TOTEMISM
§ 1. MEANING AND SCOPE OF TOTEMISM
Of very much less importance in the history of culture than Animism or
Magic, Totemism interests us by its strangeness. To be descended from
a crocodile, or blood-brother to the crow, or “the same as a kangaroo”
must be, we think, the grotesque notion of a lunatic. We never meet
people who believe such a thing; it has no stronghold in our own
breasts. So much the more surprising that it should, nevertheless, be
widely entertained. It is, indeed, far from universal among mankind,
probably much less ancient than Animism and certainly far less
enduring. Where it has prevailed it is sometimes quite forgotten; and
in the higher stages of human development it has no influence. But
every student of early institutions finds it necessary to give himself
some intelligible account of its nature and sources.
“A Totem,” says Sir James Frazer, “is a class of material objects
which a savage regards with superstitious respect, believing that
there exists between him and every member of the class an intimate and
altogether special relation.”[510]
This definition is scientifically drawn so as to include what is common
to all Totems and not to include any character that is not universally
connected with them. It is true of the Totems of individuals (or
guardian genii), very common among the Northern Amerinds; as well as
of the Sex-Totems (say Bat for men and Owl for women) which occur in
Australia; and of the Totems of clans found in many parts of the world,
of which the Australian may be supposed most nearly to represent the
original institution. When one speaks of Totems without qualification,
one means these Clan-Totems, being incomparably the most important:
others probably derive from them.
“The Clan-Totem” (to quote the same source) “is reverenced by a body
of men and women who call themselves by the name of the Totem, believe
themselves to be of one blood, descendants of a common ancestor, and
are bound together by common obligations to each other and by a common
faith in the Totem.”[511] This definition is also strict: whereas it
is not uncommon for writers on Totemism to include in their notion
of the Totem other characters which are accidents more or less often
associated with it: as that the clan believes itself descended from the
Totem; though in many cases the clan traces its origin to something
that was neither Totem nor man, or regards the Totem animal as
descended from their own human ancestress, or tells some story of the
transformation of a man into an animal, or of an animal into a man, or
of an ancestor’s friendship with the Totem animal; for the institution
is a copious source of explanatory myths. Again, it may be written that
no member of a clan may kill or injure the Totem, or eat, or utilise
it (if an animal or plant); and this is often, but not always true. If
the Totem is water, or the most important food in the district—dugong,
turtle, coconut, sago—abstention is impossible or intolerably
inconvenient. Hence among the Kaitish a Water clansman when alone may
drink; but if others are with him he may drink only when water is
given him by a man of another Totem. And to eat a little of the Totem
sacramentally, in order to confirm one’s identity with it, may be
allowed or (rather) required. Among the Warramunga the Snake clan may
kill snakes. It may even be the clan’s duty to destroy or drive away
their Totem; as happens with the Mosquito clan of the Kakadus in North
Australia, and with the Reptile clan amongst the Omahas. Similarly, the
clan sometimes, but by no means always, imitate the Totem in character,
in costume, in dances, or bear in tattoo or otherwise its badge to
manifest the community of nature. They may be thought to have special
magical powers to influence its fertility or to control its actions
(actions of game or wind or rain), and may use these powers for the
benefit of the tribe. At death the soul of a clansman may pass into,
or may appear as, the Totem animal. The Totem may be the protector of
its clansmen, and in some cases it seems to have become a god. These
accidents of Totemism, however, are very irregularly diffused and some
of them are rare.
Most important socially is the connexion between Totemism and
Marriage-customs. In the great majority of cases, men and women
of the same Totem may not intermarry; the Totem clans are said to
be exogamous; but there are exceptions even to this rule. In many
parts of the world—America, Africa, India, Indonesia, as well as
Australia—tribes are divided into non-intermarrying or exogamous
classes (moieties or phratries); sometimes the classes are subdivided,
and even the sub-classes again (in parts of Australia), so that in
all the exogamous classes are eight; and the rules concerning these
classes are such as to prevent the marriage of brothers and sisters,
parents and children and first cousins. The Totem clans are usually
distributed amongst the Marriage-classes; being probably the older
institution (whether or not originally exogamous), they may be said
to have been subordinated by the formation of the classes; and in
the matter of marriage they follow the class rules. But the Arunta
with some neighbouring tribes of Central Australia, though divided
into eight exogamous classes, have not subordinated the Totem clans;
which, accordingly, are not exogamous. If Exogamy was originally the
vital utility of Totemism, the institution is undermined by the
Marriage-classes, whether the clans are subordinated to the classes
and merely repeat their rules, or are not subordinated and lose their
Exogamy. This may explain why the classes prevail more widely than
Totems, and may be found where Totemism seems to have become extinct.
§ 2. OF THE ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM
It has already been said that Totemism does not prevail universally
amongst mankind. There is very little evidence of its having existed
amongst the ancestors of the Indo-European peoples; and it seems to
be unknown to many of the most primitive of surviving tribes—the
Boschmans, Veddas, Puranas (Borneo), Andamanese, Yaghans (Tierra del
Fuego) and Californian Indians. It is not, therefore, something founded
in human nature itself, but must have originated (whether in one or in
several places) under particular conditions.
There is some probability that the earliest Totems were animals.
Wherever Totems are found most of them are animals. A list of Totems
recognised in North Australia, given by Spencer and Gillen,[512]
comprises 202 altogether: Animals 164,[513] Plants 22, Inanimate 16.
The animals (except insects) and plants are nearly all edible. To
hunters animals must have been of all things the most interesting;
next, certain plants, especially to women. Animals lend the greatest
plausibility to any notion of blood-relationship. The inanimate Totems
include some which it is very desirable to control by Magic, such as
Water, Wind, Fire, Sun, Moon and the Boomerang.
Generally, no doubt, Totemism is ancient; but in some cases the
existing Totems must be recent, as among the Bahima of Uganda.[514]
Nearly all their Totems are different coloured cows, or some part
of a cow, and must have been adopted since the advance to pastoral
life—at a stage of culture, therefore, much above the Australian.
“Split Totems,” arising on the division of a clan by dividing its Totem
(as the Omahas comprised Buffalo-heads, Buffalo-tails, etc.[515]),
were probably formed by deliberate agreement, and had the incidental
advantage that a clansman’s food-taboo did not extend to the whole
buffalo, the staple food of the tribe, but only to the head or tail.
Amongst the Australian aborigines, the group of beliefs and practices
included in, or connected with, Totemism are of such intense and
widespread social importance, that it must have prevailed amongst them
for many generations. The northern Amerinds are so much in advance of
the Australians in social organisation, culture and mentality, that
if their Totemism has descended to them from a time when they lived
at the Australian level, its history must go back not merely for many
generations but for thousands of years. And if Egyptian gods, such
as Hathor and Anubis, were formerly Totems, the retrospect becomes
still longer. I am not aware of any direct evidence of the prehistoric
existence of Totemism, such as we have, in some ancient burials, of the
existence of Animism; but some palæolithic carvings or paintings may
have had totemic significance.
