shall we go?" These clans (thirteen
out of twenty) having local names, were strictly exogamous. So also,
of course, were the totems of the local clans; though, save in
three cases, the name of the place of residence, or a nickname, had
superseded the totem name as the title of the clan. It is as if, in
place of speaking of the MacIans, we said "the Glencoe men"; instead of
speaking of the Stewarts, said "the Appin men"; in place of speaking of
the Camerons, said "the men of Lochaber."
Thus it by no means follows that if the exogamous "clans" of any tribe
of the North-West Pacific have local names, therefore they never had
totemic names, as many of them have to this day. The rise of settled
towns or village communities yields a new set of conditions, and a new
set of non-totemic names for the clans, in some cases; precisely as
the localisation of a totem clan through the operation of male descent
causes a local name to take the place, usually but not universally, of
a totem clan name in Southern Victoria.
Consequently Mr. Goldenweizer can make no argumentative use of the
alleged local names of the Tlingit clans. If the totemic names of
exogamous units--showing connections with totemism in crests and
totemic phratry names--be absent, that is because, under known
conditions, they have been superseded by local names or nicknames. This
process is a vera causa in totemic society.
[62] Howitt, _N.T.S.E.A._, pp. 124, 130, 258, 259.
IX.
I now give an American case, in which a tribe, the Mandans, exhibit
female descent, exogamous clans, and a mixture of totemic clan
names with local names or _sobriquets_. The people were settled,
lived in villages or towns, "with houses very commodious, neat, and
comfortable." The tribe was agricultural, growing maize, beans,
pumpkins, and tobacco. Out of seven clan names four were totemic
--Wolf, Bear, Prairie Chicken, Eagle; two--Flathead and Good Knife
--look like nicknames; High Village is local.[63] Here we find other
sorts of clan names encroaching on totem names.
Among the Crows, with exogamous clans and female descent, out of twelve
clan names four are totemic--Prairie Dog, Skunk, Raven, Antelope; three
are very unkind nicknames.[64]
The American tribes have been much disturbed by the whites, and many
changes have occurred in their institutions. As Mr. Frazer points out,
in a book of 1781 Captain Carver describes Siouan "bands" or "tribes"
(really totem kins), each with a badge representing an animal, and
named after the animals: Eagles, Panthers, Tigers, Buffaloes, Snakes,
Tortoises, Squirrels, Wolves, etc. These people were Sioux or Dacotas;
whether they were exogamous or not Carver does not say. But, in place
of now bearing totemic names, the "gentes" of these people are at
present distinguished by obvious and even odious nicknames, such as
"Breakers of the Law," because members of this _gens_ disregarded the
marriage law by taking wives within the _gens_.
So says Mr. Dorsey. Mr. Frazer says the bands of this tribe are not
exogamous. But they must have been exogamous when a gens received a
nickname for breaking the law of exogamy. One "band" or _gens_ "Eats
no Geese"; it may have been a Goose clan. Other bands or _gentes_ bear
nicknames or local names.[65]
I need not give more examples. In America, as in Australia, various
conditions, already mentioned, cause changes from totemic names of
exogamous clans to local names and nicknames.
It has now been proved that though, in very rare cases, such as those
of the Arunta and Narran-ga, sets of people may have totemic names, yet
marry within the name; and that, though "clans" may be exogamous and
yet bear names which are not totemic, nevertheless the co-existence of
totemic names with exogamy prevails in the overwhelming majority of
instances, while the exceptions, as they have been accounted for by
their causes, prove the rule. Consequently I see no error of method
in holding that the totemic name and exogamy are normal features of
totemism, while totemism is "an integral phenomenon."
This is my answer to Mr. Goldenweizer's criticisms. Of course I do not
say that totemism was the cause of exogamy; I hold that exogamy was
prior to totemism, and think it perfectly possible that some exogamous
peoples may never have been totemic.
In this discussion I have, not illogically I hope, taken into account
relative conditions of advancement among the peoples studied. I have
not here shown that reckoning descent in the male line is a social
advance on reckoning in the female line, but I am able to prove that it
is, at least in Australia. I have shown that wealth, rank, and settled
habitations tend to modify totemism, for example, by introducing
heraldry, and enabling non-totemic to supersede, now more now less, the
totemic names of exogamous units.
Mr. Goldenweizer, as we saw, writes "that these conditions are due to
the fact that the tribes of British Columbia are 'advanced' cannot
be admitted."[66] I am sorry that he cannot admit what is true and
obvious. The wealth, the art, the degrees of rank, the settled
houses and towns of the British Columbian tribes have introduced the
perplexities of their heraldry; as in other parts of America and in
Australia other causes have brought in local names for exogamous kins.
[63] _T. and E._, vol. ill. pp. 135, 136. Morgan, _Ancient Society_, p.
158.
[64; _T. and E._, vol. iii. pp. 153, 154.
[65] _T. and E._, vol. iii. pp. 86, 87. Dorsey, _R.B.F._, xv. (1897)
_et seq_.
[66] _J. A. F._ p. 287.
End of Project Gutenberg's Method in the Study of Totemism, by Andrew Lang