THE ORIGIN OF TOTEM NAMES AND BELIEFS
Up to this point, we have treated of totems just as we find them in
savage practice. We have seen that totem names are the titles of
groups of kindred, real or imagined; they are derived from animals,
plants, and other natural objects; they appear among tribes who
reckon descent either on the sword or spindle side, and the totem
name of each group is usually (but not in the case of the Arunta)
one mark of the exogamous limit. None may marry a person of the same
totem name. But, in company with this prohibition, is found a body of
myths, superstitions, rites, magical practices, and artistic uses of
the totem.[1] We have shown (Chapter II.) that we cannot move a step
without a clear and consistent hypothesis of the origins of Totemism.
This we now try to produce.
SACRED ANIMALS IN SAVAGE SOCIETY
Savages, both in their groups of kin, in their magical societies, or
clubs, and privately, as individuals, are apt to regard certain beasts,
plants, and so on, as the guardians of the group, of the society,
and of the private person. To these animal guardians, whether of the
individual, the society, or the group of kin, they show a certain
amount of reverence and respect. That reverence naturally takes much
the same forms--the inevitable forms--as of not killing or eating the
animal, occasionally praying to it, or of burying dead representatives
of the species, as may happen. But I am unaware that the savage ever
calls his _personal_ selected animal or plant, or the guardian animal
of his magical _society_ (except among the Arunta, where the totem
groups are evolving into magical clubs), by the same term as he applies
to the hereditary guardian of his group of kindred; his totem, as I
use the word. If I am right, this distinction has been overlooked, or
thought insignificant, by some modern inquirers. Major. Powell, the
Director of the Ethnological Bureau at Washington, appears to apply,
the word totem both to the chosen animal friend of the individual,
and to that of the magical society in America, which includes men of
various group totems.[2] He also applies it to the totem of the kin.
Mr. Frazer, too, writes of (1) The Clan Totem, (2) The Sex Totem
(in Australia), (3) ‘The Individual Totem, belonging to a single
individual, and not passing to his descendants,’ and even indicates
that one savage may have five totems.[3] This third rule as to the
non-hereditable character of ‘the individual totem’ has, since Mr.
Frazer wrote in 1887, been found to admit of more exceptions than we
then knew. In a few cases and places, the animal selected by, or for,
the private individual, is found to descend to his or her children.
In my opinion it is better, for the present at least, to speak of
such protective animals of _individuals_, by the names which their
savage _protégés_ give to them in each case: _nyarongs_ (Sarawak)
‘bush-souls,’ (Calabar) _naguals_, (Central America) _manitus_ (?) as
among the Algonquins, _Yunbeai_ in some Australian dialects, and so
forth.[4] I myself here use ‘totem’ only of the object which lends its
name, hereditarily, to a group of kin.
PROPOSED RESTRICTION OF THE USE OF THE WORD ‘TOTEM’
This restriction I make, not for the purpose of simplifying the problem
of totemism by disregarding ‘the individual totem,’ ‘the sex totem,’
and so on, but because I understand that savages everywhere use one
word for their hereditary kin totem, and other words for the plant or
animal protectors of individuals, of magical societies, and so forth.
The true totem is a plant or animal or other thing, the hereditary
friend and ally--of the kin--but all plant or animal allies of
individuals or of magical societies are not totems. Though the attitude
of a private person to his _nagual_, or of a magical society to its
protective animal, may often closely resemble the attitude of the group
to its hereditary totem, still, the origin of this attitude of respect
may be different in each case.
This is obvious, for the individual or society deliberately adopts an
animal protector and friend, usually suggested in a dream, after a
fast, whereas we can scarcely conceive that the totem was deliberately
adopted by the first members of the first totem groups. Savages look
on animals as personalities like themselves, but more powerful, gifted
with more wakan, or _mana_, or cosmic _rapport_: each man, therefore,
and each organised magical society, looks out for, and, for some reason
of dream or divination, adopts, a special animal friend. But it is
hard to believe that the members of a primeval human group of unknown
antiquity, consciously and deliberately made a compact to adopt, and
for ever be faithful to--this or that plant, animal, element, or the
like--to be inherited in the female line. For, on this plan, the group,
say Wolves, instantly loses the totem it has adopted.
We cannot prove that it was not so, that a primitive group of
rudimentary human beings did not make a covenant with Bear, or Wolf,
as Israel did with Jehovah, and as an individual savage does with his
_nyarong_, or _nagual_, or manitu. This covenant, if made and kept by
each group, would be the Origin of Totemism. But, with female descent,
the covenant could not be kept. I am not certain that this theory,
involving joint and deliberate selection and retention of a totem, by
a primeval human group, has ever been maintained, unless it be by Mr.
Jevons. ‘The primary object of a totem alliance between a human kin and
an animal kind is to obtain a supernatural ally against supernatural
foes.’[5] The term ‘supernatural’ seems here out of place--both the
animal kind and the human kin being natural; and one has a difficulty
in conceiving that very early groups of kin would make, and would
adhere to, such alliances. Indeed, how could they adhere to their
totems, when these descended through women of alien totem groups? But
there seems to be nothing otherwise impossible or self-contradictory in
this theory; nor can it be disproved, for lack of evidence. Only such
theories as are self-contradictory, or inconsistent with the known and
admitted facts of the case, are capable of absolute disproof.
It may, of course, be objected here that, though totems, in actual
savage society, descend sometimes in the female line, still, descent
in the male line may be the original rule; and that thus a group,
like an individual, could seek, make a covenant with, and cleave to
a grub, or frog, or lizard, as a supernatural ally. But, for reasons
already indicated, in an earlier part of this work, I conceive that,
originally, totems descended in the female line only. One reason for
this opinion is that, as soon as descent of the totem comes by the
male line, a distinct step in the upward movement towards civilisation
and a settled life is made. It is not very probable that the backward
step, from reckoning by male lineage to descent in the female line,
has often been taken. On the other hand, tribes which now inherit the
totem in the male line, exhibit in their institutions many survivals of
female descent. An instance is that of the Mandans, as recorded by Mr.