It follows that any account of the origin of Totemism can only be
hypothetical. Were this all, indeed, it would be on the same foot
with Magic and Animism; but it is not all. That Magic should arise
from belief in mysterious forces and from confusing coincidence with
causation, or that Animism should result from a confusion between
dreams and objective experience (with the help of Magic-ideas) is
highly probable; because such errors are active to this day, and they
seem to spring up in primitive minds by psychological necessity;
though it may not be intrinsically necessary that the errors should
be perpetuated and systematised as, in general, they have been. But
the case of Totemism is different; for we do not see—at least, no one
has yet shown—any sort of necessity why in certain cases clans should
have borne the names of certain animals: and this is the root of the
whole matter. Indeed, this practice, not being universal, cannot be
necessary; and it may have had several different origins. Any relevant
hypothesis, therefore, can claim no more than to agree with the known
facts better than rival hypotheses; we cannot expect to deduce it from
laws of human nature; whilst still another hypothesis just as good may
any day be put forward by some speculative genius; and the doubt must
always remain whether some important facts of Totemism have not been
lost which, could they be recovered, would prove all our guesses to
have been made in vain.
In spite of these discouraging considerations, several hypotheses have
been proposed: this also is for us a sort of psychological necessity.
They may be grouped into two classes, according as they assume the
totemic names to have been originally names of individuals or of whole
clans. All seem to assume that one explanation must hold good for all
the cases.
Of hypotheses that trace totemic names to individuals there is, first,
Spencer’s; namely, that the name of an animal or plant was first given
to an individual, and then inherited by his family; who after a time
forgot his personality, remembered only their descent from such a name,
and assumed that their ancestor must have been an animal or plant such
as still bore that name. Secondly, there is the explanation offered
by Prof. Franz Boas, that the first Totems were guardian spirits of
individuals, and that these became Clan-Totems of their descendants.
For this account it may be said that among the Northern Amerinds the
belief in guardian spirits of individuals (generally some animal)
is universally diffused, and perhaps of greater importance than the
Clan-Totems, seeing that these are subordinate to the Marriage-classes:
moreover, the Totems are rarely, if ever, believed to have been
ancestors. On the other hand, in Australia, guardian spirits of
individuals are rare, whilst Totemism is universal. So that, if we
suppose only one origin of the institution, it is more reasonable to
view the guardian spirit as derived from the Clan-Totem. In Borneo we
find the guardian spirit with some traits similar to the American, but
much less generally, whilst there is now no plainly marked Totemism:
but there are several beliefs akin to those of Totemism which may be
marks of its former existence; and, if so, the guardian spirit may
also be one of its relics.[516] Thirdly, Frazer’s hypothesis, that
Totems originated in the fancies of pregnant women, who, ignorant of
physiological causes, supposed that that which stirred within them must
be some animal or plant that had entered them; so that the child when
born could be no other than that animal or plant.
Of hypotheses which regard totemic names as from the first names of
groups we have, first, Max Müller’s, that they originated with clan
marks.[517] But in Australia clan marks are not often to be found.
Secondly, Professor F. B. Jevons’, that the Totem was originally some
animal adopted by the tribe as a friendly natural power, aiding them
in the struggle for existence.[518] But, if so, this character seems
to have been lost, or greatly attenuated in Australia, and in America
belongs to the guardian spirit rather than to the Totem. Thirdly, Dr.
Haddon’s, that the Totem name was derived by a group from the animal
or plant which was its principal food; but cases to support this
suggestion are very few. Fourthly, Andrew Lang’s, that group names were
obtained in some way—perhaps imposed upon each group by others, and
accepted; and that names of animals or plants having been obtained in
any way, and the origin forgotten, just such beliefs concerning the
relation of the group to its namesake would be likely to arise, as in
fact we find amongst Totemists.[519]
For want of space to discuss all these doctrines I shall deal chiefly
with those of Frazer and Lang.
§ 3. THE CONCEPTIONAL HYPOTHESIS
Sir J. G. Frazer, after very candidly relinquishing two early
suggestions—by no means fanciful—concerning the origin of
Totemism, as unsupported by sufficient evidence, has put forward
a third—“conceptional Totemism”—which occurred to him upon the
discovery by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen of the doctrine of totemic
descent prevalent amongst the Arunta and allied tribes. These tribes
are said not to be aware of the connexion between sexual intercourse
and pregnancy. They say that a child is the result of the entry into
a woman of the spirit of some pre-existing tribesman of this or
that Totem; which, therefore, will also be the child’s. What Totem
it is depends upon the place where the woman first becomes aware of
quickening; for there are certain places known to the natives where
the people of such or such a Totem “went into the ground” [perhaps
were buried]; and in passing such a place any woman is liable to
be impregnated by one of the discarnate spirits; who are always
on the look-out for an opportunity to re-enter the mortal state.
This is the real cause of pregnancy, for which marriage is merely a
preparation.[520] A young woman who does not desire the dignity of
a matron, when passing such haunted ground, runs crouching by, and
cries out that she is an old woman; for facility in being deceived
is a saving grace of spirits. In modified forms this doctrine of “no
paternity and re-incarnation” is professed by tribes throughout the
centre and north of the continent, in Queensland and in parts of West
Australia.[521]
The Arunta doctrine of conception by animal or plant spirits cannot,
however, be the origin of Totemism; because, as Sir James Frazer
points out, the impregnating spirits are already totemic. One must,
therefore, suppose (he says) an earlier state of things, in which a
woman, ignorant of the true causes of childbirth, imagined at the first
symptoms of pregnancy (by which the quickening seems to be meant)
that she had been entered by some object, or by the spirit of some
object, which had been engaging her attention at the time, or which she
may have been eating—a wallaby, emu, plum or grass-seed—and later
believed that the child she bare must be, or be an incarnation of, that
object or spirit, and in fact nothing else than a wallaby, emu, plum
or grass-seed with the appearance of a human being. If other women
had similar experiences in connexion with other animals or plants,
and if the descendants of their children remembered the stories, and
considered themselves to be wallabies, grass-seed and so forth, the
hypothesis would fully explain that identification of groups of men
with groups of things which is characteristic of Totemism; and the
other characters naturally follow. Such is the conceptional theory of
Totemism, deriving that institution from “the sick fancies of pregnant
women.”[522]
Circumstances, which Sir James Frazer regards as very similar to those
which he imagined as having prevailed at some former time amongst the
Arunta, have been discovered by Dr. Rivers at Mota and Motlar in the
Banks Islands. There many people are “by the custom of the island” not
permitted to eat certain animals or fruits or even to touch certain
trees; because they are believed to _be_ those animals or plants—their
mothers having suffered some influence from such animals or plants at
conception or at some subsequent period of pregnancy. “The course of
events is usually as follows: a woman, sitting down in her garden,
or in the bush, or on the shore, finds an animal or fruit in her
loin-cloth. She takes it up and carries it to the village, where she
asks the meaning of the appearance. The people say that she will give
birth to a child who will have the characters of this animal, or even
(it appeared) would be himself or herself that animal.”[523] She takes
it to its proper home, tries to keep it, and feeds it; but after a
time it will disappear, and is then believed to have entered into her.
There is no belief in physical impregnation by the animal, nor of its
invading the woman as a physical object; such an animal seems to be
considered as “more or less supernatural, a spirit-animal, from the
beginning.” “The belief is not accompanied by any ignorance of the
physical rôle of the human father.” Apparently the prohibition against
eating animals or plants thus connected with oneself rests on the idea
that it would amount to eating oneself—a sort of cannibalism. One
partakes of its physical and mental characters. But the resemblance
to, and the taboo on eating, a certain animal are individual matters;
there is no belief in their being passed on to one’s descendants. In
this alone the belief at Mota falls short of Totemism. “Yet it occurs
in a people whose social system has no totemic features at the present
time, whatever it may have had in the past.”[524] Possibly former
Totem-clans have been merged in secret societies, but there is no
clear evidence of it. In Melanesia, Totemism occurs in Fiji, Shortland
Islands, Bismarck Archipelago (probably), Reef Islands, Santa Cruz,
Vanikolo and in some regions of the Solomon Islands, but not in the
Banks Islands nor in the Torres Islands to the south.
* * * * *
This hypothesis that Totemism is derived from the fancies of women
concerning the causes of their own pregnancy suggests several adverse
considerations. In the first place, it is to me incredible that the
Arunta are really ignorant of paternity; young women and children
perhaps may be, but not the seniors. My reasons for thinking so are set
out at length in the _J.R.A.I._, 1819 (p. 146), namely, that the facts
of childbirth are too interesting to be overlooked or misconstrued, and
are well within the grasp of savage understanding; that those who think
the Arunta capable of such stupidity have attended too exclusively to
particular incidents of pregnancy, especially the quickening, and have
not considered that there is a definite series of closely connected
incidents; that there is testimony, not to be lightly put aside, that
the old men know the truth in the case of human beings, and that
knowledge of the parallel phenomena amongst animals is shared even by
the Arunta children; that it is possible for knowledge to be repressed
by dogma without being extinguished; that this is an old man’s dogma,
and that we must not assume that in Australia, any more than in Europe,
what people are accustomed to say is good evidence of what they really
believe;[525] that other tribes at the same level of culture, in
South-East Australia, are so convinced of the importance of paternity
that they say the child proceeds entirely from the father; that those
who deny paternity show by their customs and myths that they are
secretly aware of it; and, finally, that in some cases they have clear
motives for maintaining the dogma and suppressing the truth.
Secondly, the observations of Dr. Rivers in the Banks Islands give
not the slightest support to the conceptional hypothesis. For (_a_)
the Banks Islands belief “is not accompanied by any ignorance of the
physical rôle of the human father.” (_b_) The belief is that the child
born to a woman who has been visited by a plant or animal is in some
way “influenced” by the experience; not, as with the Arunta, that it
is entirely due to it (except for some “preparation” by the father).
(_c_) Before the Banks Islands belief can give rise to Totemism
there must be a belief in the continuous inheritance of the plant or
animal influence; and not only is this absent, but there is a strong
tendency to prevent it. A woman having been influenced by an eel, her
child is an eel; but if that child be a girl, there is no further
transmission of eel-like qualities; the girl, on becoming pregnant, may
be influenced by a yam, and then her child will be a yam. This hinders
the formation of a group of human beings mysteriously allied to an
animal or plant, such as Totemism implies. But (_d_) the conceptional
hypothesis refers the origin of Totemism to the ignorant imaginings of
women themselves, who think they have been entered by this or that;
whereas in the Banks Islands a woman’s belief in the influence of an
animal or plant upon her offspring is not prompted by her own fancy,
but by a popular superstition. For when she carries the thing found in
her loin-cloth to the village, “the people say” she will give birth to
a child who will have the qualities of, or even will be that thing; and
a child afterwards born may not eat or touch that thing “by the custom
of the country.” Had the Arunta, then, of pre-totemic days such a
superstition and custom for the guidance of mothers? If so, the history
of that superstition and custom must be more obscure than Totemism
itself. But in the Banks Islands their origin may admit of a wide
solution; for although it is said that no manifest traces of Totemism
are to be found there now; yet, seeing that the Australians, Papuans,
Polynesians and the Melanesians to the north all have Totemism or
plain vestiges of it, the improbability that Melanesians in the Banks
Islands never had it is very great; and it is reasonable to suppose
that the superstition concerning the influence of animals or plants
upon pregnant women, and the taboo upon the eating of such an animal or
plant by the offspring, represent not a possible origin of Totemism,
but a survival of it.
These considerations raise a further question as to the employment
of the Comparative Method. Natives of the Banks Islands are far in
advance of the Arunta in all the arts of life, as well as in relation
to Totemism which they seem to have outlived. Is it admissible to
take some trait of their life as an example of what may have existed
amongst the Arunta at a stage of culture which is generally assumed
to have been inferior even to the present? When the antecedents of
an institution have been lost amongst any given people, and we set
out to supply them from parallel cases amongst other peoples, must
we not require the same relative order of development? If a social
phenomenon is found in the Banks Islands, its possibility is proved;
but strictly it was possible only where it occurred: elsewhere we can
expect only something similar, according to the similarity of other
relevant circumstances. Comparing the Banks Islands and their people
with Central Australia and its people, one discovers hardly anything
common to them. And Arunta tradition (whatever worth) shows no sign of
anything like the southern Melanesian culture: the Alcheringa ancestors
are represented as having been already Totemists. To assume, however,
that the former condition of the Arunta was even lower than the
present, may not be justifiable: social degeneration is not uncommon.
There would be something to guide our judgment if we knew how recently
the desiccation of their country approached its present severity. But,
in any case, can we suppose it to have been at all like the Melanesian?
§ 4. ANDREW LANG’S HYPOTHESIS
In some very remote age—to summarise Lang’s statement—at a level of
culture inferior to that of existing Australians, distinctive names
were acquired by small groups of mankind. Since a group needs names
for other groups more than for itself (for itself it consists of
“men” as contrasted with other kinds of animals), names may at first
have been bestowed upon each group by some other, or others, in its
neighbourhood—probably names of animals or plants—and accepted by
each; for no opprobrium attaches to such names. In _Social Origins_
Lang offers evidence concerning names (even depreciatory and mocking
names) having been conferred in this way and accepted; but in _The
Secret of the Totem_,[526] he says that how groups got their names is
not essential to his theory. They may have been given, or adopted, on
account of a group’s staple food (Haddon); or because of some animal
or plant characteristic of a group’s territory; or for some fancied
resemblance of its members to some animal. The important point is
that, from the first, they were names of groups—not derived from the
names of individuals. At the early period assumed for these events
there was not a long enough memory of individuals to make their names
traditionary; and, indeed, the reckoning of descent in the female line
(which Lang regards as universally the most ancient custom) must have
prevented the inheritance of the names of male ancestors.
Whatever may have occasioned the first fixing of names, with the flight
of time the circumstances were forgotten; and groups of men and women
found themselves with names—the names of animals or plants—without
knowing why. The bearing of a name in common with an animal or plant
inevitably suggested to the savage a mysterious connexion with the
species—perhaps that they had the same sort of soul. It gave rise to
an explanatory myth, and the analogy of family relationship suggested
a blood-bond: the animal or plant must be one’s ancestor, brother, or
primal ancestral form. From this idea follows a regard for it, respect,
reverence: it must not be killed, or eaten, or used in any way; it may
be protected, may be helpful; it is a Totem.
The connexion of Totemism with Exogamy (the custom of marrying outside
the group or kin) Lang conceives of in this way. Adopting a suggestion
of Darwin’s,[527] and the scheme of his cousin, J. J. Atkinson in
_Primal Law_, that the primary human group consisted of a powerful
male with one or more wives and their children, he argues that the
jealousy of the head of this family imposed the rule—“No male to touch
the females in my camp.” The sons, therefore, as they grew up, were
driven out, and must find wives elsewhere. This was the beginning of
Exogamy, and it may have preceded the rise of Totemism; but Totemism,
once established, strengthened the custom of Exogamy by mysterious
sanctions. As the Totem might not be eaten, or in any way used or
touched, so a woman of the same Totem could not be married; and that
not only within their immediate family-group, but not even by a male of
any group having the same Totem.