Dorsey.[6] Among the Melanesians, where female descent still exists,
there is at work the most obvious tendency towards descent through
males, as Dr. Codrington proves in an excellent work on that people.
Dr. Durkheim, too, has pointed out the traces of uterine descent among
the Arunta, who now reckon in the male line.[7] On the other hand,
where we find descent in the male line, I am not aware that we discover
signs of movement in the opposite direction. In this opinion that, as
a general rule, descent was reckoned in the female, not the male line,
originally, I have the support of Mr. E. B. Tylor.[8] For these reasons
the hypothesis of the selection of and covenant with a ‘supernatural
ally,’ plant or animal, by the deliberate joint action of an early
group, at a given moment, involving staunch adherence to the original
resolution, rather strains belief; and a suggestion perhaps more
plausible will be offered later.
THE WORD ‘TOTEM’
As to the precise original meaning and form of the word usually written
‘totem’--whether it should be ‘totam,’ or ‘toodaim,’ or ‘dodaim,’ or
‘ododam,’ or ‘ote,’ philologists may dispute.[9] They may question
whether the word means ‘mark,’ or ‘family,’ or ‘tribe,’ or clay for
painting the family mark.[10] When we here use the word ‘totem’ we
mean, at all events, the object which gives its name to a group of
savage kindred, who may not marry within this hereditary name. In place
of ‘totem’ we might use the equivalent murdu of the Dieri, or gaura of
the Kunundaburi.[11]
THE TOTEM ‘CULT’
The ‘cult,’ if it deserves to be called a ‘cult,’ of the totem, among
savages, is not confined to abstention from marriage within the name.
Each kin usually abstains from killing, eating, or in any way using
its totem (except in occasional ceremonies, religious or magical),
is apt to claim i descent from or kindred with it, or alternations
of metamorphosis into or out of it, and sometimes uses its effigy on
memorial pillars, on posts carved with a kind of genealogical tree, or
tattoos or paints or scarifies it on the skin--in different cases and
places.
To what extent the blood-feud is taken up by all members of the slain
man’s totem, I am not fully aware: it varies in different regions. The
eating or slaying of the totem, by a person of the totem name, is in
places believed to be punished by disease or death, a point which the
late Mr. J. J. Atkinson observed among the natives of New Caledonia
(MS. _penes me_). Mr. Atkinson happened to be conversing with some
natives on questions of anthropology, when his servant brought in a
lizard which he had killed. On this one of the natives exhibited great
distress, saying, ‘Why have you killed my father? we were talking of my
father, and he came to us’ The son (his name was Jericha) then wrapped
the dead lizard up in leaves, and reverently laid the body in the bush.
This was not a case like that of the Zulu _Idhlozi_, the serpents
that haunt houses, and are believed to be the vehicles of the souls
of dead kinsfolk. The other natives present had for their ‘father,’
one, a mouse, the other a pigeon, and so on. If any one ate his animal
‘father,’ sores broke out on him, and Mr. Atkinson was shown a woman
thus afflicted, for having eaten her ‘father.’ But I do not find, in
his papers, that a man with a mouse for father might not marry a woman
of the mouse set, nor have I elsewhere been able to ascertain what is
New-Caledonian practice on this point.[12] When Mr. Atkinson made
these observations (1874), he had only heard of totems in the novels of
Cooper and other romancers.
‘TOTEM GODS’
This example is here cited because, as far as I am aware, no other
anthropologist has observed this amount of Totemism in New Caledonia.
Students are divided into those who have a bias in favour of finding
totemism everywhere; and those who aver, with unconcealed delight,
that in this or the other place there are no totems. Such negative
statements must always be received with caution. An European may live
long among savages before he really knows them; and, without possessing
totemism in full measure, many races retain obvious fragments of the
institution.
Mr. Tylor has censured the use of the terms ‘totems’ and ‘totem clans’
with respect to the Fijians and Samoans, where certain animals, not
to be eaten, are believed to be vehicles or shrines of certain gods.
It is a very probable conjecture (so probable, I think, as almost to
amount to a certainty), that the creatures which are now the shrines
of Fijian or Samoan gods of the family, or of higher gods, were once
totems in an earlier stage of Samoan and Fijian society and belief. As
I have said elsewhere, ‘in totemistic countries the totem is respected
himself; in Samoa the animal is worshipful because a god abides within
him. This appears to be a theory by which the reflective Samoans have
explained to themselves what was once pure Totemism.’[13] But I must
share in Mr. Tylor’s protest against using the name of ‘totem’ for a
plant or animal which is regarded as the shrine of a god. Such thorough
totemists as some of the North American Indians, or the Australians, do
not explain their totems as the shrines of gods, for they have no such
gods to serve as explanations. That myth appears to be the Samoan or
Fijian way of accounting for the existence of worshipful and friendly
plants and animals.
Thus, at all events, and unluckily, the phrase ‘the totem-god’ is
introduced into our speculations, and the cult of the ‘totem-god’ is
confused with the much more limited respect paid by savages to actual
totems. However attractive the theory of ‘the totem-god’ may be, we
cannot speak of ‘totems’ where a god incarnate in a plant or animal is
concerned. Such a deity may be a modified survival of Totemism, but a
totem he is not. Moreover, it is hardly safe to say that, in the Samoan
case, the god is ‘developed from a totem;’ we only know that the god
has got into suspiciously totemistic society. On the whole, we cannot
be too cautious in speaking of totems and Totemism: and we must be
specially careful not to exaggerate the more or less religious respect
with which totems are, in many cases, regarded. The Australians, as
far as they have the idea of a creative being, Baiame, Nooreli, and so
forth, do not regard their totems as shrines or incarnations of him.
That appears to be the speculation of peoples who, probably by way of
animism, and ancestor-worship, are already in the stage of polytheism.
Totems, in their earliest known stage, have very little to do with
religion, and probably, in origin, had nothing really religious about
them.
SAVAGE SPECULATIONS AS TO THE ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM
Peoples who are still in the totemistic stage, as we have seen, know
nothing about the beginnings of the institution. All that they tell
the civilised inquirers is no more than the myth handed down by their
own tradition. Thus the Dieri or Dieyrie, in Australia, say that the
totems were appointed by the ancestors, for the purpose of regulating
marriages, after consultation with Mura Mura, or with ‘the’ Muramura.
The Woeworung, according to Mr. Howitt, have a similar legend.[14]
It is not necessary here to ask whether Mura Mura is ‘the Supreme
Being’ (Gason, Howitt), or ‘ancestral spirits’ (Fison).[15] The most
common savage myth is of the Darwinian variety, each totem kin is
descended from, or evolved out of, the plant or animal type which
supplies its totem. Again, as in fairy tales, a woman gave birth to
animals, whence the totem kins derive their descent. In North-West
America, totems are often accounted for by myths of ancestral heroes.
‘The Tlingit’ (Thlinket) ‘hold that souls of ancestors are reborn in
children, that a man will be reborn as a man, a wolf as a wolf, a raven
as a raven.’ Nevertheless, the totems are regarded as ‘relatives and
protectors,’ and it is explained that, in the past, a human ancestor
had an adventure with this or that animal, whence he assumed his totem
armorial bearings.[16] In precisely the same way a myth, a very late
myth, was invented, about the adventure of a Stewart with a lion, to
account for the Lyon of the Stewarts.[17] The Haidas and Thlinkets,
believing as they do that human souls are reborn human, cannot hold
that a bestial soul animates a man, say, of the Raven totem.
The Arunta, on the other hand, suppose that the souls of animals
which evolved into human beings, are reincarnated in each child born
to the tribe. ‘Two clans of Western Australia, who are named after a
small opossum and a little fish, think that they are so called because
they used to live chiefly on these creatures.’[18] This myth has some
support in modern opinion: the kins, it is argued, received their
totem names from the animals and plants which mainly formed their
food supply; though now their totems are seldom eaten by them. These
legends, and others, are clearly ætiological myths, like the Samoan
hypothesis that gods are incarnate in the totems. The myths merely try
to explain the original connection between men and totems, and are
constructed on the lines of savage ideas about the relations of all
things in the universe, all alike being personal, and rational, and
capable of interbreeding, and of shape-shifting. Certain Kalamantans
of Sarawak will not eat a species of deer, because ‘an ancestor became
a deer of this kind.’[19] All such fables, of course, are valueless as
history; and, in the savage state of the intellect, such myths were
inevitable.
MODERN THEORIES
Mr. McLennan himself at first had a theory, which, as far as I heard
him speak of it, was more or less akin to my own. But he abandoned
it, says his brother, Mr. Daniel McLennan, for reasons that to him
appeared conclusive. I ought to mention that Mr. A. H. Keane informed
me, several years ago, that he had independently evolved a theory akin
to mine, of which, as it then stood, I had published some hint. (For a
statement of Mr. Keane’s theory see our Preface.) In 1884[20] I wrote,
‘People united by contiguity, and by the blind sentiment of kinship
not yet brought into explicit consciousness, might mark themselves by
a badge, and might thence derive a name, and, later, might invent a
myth of their descent from the object which the badge represented.’ But
why should such people mark themselves by a badge, and why, if they
did, should the mark be, not a decorative or symbolic pattern, but the
representation of a plant or animal? These questions I cannot answer,
and my present guess is not identical with that of 1884.
Meanwhile let us keep one point steadily before our minds. Totemism,
at a first glance, seems a perfectly crazy and irrational set of
beliefs, and we might think, with Dr. Johnson, that there is no use in
looking for reason among the freaks of irrational people. But man is
never irrational. His reason for doing this, or believing that, may
seem a bad reason to us, but a reason he always had for his creeds
and conduct, and he had a reason for his totem belief, a reason in
congruity with his limited knowledge of facts, and with his theory
of the universe. For all things he wanted an explanation. Now what
he wanted a reason for, in Totemism, was the nature and origin of
the connection between his own and the neighbouring groups, and the
plant or animal names which they bore. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen
write, ‘what gave rise, in the first instance, to the association of
particular men with particular animals and plants, it is impossible
to say.’ But it is not impossible to guess, with more or less of
probability. The connection once established, savages guessed at
its origin: their guesses, as always, were myths, and were of every
conceivable kind. The myth of descent from or kinship with the animal
or plant, the Darwinian myth, does not stand alone. Every sort of myth
was fashioned, was believed, and influenced conduct. Our business is to
form our own guess as to the original connection between men and their
totems: a guess which shall be consistent with human nature.
MR. MAX MÜLLER’S THEORY
Many such guesses by civilised philosophers exist. We need not dwell
long on that of Mr. Max Müller, akin, as it is, to my own early
conjecture, ‘a totem is a clan mark, then a clan name, then the name of
the ancestor of the clan, and lastly the name of something worshipped
by the clan.’[21] We need not dwell on this, because the kind of
‘clan mark’ on a pillar outside of the quarters of the clan, in a
village, is peculiar to North America, and to people dwelling in fixed
settlements. Among the nomadic Australians, we have totemism without
the settlements, without the totem pillar, without the ‘clan mark,’ on
the pillar, which, thus, cannot be the first step in Totemism. Again,
the ‘clan name,’ or group name, must be earlier than the ‘clan mark,’
which merely expresses it, just as my name is prior to my visiting
card, or as the name of an inn, ‘The Red Lion,’ is prior to the sign
representing that animal. Obviously we have to ask first, _whence comes
the clan name, or group name?_
THE THEORY OF MR. HERBERT SPENCER
In a passage on animal-worship, Mr. Herbert Spencer (unless I
misconceive him) advances a theory of the origin of Totemism. True, he
does not here speak of totems, but he suggests an hypothesis to explain
why certain stocks claim descent from animals, and why these animals
are treated by them with more or less of religious regard. Actual men,
in savagery, are often called by ‘animal nicknames,’ and we cannot be
surprised if the savage ... gets the idea that an ancestor named ‘the
tiger’ was an actual tiger ... Inevitably, then, he grows up believing
that his father descended from a tiger--thinking of himself as one of
the tiger stock.[22]
It were superfluous to dwell on this theory. Totem names are group
names; and, as they occur where group names are derived from the
mother, they cannot have originated in the animal nicknames of
individual dead grandfathers. The names of the dead are usually tabued
and forgotten; but that is of no great moment. The point is that such
group names are derived through mothers, in the first instance, not
through male founders of families.[23]
No theory which starts from an individual male ancestor, and his name
bequeathed to his descendants, can be correct. That Mr. Spencer’s does
start in this way may be inferred from the following text: ‘commonly
the names of the clans which are forbidden to intermarry, such as Wolf,
Bear, Eagle, Whale, &c., are names given to men, implying, as I have
before contended (170-173), descent from distinguished male ancestors
bearing those names--descent which, notwithstanding the system of
female kinship, was remembered when there was pride in the connection.’