* * * * *
In maintaining this hypothesis against those who would derive Totems
from the names and traditions of individuals, Lang seems to me to
lay too much stress upon the difficulty of establishing a tradition
of descent amongst people who trace descent (as he would say) “on
the spindle side.” If the tradition began from a woman (as it might
do), there is no difficulty; and even if it began from a man, it is
conceivable that his women-folk should adopt it. Moreover, in the
opinion of both Westermarck and Frazer, it has not been shown that the
reckoning of descent in the female line is original and universal.
Still, the further we push back the origin of Totemism the more
difficult it is to understand the growth of a tradition of the descent
and inheritance of the name and personal qualities of an individual;
and this difficulty is avoided by an hypothesis which derives Totemism
from the animal- or plant-names of groups of men and women. That such
names were conferred upon each group by others in the neighbourhood is
a reasonable conjecture;[528] being the earliest names of groups they
cannot be called nicknames; and the names of animals or plants need in
no way have been offensive. It is still more reasonable to urge that,
having been adopted by a group, the circumstances of their acquisition
would, in a few generations, be forgotten, and that they would then
become the ground of myths and mysterious totemic beliefs. But does any
one think that it will now ever be possible to decide with confidence
where, when, how or why the names were given at first? I do not.
As to the origin of Exogamy, I cannot believe that the primitive human
groups were such as Lang described; and, if not, some other origin of
that custom must be sought.
§ 5. TOTEMISM AND MARRIAGE
Generally men and women of the same Totem cannot marry. Tribes, such
as the Arunta, that do not observe this rule are so few that it
is reasonable to consider them aberrant; so that in each case the
non-coincidence of Totemism and Exogamy is a distinct problem.
Nevertheless, there is reason to think that these institutions have not
the same origin. For several primitive tribes, some of them inferior
in culture to the average Australian, have customs of Exogamy, or
(at least) forbidding marriage between individuals of some certain
description, who have not, and are not known ever to have recognised
Totemism. Many tribes, again, who by their ethnological position may
be supposed once to have entertained Totemism, have abandoned it, but
still maintain Exogamy by means of Marriage-classes (phratries) or
otherwise. Further, many nations of advanced culture cannot be shown
ever to have been totemists, but have always (as far back as can be
traced) enforced Exogamy so far as to prohibit marriage within certain
degrees of kindred. And that the connexion between Totemism and Exogamy
is not original but acquired, is indicated by the consideration that
the most obvious tendency of Totemism would be to favour Endogamy
(the practice of not marrying outside certain limits), on the obvious
principle that as an animal kangaroo mates with an animal kangaroo, so
a human kangaroo should marry a human kangaroo. This is so obvious
that the opposite rule that a human kangaroo must not marry another
one, but (zoological paradox!) only an emu or a witchety-grub,
seems perverse, and only to be explained by the influence of some
superstition or incidental custom. According to Arunta tradition, their
ancestors in the Alcheringa were endogamous.
Whether Exogamy originated in the days of the hunting-pack—which
is so far probable that the Boschmans observed it—or during the
reconstitution of society after the breaking up of the packs, or even
later, or in some regions at one period, in others at another, is, I
fear, beyond our power of verifiable guessing. The best hypothesis as
to the grounds of the custom is Westermarck’s, namely, that an instinct
of mutual avoidance grew up between near kin. This requires that at
the time of its origination promiscuity of sexual relations should not
have prevailed in the human stock, since that would have destroyed the
conditions necessary to the rise of such an instinct. If promiscuity
was ever widely practised, it must have been after the breaking up of
the hunting-packs. That at some stage of human life, and apparently
with some Australian tribes not a remote one, promiscuity was
established, has been argued (on the ground of some Australian customs)
with much plausibility; but in his _History of Human Marriage_,[529]
Westermarck has examined this opinion very carefully, and concludes
that it is not tenable. His reasoning seems to me good throughout; and,
having nothing important to add to it, I refer the reader to his work.
Whether amongst anthropoids any instinctive avoidance prevails,
preventing what we conceive of as incest, nobody knows. With their
solitary families, the growth of such a disposition may be more
difficult than amongst gregarious animals (such as our ancestors had
become long before they could be called “human”), who find other
families at hand to intermarry with; though the primitive human bands
probably were not large. Savages now at the lowest level, such as the
Veddas or Yaghans, rarely form parties of more than thirty or forty.
The Boschmans, before their tribal habits were destroyed in the early
years of last century, though sometimes assembling in large numbers
for the great hunts by means of stockade traps, yet were usually
scattered in groups of a few families. It is not likely that their
remote forefathers consorted in larger numbers: eight or ten families
may have been enough to co-operate in hunting, or in mutual defence.
Within each family constituting such a band the tendency to Exogamy may
first have manifested itself.
Westermarck’s hypothesis concerning Exogamy was first published in
the _History of Human Marriage_,[530] and has been re-stated in _The
Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_.[531] In the former work he
fully discusses the evidence as to the effects of the inter-breeding
of near kin, and concludes that it is probably injurious. The evidence
is conflicting, but his conclusion seems to me justifiable. And he
rightly points out that if, amongst civilised nations, the mischief of
inbreeding is not always manifest, it was probably much greater amongst
primitive savages: (1) because the blood of the stock was purer; for in
modern Europe (_e. g._) every marriage brings together many different
strains. (2) Because communities were then much smaller; so that
under endogamous conditions whatever vice may beset inbreeding would,
generation after generation, be perpetuated and exaggerated without
relief. It may be added that with Endogamy the young folk are likely
to begin to breed earlier—perhaps by two or three years—than they
would with Exogamy; and there is no doubt that the marriage of immature
individuals is highly injurious to the race.
But if inbreeding was injurious, Natural Selection favoured any
family or band that practised Exogamy. That any should have done
so on rational grounds, to avoid the observed evil effects of
inbreeding, cannot be supposed. The motive must have been blind to the
consequences, and may have taken the form of coldness toward those of
opposite sex with whom one had grown up from infancy, or of aversion
to the idea of marrying them. Such dispositions Natural Selection
preserved, and they have descended to ourselves; for such was the
beginning of the abhorrence of incest.
I conjecture that this feeling first showed itself within the family,
and led the families of a band to exchange their daughters; and that
later it extended to all members of the same band, and that wives were
then sought from other bands. Probably wives were obtained sometimes
by capture or enticement, sometimes by exchange so far as amicable
relations with neighbours prevailed: for the evidence is far from
showing that “marriage by capture” was ever a general custom; whilst
our knowledge of the Australians and Boschmans shows that neighbouring
bands of savages are not always hostile.
Such a state of things may have existed for ages before the rise of
Totemism, and amongst races that never adopted Totemism. When names of
animals were first given to, or adopted by, various groups, Totemism
somewhere (perhaps in several places) resulted, as a belief in the
magical or spiritual connexion between men and animals of the same
name. But the bands that adopted Totemism were already exogamous,
having an aversion to marriage with others of the same band; and the
practice of Exogamy was thus brought under the mysterious sanction of
totemic ideas. It would then be further extended to bar marriage with
those of the same Totem in other groups.
Totemic sanctions may have been useful in confirming the Exogamy of
some groups, but all superstitious aids to right conduct are liable to
perverse issues, and at best they are second best. Totemism prevents
consanguineous marriages, but also prevents marriage with thousands of
people where no blood-relationship is traceable. If any races were able
to perceive that the interest of Exogamy was the prevention of marriage
between near kin, and then to keep account of kinship and govern
themselves accordingly, they chose the better part.