A brief-lived joy in the name of which the male ancestor’s descendants
were proud, left them, in the second generation, under exogamy and
female kin. Thus my father was nicknamed ‘Tiger.’ Proud of the title,
I call myself Tiger. But I must marry a woman who is Not-Tiger, and my
offspring are Not-Tigers. My honour hath departed!
MR. FRAZER’S THEORIES
The hypotheses of Mr. J. G. Frazer are purely provisional. He starts
from the idea, so common in _Märchen_, of the person whose ‘soul,’
‘life,’ or ‘strength’ is secretly hidden in an animal, plant, or other
object. The owner of the soul wraps the ‘soul-box’ up in a mystery,
it is the central secret of his existence, for he may be slain by
any one who can discover and destroy his ‘soul-box.’ Next Mr. Frazer
offers many cases of this actual belief and practice among savage and
barbarous peoples; and, as a freak or survival, the idea is found even
among the civilised. We meet the superstition in the Melanesian group
of islands (where Totemism is all but extinct), and perhaps among
the Zulus, with their serpent Idhlozi, whose life is associated with
their own. Mr. Atkinson’s New-Caledonians, however, did not think
that death inflicted on their animal ‘fathers’ involved danger to
themselves, though it distressed them, as an outrage to sentiment.
Then we have the ‘bush-souls’ (one soul out of four in the possession
of each individual), among the natives of Calabar. These souls, Miss
Kingsley wrote, are never in plants, but always in _wild_ beasts, and
are recognisable only by second-sighted men. The ‘bush-soul’ of a man
is often that of his sons: the daughters often inherit the mother’s
‘bush-soul:’ or children of both sexes may take the bush-soul of either
father or mother. The natives will not injure their bush-soul beasts.
Nothing is known as to prohibition of marriage between persons of the
same bush-soul. Here we have really something akin to the totem, the
bush-souls being hereditary, at least for one generation. But this is
among a house-dwelling, agricultural people, far above the state of
real savagery: not among a ‘primitive’ people.
The Zapotecs of Central America, again, choose, by a method of
divination, ‘a _tona_ or second self,’ an animal, for each child, at
its birth. It is, by the nature of the case, not hereditable. The
_nagual_, usually a beast, of each Indian of Guatemala is well known;
and is discovered, on the monition of a dream, by each individual.
Therefore it cannot be hereditable. The sexes, in Australia, have each
a friendly and protecting species of animal; say a Bat for all men,
a Nightjar for all women: indeed, in Australia, all the elements of
nature have their place in the cosmic tribe. To injure the animal of
either sex, is to injure one of the sex. There is no secret about the
matter.
Mr. Frazer then argues, ‘the explanation which holds good of the one’
(say ‘the sex totem,’ or ‘personal totem’), ‘ought equally to hold good
of the other’ (the group totem). ‘Therefore, the reason why a tribe’
(I venture to prefer ‘group,’ or ‘kin,’ as there are many totems in
each ‘tribe’) ‘revere a particular species of animals or plants ... and
call themselves after it, would seem to be a belief that the life of
each individual of the tribe is bound up with some one plant or animal
of the species, and that his or her death would be the consequence of
killing that particular animal or destroying that particular plant.’
Mr. Frazer thinks that ‘this explanation squares well’ with Sir George
Grey’s description of a _Kobong_ or totem in Western Australia. There,
a native gives his totem ‘a fair show’ before killing it, always
affording it a chance of escape, and never killing it in its sleep.
He only does not shoot his kindred animal _sitting_, and his plant
he only spares ‘in certain circumstances, and at a particular period
of the year.’ Mr. Frazer writes that as the man does not know which
individual of the species of plant or animal ‘is specially dear to him,
he is obliged to spare them all, for fear of injuring the dear one.’
But the man, it seems from Grey’s account, does not ‘spare’ any of
them; he kills or plucks them, ‘reluctantly,’ and in a sportsmanlike
manner, ‘never without affording them a chance of escape.’ In a case of
Sir George Grey’s, the killing of a crow hastened the death of a man of
the Crow totem, who had been ailing for some days. But the Australians
do not think that to kill a man’s totem is to kill the man. Somebody’s
totem is killed whenever any animal is slain. Mr. Frazer now finds that
the Battas, for example, ‘do not in set terms affirm their external
soul to be in their totems,’ and I am not aware that any totemists do
make this assertion. They freely offer all other sorts of mythical
explanations as to what their totems originally were, as to the origin
of their connection with their totems, but never say that their totems
are their ‘soul-boxes.’
Mr. Frazer has an answer to this objection. ‘How close must be the
concealment, how impenetrable the reserve in which he’ (the savage)
‘hides the inner keep and citadel of his being.’ The Giant, in the
_Märchen_, tries to keep the secret of his ‘soul-box,’ much more
then does ‘the timid and furtive savage.’ ‘No inducement that can be
offered is likely to tempt him to imperil his soul by revealing its
hiding-place to a stranger. It is, therefore, no matter for surprise
that the central mystery of the savaged life should so long have
remained a secret, and that we should be left to piece it together from
scattered hints and fragments, and from the recollections of it which
linger in fairy tales.’