Some exceptions to the rule that Totem-clans are exogamous may,
perhaps, be explained by supposing that certain bands had not adopted
Exogamy when they became totemists—may not this have happened amongst
the Arunta?—and that they have since learnt Exogamy under other
conditions from neighbouring people, or by conquest. Amongst the
other possible conditions there are the remarkable Marriage-classes,
or phratries that prevail in Australia, North America, and less
regularly in other parts of the world. These Marriage-classes are
considered by some ethnologists to be of deliberate institution—a
reform for the regulation of Exogamy; and Spencer and Gillen, who
knew the Australians so intimately, thought such a law—though its
intricacy astonishes most Europeans and stumbles many—was not beyond
their power of excogitation. Upon that point it would be absurd of me
to have any opinion. But to suppose deliberate intention is contrary
to the usual method of interpreting savage institutions: a savage
language is a system of customs much more intricate and refined than
the Marriage-classes, and not generally believed to have originated
with the deliberate enactment of rules of grammar. I conjecture
that those classes resulted at first from a grouping of exogamous
Totem-clans which grew up by custom, and that the only deliberate work
consisted in some minor adjustments of clan-relations. Marriage of
cousins is prevented in Central and North Australia by the recognition
of eight sub-classes; but the same result is obtained in other tribes
by a custom which merely forbids it. Exogamous classes having been
established in some tribes, may have been imitated in others.
One result of the classificatory marriage system, however it grew up,
is the extended use of names of kinship to denote all individuals of
the same or corresponding generation—“father” for all men who might
by custom have married your mother; “brother” and “sister” for all men
and women descended from those whom your father or mother might have
married; “husband” or “wife” for any man or woman whom, according to
custom, you might have married. When further progress has been made
in culture, distinctive names are used to express blood-relationship
and class-relationship. It may be worth considering whether, in
Australia, some of the customs which have been supposed to bear witness
to an original state of promiscuity are not really results of the
classificatory system of naming relationship: marital rights having
been claimed on the ground of the names “husband” and “wife” as used
in that system.
§ 6. THE CLANSMAN AND HIS TOTEM
The relationship of Clansman to Totem may be conceived of as one of
friendliness, protection, consanguinity, or even identity; and this
last I take to be the case in the age when Totemism is most alive and
powerful. But in what sense can a man be the same as an emu? He may be
of the same name; but by itself that would be nothing. It is not the
name, but the identity which the name has come to signify that must be
considered. Some light may be shed upon the problem by the saying of
a native to Spencer and Gillen, pointing to a photograph of himself:
“That one is just the same as me; so is a kangaroo.” The photograph
might be “the same” as himself in the sense of resemblance; but in that
sense the kangaroo is not the same. Some, indeed, who have speculated
on the savage mind suppose that it is not only incapable of reasoning,
but even of perceiving the facts before it, when under the influence
of some strong belief; and I admit that this is sometimes true. But
all a savage’s actions in relation to his Totem show that he is aware
of the difference: not least his efforts on certain occasions to help
his imagination to establish identity by disguising himself and by
imitating the actions of this strange other self, and by eating a
little of it to insure physical identity at least to that extent. He
also seeks to multiply it that others may eat their ration, and for any
theory of his identity with the Totem, this must be a puzzle.
But a photograph may be the same as oneself in another sense than mere
superficial resemblance: it may, like a shadow or reflection, be (or
contain) a man’s soul, or part of it. And similarly a kangaroo or other
Totem may be conceived to be the same as a man, that is, as having the
same soul. Perhaps this is as near as we can get to the Australian’s
meaning in the above-quoted confession of faith. It is reconcilable
with the ceremonial eating of some part of the Totem; for that will
convey spiritual as well as physical properties: and to reconcile it
with the multiplication of the Totem that others may eat, I point to
the biological necessity that each clan’s Totem should be food for the
other tribesmen. Where all edible animals and plants are Totems, how
else can they subsist? But we have several times seen that biological
necessity will place limits to a belief, and that excuses can be found
for necessary actions which are in conflict with a belief. That the
clansmen give their own Totem to the tribe (since they cannot defend
it) is an ingenious compromise.
It is reported that amongst the Euahlayi tribe occur personal Totems
(or guardians, rare in Australia) called Yunbeai, possessed chiefly
by wizards. A man may eat his hereditary Totem, but not his Yunbeai;
which in this privilege seems to have supplanted the Totem. His spirit
is in the Yunbeai, and its spirit is in him.[532] They have, then, the
same soul; and, although this belief is not strictly Totemism, it is
probably derived from it. A clansman of the Yuin tribe (West Australia)
had as his Totem the Black Duck, which warned him against enemies;
and he related that once, whilst he slept, a Lace-Lizard man sent
his Totem, which went down his throat and almost ate his Black Duck
residing in his breast; so that he nearly died.[533] Were not his Black
Duck and his soul the same?
This hypothesis agrees very well with a belief that one’s body and
soul descend from the same ancestor as the Totem’s; and that at death
one goes to, or becomes, the Totem; and excuses the fiction that the
quickening of a pregnant woman may be caused by the entry into her of
the spirit of some totem-plant or animal.
On the Gold Coast and elsewhere in West Africa, a man has more than
one soul, it may be as many as four; and one of them dwells with some
animal in the bush: thence called his “bush-soul.” Sir James Frazer’s
first hypothesis concerning Totemism was that it may have been derived
from the notion of an external soul which may be deposited in anything
(as thus in an animal in the bush) for safety. He now thinks the
connexion of the “bush-soul” with Totemism uncertain.[534] If there
has been any connexion, may it not be that the “bush-soul” is derived
from Totemism, and that every Totem is a sort of “bush-soul”—that is,
it has a soul which is the same (at least, of the same kind) as the
clansman’s?
§ 7. TOTEMISM AND MAGIC
The identity of a man with his name, as usually assumed by savages,
whether his personal or his totemic name, is not itself a magical
belief, but an inevitable result of mental association at a low level
of intelligence: perhaps earlier than any notions that can properly be
called magical. The name of a man, always thought of along with his
other properties, seems to be as much one of them as a scar on his neck
or any peculiar trait of visage or length of limb. This must be as old
as naming. But such a complication of the name with other marks having
been formed, it becomes the ground of magic beliefs and practices.
To mention the name of a man or spirit insures his presence and
participation in any rite, either acting or suffering; or where writing
is known, his name on a piece of paper is as good as his nail-parings.
The use of the name is not a mere animistic summons (which might be
disobeyed), but an immediate instatement of the given individual. Such
magic may enter into totemic observances.
The descent of the clan from the Totem-animal, or of the animal from
a forefather of the clan, or of both from a _tertium quid_, involves
metamorphosis; and this, again, is not itself a magic idea; for real
metamorphoses are common in the life of birds, amphibia, insects, and
it would be unreasonable to expect savages to perceive clearly that
these are not parallel cases. There is a difference, however, between
transformations that may be observed, such as that of a chrysalis into
a butterfly, and those that have never been observed, but are merely
imagined and asserted. The latter are more mysterious, and mystery
is one character of magic. For example, the Witchety-Grub clan among
the Arunta have as their mate a bird, the chantunga, which they will
not eat because, they say, of old some full-grown witchety-grubs
were transformed into these birds.[535] This change has a magical
character, though no magical agency is assigned. But if any attempt
were made to explain how the great change took place, recourse might
be had to powers of magic. Even when agency is assigned, it is not
always magical. In the earliest Alcheringa the two Ungambikula (“out
of nothing”) saw in groups by the shore of the salt water a number of
inapertwa, rudimentary men, mere roundish masses, without organs or
means of feeding, and these they cut out into men with stone knives,
therefore not by magic.[536] But, again, a tribe on the Darling River
(Wathi-wathi) have traditions concerning Bookoomuri who lived long ago,
excelled in Magic, and transformed themselves into animals; and here
the magical power is asserted, though the manner of its operation is
indefinite. But the Bear clan of the Tshimshians (British Columbia)
explain their position by the story that once upon a time an Indian,
whilst hunting, met a bear, which took him to its home, where he stayed
two years. On returning to his village he looked like a bear; but,
having been rubbed with medical herbs, recovered human shape.[537]
And here the magic is as explicit as in any recipe for a were-wolf,
or that fallacious ointment with which Lucius achieved his memorable
transformation.
Nor, further, has the prohibition to slay, injure or eat the Totem
in the first place any magical significance; for it merely puts the
Totem in the position of a clansman. But the situation, being strange
and mysterious, acquires a magical atmosphere; and the enforcement of
the taboo by penalties is unmistakably magical. The Untmajera (North
Central Australia) have a legend of a Beetle-Grub man of former times
who ate beetle-grubs, and thereupon broke out in sores, wasted away and
died. Or one’s hair may turn grey; or, according to the Samoan belief
(not strictly totemistic), the forbidden food may grow inside one into
the whole animal or plant to the destruction of its host. Such beliefs,
resting on the analogy of poisons and their physiological consequences,
are magical imaginations: the taboo has the same character as a
conditional curse.
Similarly, the prohibition of marriage within the Totem-clan, if it
originated (as I have supposed) with the fusion of Totemism and Exogamy
in the customs of various early groups of men and women, is not based
on Magic; but the penalties for breaking the taboo are magical. Thus
amongst the Euahlayi and their neighbours men and women of the Iguana
clan cannot intermarry, though coming from different parts of the
country and without any traceable consanguinity; because, if they
did, their children, inasmuch as their ancestors on both sides were
the same animal, would “throw back” to the form or attributes of the
iguana.[538] A grotesque anticipation of scientific ideas.
But the most remarkable connexion between Totemism and Magic occurs
in those rites by which clansmen in several parts of the world, but
especially in Australia, believe themselves able to influence their
Totems: when these are edible, to multiply them; when noxious, to
drive away or destroy them; or, as with the wind and rain, to control
them for the general good. Spencer and Gillen[539] give astonishing
descriptions of the rites of multiplication (or Intichiuma), carefully
prepared and regulated, including disguisings of clansmen in the
likeness of the Totems, drawings of the Totems on the ground, dances,
incantations and ceremonies, sometimes representing traditional
history—by which the tribesmen discharge this function of theirs.
They rely chiefly on mimetic (exemplary) Magic which, by dramatising
some natural process, brings it into real operation. In identifying
themselves with the Totem, they exert their imaginations to the
utmost, and to this end may eat a little of the Totem, at other
times forbidden. This assumption that by eating a little of any
animal, plant or human being, you become one with it, or acquire its
qualities, or, further, that two men by eating together of the same
food become allied (which is in a manner materially true, but absurdly
interpreted), is another of those notions simpler than, and antecedent
to, Magic, which provide a base for magical operations.[540] These
solemnities last for months, and are carried out with conscientious
diligence and earnestness: the infatuation is profound and universal.
Here, as at most of the higher stages of culture, we find the most
intense emotions of which men are capable excited by participation in
communal imaginative exercises that have directly, in relation to their
expectations, absolutely no result. Indeed, pre-occupation with vain
employments tends to exclude all ideas that might be useful, that might
lead (_e. g._) to the increasing of food by the cultivation of plants
or domestication of animals. Sir James Frazer has pointed out that a
passage of the rites of the Grass-seed clan, in which grass-seeds are
scattered about upon the ground, might have led to cultivation: but the
mental state of the clan is unfavourable to cool observation. As for
animals, it is some excuse for the backwardness of Australian culture
that the Marsupialia do not comprise a single species that would
repay domestication. Indirectly and undesignedly these performances
have very useful consequences: they annually restore the unity of the
tribe assembled from all parts for the great occasion; promote mutual
good-will and a spirit of co-operation, for which they afford the chief
opportunity; maintain the social organisation and the tradition of
customs by increasing the influence of the Headmen, who have a leading
part in everything that happens, and on whose authority all order and
discipline depend; interrupt the monotony of savage life with variety
of interests; stimulate ingenuity, and fill up the time, that might
else be wasted in idleness or quarrelling, with artistic and dramatic
recreation.
Upon these rites for the multiplication and control of the Totems,
Sir James Frazer based his second hypothesis concerning the origin of
Totemism, namely, that it was a system of co-operation amongst sections
of a savage tribe for the magical supply of food, etc.: the Emu clan
multiplying emus, the Kangaroo clan kangaroos, the Witchety-Grub clan
witchety-grubs, and so forth.[541] But he afterwards reflected that
such a design was beyond the conception of savages. And, no doubt, as a
plan thought out and deliberately adopted as a whole, most ethnologists
would consider it above the capacity of Australian aborigines. But if
so—though not more difficult than the invention of the Classificatory
Marriage System—it shows what complex arrangements, simulating
design, may come into existence by the growth of custom; for the clans
certainly do co-operate in the magical supply of food.
Whatever may have been the origin of Totemism the institution seems to
have been utilised by some tribes in an ambitious attempt to control
all nature by grouping (on very obscure principles, if on any) various
classes of phenomena with the Totems, so that one clan or another is
responsible for everything. Short of this, it is plainly necessary to
control the wind, rain, hail and lightning. The control of an animal
Totem is not always benevolent toward the animals themselves. In the
Kakadu tribe it is the duty of the Mosquito clan to save the rest
from mosquitoes; they make imitation mosquitoes, dance and sing, and
imagine they are killing them.[542] In North America similar beliefs
and practices have been found both for encouraging and for discouraging
the Totem, but occasionally and irregularly. The Bird clan of the
Omahas, when birds threatened the crops, prevented their devastations
by chewing corn and spitting it about over the fields; when mosquitoes
were troublesome, the Wind people flapped blankets to raise a wind and
blow the pests away; when worms attacked the crops, the Reptile clan
(worms and reptiles are confused in primitive Zoology) countermined
their approaches by pounding up some of them with a little corn into
a soup and eating it.[543] The most remarkable American rites for
the increase of food—the Buffalo-dances and Corn-festivals of the
Mandans—were not totemic, but carried out by the whole tribe. The
buffalo hunting-dance to bring the herd within reach, was continued,
if necessary, for weeks—in fact until the animals came; so that the
Magic was always effectual.
§ 8. TOTEMISM AND ANIMISM
If the unity of clansmen with their Totem is very early conceived
of as consisting in having the same, or the same sort of, soul, it
is thenceforward essentially animistic. Yet this idea seems only
very slowly to have led to any sense of dependence on the Totem as a
spiritual power, or to any expectation that it would help or succour
the clansmen, or (consequently) to the making of any appeal to it,
except by magical coercion. Perhaps the earliest way in which the
Totem was supposed to aid its clansmen was by omens; as a Black Duck
man of the Yuin tribe (West Australia) thought that black ducks warned
him against his enemies; but this is more characteristic of guardian
spirits than of Clan-Totems. Occasionally in Australia we meet with
something like a prayer to a Totem. On the Tully River (Queensland)
we are told by Mr. W. E. Roth that before a man goes to sleep, or on
waking in the morning, he utters in a low voice the name of the animal
whose name he bears, or which belongs to his group; and that then, if
edible, he will be successful in hunting it or, if dangerous, it will
not hurt him without warning.