On reflection, we cannot but see the flaw in this reasoning. No savage
has revealed _to European inquirers_ that his totem is his ‘soul-box.’
_But every other savage knows his fatal secret_. Every savage, well
aware that his own totem is the hiding-place of his soul, knows that
the totems of his enemies are the hiding-places of _their_ souls.
He wants to kill his enemies, and he has an easy mode of doing so,
to shoot down every specimen of their totems. His enemies will then
die, when he is lucky enough to destroy their ‘soul-boxes.’ Now I am
not aware, in the destructive magic of savages, of a single case in
which a totem is slain, or tortured for the purpose of slaying or
torturing a man of that totem. All other sorts of sympathetic magic
are practised, but where is the evidence for that sort, which ought to
be of considerable diffusion?[24] The supposed ‘secret’ of savage life
is no secret to other savages. Each tells any inquirer what his ‘clay’
or totem is. He blazons his totem proudly. The nearest approach to
invidious action, against a totem, with which I am acquainted, is the
killing by the Kurnai women, of the men’s ‘sex totem,’ when the young
men are backward wooers. The purpose is to produce a fight between lads
and lasses, a rude form of flirtation, after which engagements, or
elopements, are apt to follow.[25]
Mr. Frazer tentatively suggests another, a rival or a subsidiary
solution of the problem, to which reference has already been made.
Among the Arunta and other tribes, ‘the totemic system has a much wider
scope, its aim being to provide the community with a supply of food
and all other necessaries by means of certain magical ceremonies, the
performance of which is distributed among the various totem groups.’
That is to say, these totemic magical ceremonies _now_ exist for
the purpose of propagating, as part of the food supply, animals or
vegetables, which, by the former theory, were the secret receptacles of
the lives of the tribesmen. To kill and eat these sacred receptacles
would endanger the lives of the tribesmen, but to risk _that_ is quite
in accordance with the practical turn of the Arunta mind. Mr. Frazer
has, however, suggested a possible method of reconciling his earlier
hypothesis--that a totem was a soul-box--with his later theory,
that the primal object of totem groups was to breed their totems for
food.[26]
Mr. Frazer observes, ‘It is not as yet clear how far the particular
theory of Totemism suggested by the Central Australian system is of
general application, and ... in the uncertainty which still hangs over
the origin and meaning of Totemism, it seems scarcely worth while to
patch up an old theory which the next new facts may perhaps entirely
demolish.’ He then cites the Arunta belief that their ancestors of
‘the dream time’ (who were men evolved out of animals or plants, these
objects being their totems) kept their souls (like the Giant of the
fairy tale) in stone _churingas_ (a kind of amulets) which they hung on
poles when they went out hunting. We have thus a _va-et-vient_ between
each man, and the spirit of the plant or animal out of which he, or his
human ancestor, was evolved. That spirit (in origin the spirit of an
animal or plant) is now handed down with the stone _churinga_, and is
reincarnated in each child, who is thus, an incarnation of the original
totem. Such is the Arunta theory, and thus each living Arunta is the
totem’s soul-box, while, to savage reasoners, the totem soul may,
perhaps, seem also to tenant simultaneously each plant or animal of its
species.
This is a theory of Totemism;[27] but, so far, we only know the facts
on which it is based among one extraordinary tribe of anomalous
development. We have still to ask, what was the original connection of
the men with the plants and animals, which the Arunta explain by their
myth? Was that connection originally one of magic-working, by each
group, for its totem species, and, if so, why or how did the groups
first select their plants and animals? Mr. Haddon’s theory, presently
to be criticised, may elucidate that point of departure.
SUGGESTION OF MR. N. W. THOMAS
As I am writing, a theory, or suggestion, by Mr. N. W. Thomas appears
in _Man_ (1902, No. 85). Mr. Thomas begins with the spirit which dwells
in an African fetich, and becomes the servant of its owner. The magical
apparatus ‘may be a bag of skin containing parts of various animals.
Such an animal may be the familiar of the owner, his messenger, or
an evil spirit that possesses him;’ similar beliefs are held about
the wer-wolf. Now the American-Indian has _his_ ‘medicine bag.’ ‘The
contents are the skin, feathers, or other part of the totem animal.’
_Distinguo_: they are parts, not of the ‘totem animal,’ but of the
adopted animal of the individual, often called his _manitu_. If we say
‘the totem animal,’ we beg the question; we identify the totem with
the _manitu_ of the individual. It may be true, as Mr. Thomas says,
that ‘the basis of _individual_ Totemism seems to be the same as that
of fetishism,’ but I am not discussing ‘individual Totemism,’ but real
group Totemism. Mr. Thomas also is clear on this point, but, turning to
Australia, he says that ‘the individual totem seems to be confined to
the medicine-man.’ From information by Mrs. Langloh Parker, I doubt the
truth of this idea. A confessedly vague reminiscence of Mr. Rusden does
not help us. Speaking of an extinct tribe on the Hunter River, N.S.W.,
he says that he ‘does not recollect all their class divisions, Yippai’
(Ippai), ‘and Kombo’ (Kumbo). ‘Apropos of the generic names’ (whatever
these may be) ‘the Geawe-gal had a superstition that _every one_ had
within himself an affinity to the _spirit_ of some beast, bird, or
reptile. Not that he sprang from the creature in any way’ (as is a
common totemic myth), ‘but that the spirit which was in him was akin
to that of the creature.’ This is vague. Mr. Rusden does not say that
his native informant said, that the ‘spirit’ was the man’s totem in
each case.[28] But Mr. Thomas, on this evidence, writes: ‘This belief
suggests that the interpretation suggested for individual Totemism
can also be applied to clan Totemism,’ apparently because, among the
extinct tribe, not only sorcerers, but, in this case, every one was the
receptacle of an animal (not a plant) spirit. But obviously the animal
spirits of the Geawe-gal may be the spirits--not of their group totems,
if they had any--but of their individual _manitus_, which we do not
know to be confined to sorcerers. Every one is a sorcerer, better or
worse, in a society where every one works magic.
Next, the wer-wolf has a way of returning ‘to look at’ (to _eat_, I
think) the body of his victim. Now in North Queensland, as in Scotland,
the body of a dead man is surrounded with dust or ashes (flour in
Scotland), and the dust is inspected, to find the tracks of some bird
or animal.[29] From such marks, if any, ‘the totem of the malefactor is
inferred.’ The malefactor is the person who, by the usual superstition,
is thought magically to have caused the death of the tribesman. ‘These
facts seem best interpreted if we suppose that in North Queensland
the sorcerer is believed to return in animal form, and that the form
is that of his totem, for in no other way does it seem possible to
identify the man’s totem by observing the footsteps.’
Is the man’s group totem meant? If so, the process could not
identify ‘the malefactor,’ there are hundreds of men of his totem.
Is his _manitu_ or ‘individual totem’ meant? Then the process might
be successful, but has no concern with the origin of hereditary
kin-Totemism. Indeed Mr. Thomas ‘leaves the applicability of the theory
to group Totemism for subsequent consideration.’ We shall show--indeed,
in Mr. Herbert Spencer’s case we have shown--the difficulty of deriving
kin-Totemism from the manitu, or ‘obsessing spirit’ if Mr. Thomas
pleases, of the individual. This point, as is said, Mr. Thomas reserves
for later consideration.
DR. WILKEN’S THEORY
We now come to a theory which exists in many shapes, but in all is
vitiated, I think, by the same error of reasoning. Mr. Tylor, however,
has lent at least a modified approval to the hypothesis as mooted by
the late Dutch anthropologist, Dr. Wilken, of Leyden. Mr. Tylor writes,
‘if it does not completely solve the totem problem, at any rate it
seems to mark out its main lines.’ Unluckily the hypothesis of Dr.
Wilken is perhaps the least probable of all. The materials are found,
not in a race so comparatively early as the Australians or Adamanese,
but among the settled peoples of Malay, Sumatra, and Melanesia. By
them, in their Tables of Precedence, ‘the Crocodile is regarded as
equal in rank to the Dutch Resident.’ Crocodiles are looked on as near
kinsmen of men, who, when they die, expect to become crocodiles. To
kill crocodiles is murder. ‘So it is with tigers, whom the Sumatrans
worship and call ancestors.’
Mr. Tylor observes, ‘Wilken sees in this transmigration of souls
the link which connects Totemism with ancestor-worship,’ and thinks
that Dr. Codrington’s remarks on Melanesian ways add weight to this
opinion. In Melanesia, as Dr. Codrington reports, an influential man,
before his death, will lay a ban, or tabu, on something, say a banana,
or a pig. He says that he ‘will be in’ a shark, a banana, a bird, a
butterfly, or what not. Dr. Codrington’s informant, Mr. Sleigh of Lifu,
says ‘that creature would be sacred to his family,’ they would call
it ‘papa,’ and ‘offer it a young cocoa-nut.’ ‘_But they did not adopt
thus the name of a tribe_.’ The children of papa, who chose to be a
butterfly (like Mr. Thomas Haynes Bailey) do not call themselves ‘The
Butterflies,’ nor does the butterfly name mark their exogamous limit.
Mr. Tylor concludes, ‘an ancestor, having lineal descendants among men
and sharks, or men and owls, is thus the founder of a totem family,
which mere increase may convert into a totem clan, already provided
with its animal name.’ This conclusion is tentative, and put forth with
Mr. Tylor’s usual caution. But, as a matter of fact, no totem kin is
actually founded thus, for example, in Melanesia. The institutions
of that region, as we are to show, really illustrate the way out of,
not the way into, Totemism. Moreover the theory, as expressed by
Mr. Tylor in the words cited, must be deemed unfortunate because it
takes for granted that ‘the Patriarchal theory’ of the origin of the
so-called ‘clan,’ or totem group, is correct. A male ancestor founds
a family, which swells, ‘by natural increase,’ into a ‘clan.’ The
ancestor is worshipped under the name of Butterfly, his descendants,
the clan founded by him, are named Butterflies. But all this can only
happen where male ancestors are remembered, and are worshipped, where
descent is reckoned in the male line, and where, as among ourselves, a
remembered male ancestor founds a House, as Tam o’ the Cowgate founded
the House of Haddington. In short Dr. Wilken has slipped back into
the Patriarchal theory. Now, among totemists like the Australians,
ancestors are not remembered, their names are tabued, they are not
worshipped, they do not found families, where descent is reckoned in
the female line.[30]
MISS ALICE FLETCHER’S THEORY
An interesting variant of this theory is offered, as regards the Omaha
tribe of North America, by Miss Alice Fletcher, whose knowledge of the
inner mind of that people is no less remarkable than her scientific
caution.[31] The conclusion of Miss Fletcher’s valuable essay shows,
at a glance, that her hypothesis contains the same fundamental error
as that of Dr. Wilken: namely, the totem of the kin is derived from
the _manitu_, or personal friendly object of an individual, a male
ancestor. This cannot, we repeat, hold good for that early stage of
society which reckons descent in the female line, and in which male
ancestors do not found houses, clans, names, or totem kins.
The Omaha men, at puberty, after prayer and fasting, choose manitus
suggested in dreams or visions. Miss Fletcher writes, ‘As totems could
be obtained but in one way--through the rite of the vision, the totem
of a _gens_ must have come into existence in that manner, and must
have represented the manifestation of an ancestor’s vision, that of a
man whose ability and opportunity served to make him the founder of a
family, of a group of kindred who dwelt together, fought together, and
learned the value of united strength.’[32]
This explanation obviously cannot explain the Origin of Totemism among
tribes where descent is reckoned in the female line, and where no
man becomes ‘the founder of a family.’ The Omaha, a house-dwelling,
agricultural tribe, with descent in the male line, with priests,
and departmental gods, a tribe, too, among whom the manitu is not
hereditable, can give us no line as to the origin of Totemism. Miss
Fletcher’s theory demands the hereditable character of the individual
manitu, and yet it is never inherited.