Professor Durkheim has an elaborate theory of the growth of divinities
from Totems in Australia, especially in the example of Bungil, the
Eagle-Hawk, a great phratry name-animal in several tribes.[544] He
is a persuasive writer, but perverse and ingenious. Bungil receives
neither prayer nor sacrifice (these, indeed, in the author’s view
are not necessary to religion), and there is nothing to show that he
differs from the other glorified Headmen who are found in Australia.
The most plausible of these superior beings is Byamee of the Euahlayi,
who is not a Totem, but the source of Totems, which are derived from
different parts of his body. At funerals prayers are addressed to him
for the souls of the dead; and, again, at the close of the Boorah
(initiation rites) for long life, inasmuch as the tribesmen have kept
his law.[545] We are told that the nearest mission-station is a hundred
miles off, and recently established; but on reading further that only
those who have been initiated can go to Byamee’s sky-camp, and that
gross sinners are punished in the next life in Eleanbah Wundah, a place
dark but for fires,[546] we cannot help reflecting that missionaries
are not the only channels of sound doctrine.
The most authentic example of the rise of a Totem to something like
divine rank is the Wollunqua, the great snake of the Warramunga,
which differs from other Totems in being not a real animal but a
mythological monster. It is not approached with prayer or sacrifice;
but is the object of rites in part propitiatory, in part coercive, and
is certainly regarded with superstitious awe much as a demon might
be. To please the Wollunqua, the clan build a long mound and draw its
representation upon it; which, however, afterwards meets with “savage
destruction.” On approaching Thapanerlu, the sacred pool where it
lives, they whispered to it “to remain quiet and do them no harm.”[547]
On the whole, funeral ceremonies, in Australia, to provide the dead
with necessaries, food, utensils, warmth—even precautions against
ghosts—come nearer to religious ideas than anything connected with
Totemism. Among the Jupagalk (Victoria) a person when in great pain
would call on some dead friend to come and help him, to visit him in a
dream and teach a song against the evil magic that hurt him.[548]
In Yam Island (Torres Straits) there is a cult of two brothers, Maiou
and Sigai, who are said to have come from Australia. They have shrines
within a fence; women and uninitiated youths are not permitted to
enter, and do not know that Maiou is the crocodile (Kodal), and Sigai
the hammer-headed shark (Kursi); for they are always addressed and
spoken of by their names as heroes, and not by their animal or Totem
names. The shrines contain effigies made of turtle-shell representing
the animals; and under each effigy is a stone in which the life or
spirit of the Totem-hero resides. The natives, in the north-west
monsoon, danced and sang before them for fine weather; and also on
going to war, praying: “O Totem Sigai and Totem Maiou, both of you
close the eyes of these men so that they cannot see us.”[549] This
is indisputably Religion; it is not, however, pure Totemism, but
apparently a fusion of hero-worship with the Totemism of the heroes.
Another hero of more recent date, Quoiam, is worshipped in the
neighbouring island of Mabuaig. He came from North Queensland; and
his house and cairn are still shown on a hill-top. His Totem was the
shovel-nosed skate, but he has undergone no fusion with that animal. We
may be inclined to infer that the hero can stand alone, whilst a Totem
needs the alliance of a hero to anthropomorphise it.
Such an inference is, on the whole, confirmed by the state of religion
in Fiji. There, amongst the coastal tribes, Totemism is decadent and
irregular; though even on the coast of Viti Levu there are deities
with animal attributes, and especially with the power of changing into
animals; and the animal connected with a god must not be eaten by
people of the district where he is worshipped.[550] In the mountainous
interior Totemism still flourishes, and animal-gods are worshipped
which have been assumed to have originated in Totems. Dr. Rivers tells
us[551] that he formerly assumed this, but is inclined to revise his
opinion. The Fijian Snake-god Ndengei was, according to tradition, a
man who came to the island from elsewhere; probably he made a great
impression and was apotheosised. His character as a Snake-god may be
derived from the snake’s having been his Totem. Probably god-like
beings in Fiji were in many cases heroes, but a close relation with
their Totem endued them with something of the animal nature. “The
evolution would not be simply from Totem to god, but from hero and
Totem together to god.”
Gods present in animals, sometimes in plants, were acknowledged in
Samoa, Tahiti, Hawaii, Tonga; and, in fact, Polynesia is the region
where, if anywhere, Totems contribute largely to the divine population.
Rivers will not deny (_loc. cit._) that direct evolution of gods
from Totems may have taken place; but he points out that in Samoa,
for example, the Octopus-god (Ole Fe’e) was, according to tradition,
brought to the island by a Fijian chief. Was then the mollusc or the
chief the root from which the god grew up? In Savaii there were gods
incarnate in men: one in an actual man who was a cannibal propitiated
with human flesh; another, invisible to the people, though seen by
strangers as a handsome young man wearing a girdle of leaves, was
called the King of Fiji (Tuifiti). Other gods described by Turner[552]
are Ole alii Fiti (chief of Fiji), who was manifest in an eel; and
Tinalii (King of chiefs), who was associated with the sea-eel, octopus,
mullet, and the ends of banana leaves. Fusion seems to have been common.
It must not, of course, be assumed that all animal gods are Totems.
Among the ways in which animal gods may have arisen we cannot deny
some place to Spencer’s hypothesis, that heroes have sometimes been
worshipped as animals because they bore animal names; and, after their
death, the eponymous animals, ever present to men’s eyes, superseded
the heroes, and were connected with and transformed their legends.
It is also conceivable that a hero has been worshipped in the form
of an animal or plant, because he had announced that, after death,
he would be in such an animal or plant; for at Ulawa (Solomon Isles)
bananas were _buto_, things that might not be eaten, approached or
beheld (according to Dr. Coddrington[553]), because an influential man
had prohibited the eating of them, saying that, after death, he would
be in the banana; and with so much influence he might, in favourable
circumstances, have become a Banana-god. And, again, in Professor
Westermarck’s opinion, “the common prevalence of animal worship is,
no doubt, due to the mysteriousness of the animal world; the most
uncanny of all creatures, the serpent, is also the one most generally
worshipped.”[554]
But these considerations strengthen the probability that a Totem may
sometimes become a god; having the general respect of the clan to
begin with. Some Totems having been deified with the assistance of
heroes, others may perhaps be elevated by the force of analogy; or,
once the conception of a spiritual being has been reached—chiefly (as
we suppose) by reflection on dreams—and animals and even inanimate
things have been thought to have spiritual doubles, if then the Totem
is conceived to have a spirit, and even the same as the clansman’s
soul, if it is appealed to for assistance, if it sends omens, listens
to prayer and accepts sacrifice, what is it but a god?