MR. HILL TOUT’S THEORY
Mr. Hill Tout has evolved a theory out of the customs of the aborigines
of British Columbia, among whom ‘the clan totems are a development of
the personal or individual totem or tutelar spirit.’ The Salish tribes,
in fact, seek for ‘sulia, or tutelar spirits,’ and these ‘gave rise to
the personal totem,’ answering to _manitu, nyarong, nagual_, and so
forth. ‘From the personal and family crest is but a step to the clan
crest.’ Unluckily, with descent in the female line, the step cannot
be taken. Mr. Hill Tout takes a village-inhabiting tribe, a tribe of
village communities, as one in which Totemism is only nascent. ‘The
village community apparently formed the original unit of organisation.’
But the Australians, who have not come within measurable distance of
the village community, have already the organisation of the totem kin.
Interesting as is Mr. Hill Tout’s account of the Salish Indians, we
need not dwell longer on an hypothesis which makes village communities
prior to the evolution of Totemism. What he means by saying that ‘the
_gens_ has developed into the clan,’ I am unable to conjecture. The
school of Major Powell use ‘_gens_’ of a totem kin with male, ‘clan’
of a totem kin with female descent. Mr. Hill Tout cannot mean that
male descent is being converted into descent in the female line? As he
writes of ‘a four-clan system, each clan being made up of groups of
_gentes_,’ he may take a ‘clan’ to signify what is usually called a
‘phratry.’[33]
MESSRS. HOSE AND MCDOUGALL
Among other efforts to show how the hereditary totem of a group might
be derived from the special animal or plant friend of an individual
male, may be noticed that of Messrs. Hose and McDougall.[34] The
Ibans, or Sea Dyaks of Sarawak, are probably of Malay stock, and are
‘a very imitative people,’ of mixed, inconsistent, and extravagant
beliefs. They have a god of agriculture, and, of course, are therefore
remote from the primitive; being rice-farmers. They respect nyarongs,
or ‘spirit helpers,’ though Mr. Hose lived among them for fourteen
years without knowing what a nyarong is. ‘It seems usually to be the
spirit of some ancestor, or dead relative, but not always so....’ The
spirit first appears to an Iban in a dream, in human form, and the
Iban, on awaking, looks for the _nyarong_ in any casual beast, or
quartz crystal, or queer root or creeper. So far the _nyarong_ is a
fetish. Only about two per cent, of men have _nyarongs_. If the thing
be an animal, the Iban respects the other creatures of the species.
‘In some cases the cult of a _nyarong_ will spread through a whole
family or household.’ Australian individuals have also their secret
animal friends, like _nyarongs_ and _naguals_, but these are never
hereditary. What _is_ hereditary is the totem of the group, which may
not be altered, or so seldom that it would be hard to find a modern
example: though changes of totems may have occurred when, in the
pristine ‘treks’ of the race, they reached regions of new fauna and
flora.
‘The children and grandchildren,’ our authors go on, ‘among the Ibans,
will usually respect the species of animals to which a man’s _nyarong_
belongs, and perhaps sacrifice fowls or pigs to it occasionally.’
Of course ‘primitive’ man has no domesticated animals, and does not
sacrifice anything to anybody. ‘If the great-grandchildren of a man
behave well to his _nyarong_, it will often befriend them just as much
as its original _protégé_.’ It is not readily conceivable that, among
very early men, and where the names of the dead are tabued, the wisest
great-grandchild knows who his great-grandfather was. Still, though the
great-grandfather was forgotten, his _nyarong_--it may be said--would
be held in perpetual memory, and become the totem of a group. But this
is not easily to be conceded, because there would be the competition
of the _nyarongs_ of each generation to crush the ancient nyarong;
moreover the totem, in truly primitive times, is not inherited from
fathers, but from mothers.
Our authors say that, in some cases, ‘all the members of a man’s
family, and all his descendants, and, if he be a chief, all the members
of the community over which he rules,’ may come to share in the
benefits of his nyarong, and in its rites. But all this of chiefs, and
great-grandchildren of a known great-grandfather, all this occurring
to-day among an imitative and agricultural people, with departmental
deities, and domesticated animals, cannot give us a line to the origin
of Totemism among houseless nomads, who tabu the memory of their dead,
and, as a rule, probably reckoned descent on the female side, so that
a man could not inherit his father’s totem. We must try to see how
really early men became totemic. Mr. Frazer observes, ‘It is quite
possible that, as some good authorities incline to believe, the clan
totem has been developed out of the individual totem by inheritance,’
and Miss Alice C. Fletcher we have cited as holding this process to
be probable in North America.[35] All such theories are based on the
beliefs and customs of modern savages advancing, like the American
Indians of to-day, towards what is technically styled ‘barbarism.’ It
was not in the state of barbarism, but in a savagery no longer extant,
that totemism was evolved. Totemism derived from inheritance of a
male ancestor’s special ‘spirit-helper’ is checked by the essential
conditions of people who are settled, agricultural, and given to
reckoning descent in the male line. No more can be produced, in such
a state, than ‘abortive beginnings of Totemism.’[36] Exogamy is never
reached on these lines, and Totemism is behind, not in front of, all
such peoples. Totemism arose in the period of the group, not of the
family-founding male ancestor.