In North America the Totem seems nowhere to have been worshipped; and
any tendency that may have existed to propitiate it was diverted by
the superior fascination of the personal guardian-genius, to which
sometimes costly sacrifices were made and even self-mutilations;
as among the Mandans, who often cut off a finger to secure its
favour.[555] On the other hand, a class of spirits was recognised
in the “elder brother” of each species of animal (or of the most
interesting species—bear, deer, snake, etc.—all of the totemic
class), a being (in the words of an early missionary, 1634) “who is
as it were the principle and origin of all the individuals,” and
“marvellously great and powerful”:[556] it watches over the species and
avenges its wrongs. In North-West America and throughout Siberia the
Bear and the Raven are objects of religious reverence; not, indeed, as
clan-totems, but for all men. Among the Gulf nations the Yuchis are
Totemists, and a youth at his initiation is put under the care of his
clan-totem, instead of a personal guardian-genius as among the northern
tribes; he looks for protection, however, not to the living animals of
the Totem species, but to superior beings, like the “elder brothers”
of the species.[557] Similar to these must be the Beast-gods of the
Zuni Indians, to whom they offer a portion of all game, praying that
they will intercede for them with the Sun-Father. In South America,
too, the Patagonians and Araucanians teach that each species of animal
has a guardian spirit, who lives in a cave, and that the Indians
themselves at death go to live with him. We can hardly doubt that in
all these cases, the spirit-animals are in some way connected with
totemic beliefs: if not gods, they are at least divine beings, and they
exemplify a noble sort of mysticism that is natural to the Amerind
imagination.[558]
Africa is the principal home of Zoolatry. The religion of the Bantu
nations of South Africa is, indeed, ancestor-worship; and their
serpent-cult seems to be an outgrowth of ancestor-worship (for they
think that their dead return as serpents of various species according
to rank); unless, indeed, it has been diverted to such a subordinate
place from some more ancient superstition. In West Africa there are
many Beast-gods, especially the leopard, hyena, crocodile and python.
They do not, however, give much indication of totemic origin; and Sir
James Frazer observes that, as the hereditary worship of animals in
certain districts (as of the hyena at Accra) was not totemic, nor need
similar practices have been so elsewhere.[559] Hence that the Egyptians
worshipped certain animals, and that in the district of any animal’s
worship it was not killed or eaten, cannot prove that the worship
was totemic, unless it be shown that Totemism is the only road to
Zoolatry; for, if there are other ways, any animal that becomes divine
will, naturally, not be killed or eaten. On the other hand, that the
Egyptians were not Exogamists does not prove they were not Totemists;
since some known Totemists are not Exogamists. The natural impression
of a student who merely comes amongst other things to Egyptian Religion
is that Totemism was one of its sources; but it is a subject on which,
more strictly than on most, only a few specialists can form a judgment.
On the whole, the contribution of Totemism to religion seems to
have been greatly exaggerated. Compared with the influence of dead
heroes and ancestors, or with the personification of the greater
manifestations of nature—Sky, Sun, Thunder—it has been ineffective,
falling short of the production of high gods; or if, as in Polynesia,
it seems sometimes to have come near to that achievement, it may be
suspected that its success owed much to an alliance with hero-worship.
FOOTNOTES:
[510] _Totemism and Exogamy_, I. p. 3. The definition occurs in a
reprint of an earlier essay. A later definition (IV. p. 3) runs:
“Totemism is an intimate relation which is supposed to exist between
a group of kindred people on the one side and a species of natural
or artificial objects on the other side, which objects are called
the totems of the human group.” The relation appears to be one of
friendship and kinship, on a footing of equality, not religious in
Australia. I have, in this chapter, drawn freely upon the great mass of
facts and speculations collected in _Totemism and Exogamy_; believing
that in that work the author not only intended to present the evidence
for his own conclusions, but had also the benevolent purpose of
assisting the labours of those who might come after him. A heavy debt
of gratitude is due; which, indeed, causes some embarrassment if ever
one feels obliged to differ from him in opinion.
[511] _Totemism and Exogamy_, I. p. 4; cf. IV. pp. 3, 4. Perhaps the
author no longer approves of the word “reverenced.” Totem and clan are
rather on a footing of equality.
[512] _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, App. B.
[513] The animals are: Human 2, other Mammalia 31, Birds 46, Reptiles
51, Amphibia 1, Fishes 8, Insects 24, Mollusca 1.
[514] _Totemism and Exogamy_, II. p. 535.
[515] _Totemism and Exogamy_, III. pp. 90-100.
[516] Hose and McDougall, _Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, II. pp. 96-110.
[517] _Contributions to the Science of Mythology_, I. p. 201.
[518] _Introduction to the History of Religion_, p. 101.
[519] _Secret of the Totem_ and _Social Origins_.
[520] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p.
330.
[521] _Native Tribes of Northern Territory of Australia_, p. 263.
[522] _Totemism and Exogamy_, IV. pp. 57-63.
[523] _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, 1909, p. 173.
[524] _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, 1909, p. 175.
[525] In the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain, a man applies the name
of “mother” to his real mother and also to his maternal aunts, who
accept the relationship and may assert: “We all three of us bore him”
(_Totemism and Exogamy_, I. p. 305 note). Is this what they believe, or
what (following their system of class-nomenclature) they are accustomed
to say?
[526] Page 125.
[527] See above, ch. ii. § 3.
[528] It is reasonable to suppose that a group named other groups
to distinguish those around them, before needing to name itself. It
follows that probably each group sometimes bore a different name when
spoken of by each of several neighbours. How amidst such confusion
could single names be fixed? Perhaps because the group designated
adopted one of them; or by the elimination of the other names through
many causes in course of time, in generations, in hundreds of years.
The march of progress was leisurely in those days.
[529] Chs. iv., v., vi.
[530] Chs. xiv., xv., _Prohibition of Marriage between Kindred_.
[531] Ch. xl., _Marriage_.
[532] Langloh Parker, _The Euahlayi Tribe_, p. 21.
[533] _Totemism and Exogamy_, I. p. 489.
[534] _Ibid._, IV. p. 54.
[535] _Totemism and Exogamy_, I. p. 254.
[536] _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 388.
[537] _Totemism and Exogamy_, III. p. 13.
[538] Langloh Parker, _The Euahlayi_, p. 22.
[539] _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, ch. vi.; _Northern Tribes
of Central Australia_, ch. ix.
[540] There is, however, another possible reason for the eating by the
clan or by its Headman of some portion of the food which they profess
to supply to the rest of the tribe—namely, that it expresses a prior
claim to some sort of proprietorship, which is then waived.
[541] _Totemism and Exogamy_, IV. pp. 55-7.
[542] Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes North. Ter. Aust._, p. 324.
[543] _Totemism and Exogamy_, III. pp. 104-5.
[544] _The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life_, II. ch. ix.
[545] Langloh Parker, _The Euahlayi Tribe_, pp. 458, 478, etc. In
Eleanbah Wundah, they hold their right hands pressed against their
sides, which A. Lang thought a remarkable image. It is, W. E. Roth
tells us, gesture-language for sickness. (_Ethnological Studies in
North-West Central Queensland_, p. 90.)
[546] _The Euahlayi_, pp. 4 to 8, and 78.
[547] _North. Ts. of C. Aust._, p. 253.
[548] Howitt, _Northern Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 435.
[549] Haddon, _Reports of the Expedition to Torres Straits_, V. pp. 37,
38.
[550] W. H. R. Rivers, _J. A. I._, 1909, p. 158.
[551] _J. A. I._, 1909, p. 163.
[552] _Samoa_, chs. iv., v.; especially pp. 28, 48, 62-3, 70, 75. Fiji
had in some way deeply impressed the Samoan imagination.
[553] _The Melanesians_, p. 31.
[554] _Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_, II. p. 590.
[555] _Totemism and Exogamy_, III.
[556] Quoted by Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, II. p. 244.
[557] _Totemism and Exogamy_, III. p. 311.
[558] On species-gods see Tylor’s _Primitive Culture_, II. pp. 242-6.
[559] _Totemism and Exogamy_, II. p. 574.