Messrs. Hose and McDougall, it is to be noted, do not say that Totemism
is now being developed, in Sarawak, out of _nyarongs_. They only say
that it, perhaps, might be so developed ‘in the absence of unfavourable
conditions.’ If there existed ‘prosperous families,’ each with a
_nyarong_, other families would dream of _nyarongs_, and it would
become rather disreputable to have none. ‘So a system of clan totems
would be established.’ But male kinship, agriculture, metal-working,
chiefship, and large houses were certainly non-existent when Totemism
was first evolved. We must not look, in such advanced society, for
the origin of Totemism. In Sarawak is a houseless nomadic race, the
Punans. Among them Totemism has not yet been observed, but they are so
little known, that the present negative evidence cannot be regarded as
conclusive. Mr. Hose knew the Ibans for fourteen years without learning
what a _nyarong_ is, and it was by, mere accident that Mr. Atkinson
discovered the animal ‘fathers’ of the Kanakas.
MR. HADDON’S THEORY
Mr. Haddon has suggested a theory which was printed in the _Proceedings
of the British Association_ (1902). On this scheme, at a very early
period, groups, by reason of their local environment, would have
special varieties of food. Thus, at present, in New Caledonia, the Sea
branch of a tribe has cocoa-nuts, fish of all sorts, and so forth,
while the Bush branch has bananas, and other commodities, and the Sea
and Bush moieties of the tribe meet at markets for purposes of barter.
But, in a really primitive state, there will be no cultivation, as
there is in New Caledonia. Still, a coast savage might barter crabs
for a kangaroo, and, if landed property is acknowledged, owners of
plum-trees, or of a spot rich in edible grass-seeds, might trade these
away for lobsters and sea-perch.[37] Not having any idea of real
cultivation, or of pisciculture (though they may and do have ‘close’
seasons, under tabu), the savages may set about working magic for
their specialities in food. Thus it is conceivable that the fishers
might come to be named ‘crab-men,’ ‘lobster-men,’ ‘cuttlefish-men,’ by
their neighbours, whom they would speak of as ‘grass-men,’ ‘plum-men,’
‘kangaroo-men,’ and so on. When once these names were accepted (I
presume), and were old, and now of unknown or rather forgotten origin,
all manner of myths to account for the connection between the groups
and their plant and animal names would arise. When the myth declared
that the plants and animals were akin to their name-giving creatures,
superstitious practices would follow. We have seen two cases in which
Australian totem groups averred that they were named totemically
after a small species of opossum, and a fish which their ancestors
habitually ate. But that is an explanatory myth. Man cannot live on
opossums alone, still less on sardines.
My own guess admits the possibility of this cause of giving plant and
animal names to groups, among other causes. But I doubt if this was a
common cause. In Australia, everything that can be eaten _is_ eaten by
all the natives of a given area, each kindred having only a tendency to
spare its own totem, while certain other tabus on foods exist. In this
condition of affairs, very few groups could have a notable _special_
variety of food, except in the case of certain fruits, grass-seeds,
and insects. For these articles the season is almost as brief as the
season of the mayfly or the grannom. ‘When fruits is in, cats is out,’
as the pieman said to the young lady. During the rest of the year, all
the groups in a large area will be living on the same large variety of
reptiles, roots, animals such as rats and lizards, birds and so forth.
It does not seem probable that, except as between Sea and Bush parts
of a tribe, there could be much specialisation in matters of diet,
during the greater part of the year. Therefore, I do not think that
the derivation of totem names from special articles of food can ever
have been common. But local knowledge is necessary on this point. Are
the totem groups of Australia settled on lands peculiarly notable for
the plants and animals whose names they bear? If so, that circumstance
may account for the totem names of each group, and--granting that the
origin of the names is long ago forgotten, and that native speculation
has explained the names by myths--the rest is easy.
It will appear, when we come to my conjecture, that it varies from Mr.
Haddon’s only on one point. We both begin with plant and animal names
given to the various groups, _from without_. We then suppose (or,
at least, I suppose) the origin of the names to be forgotten, and a
connection to be established between the groups and their name-giving
objects, a connection which is explained by myths, while belief in
these gives rise to corresponding behaviour: respect for the totem,
and for his human kinsfolk. The only difference is that my theory
suggests several sources of the names: while Mr. Haddon offers only one
source, special articles of food and barter. Kindreds, to be sure, are
now named, not from what they eat (scores of things), but from the one
thing which (as a kindred) they do not eat. But this, when once the
myths of kinship with the totem arose, might be a later development,
arising out of the myth. In essentials, my conjecture appears to be
in harmony with Mr. Haddon’s--the two, of course, were independently
evolved.
On one point I perceive no difficulty, and no difference. It has been
suggested that Mr. Haddon ‘commences with the commencement,’ whereas,
in the hypothetical early age which we both contemplate, people had
scarcely a sufficient command of language to invent nicknames. Why more
command of language is needed for the _application_ of nicknames than
of names, I do not perceive. In Mr. Haddon’s theory, as in mine, names
already existed, names of plants and animals. In both of our hypotheses
those names were transferred to human groups; in my conjecture for
a variety of reasons, in his, solely from connection with special
articles of food, eaten and bartered, by each group. I am not convinced
that, so early, the relations between groups would admit of frequent
barter: nor, as has been said, am I certain that many groups could have
a very special article of food, in an age prior to cultivation. But,
granting all that to Mr. Haddon, no more command of language is needed
by my theory than by his. Each conjecture postulates the existence of
names of plants and animals, and the transference of the names to human
groups. If gesture language was prior to spoken language, in each case
gesture names could be employed, as, in North America, totem names are
to this day expressed in gesture language. In my own opinion, man was
as human as he is to-day, when totem names arose, and as articulate.
But, if he was not, gesture-language would suffice.
I shall illustrate my theory from folk-lore practice. We might do
the same for Mr. Haddon’s. We talk of ‘the Muffin man,’ the man who
sells muffins. We style one person ‘The English Opium-Eater,’ another
‘The Oyster-Eater,’ another ‘The Irish Whiskey Drinker.’ Here are the
nicknames derived from the dealing in, or special consumption of,
articles of food.
Many others occur in my folk-lore and savage lists of nicknames.
They all imply at least as much command of language, as the names,
ultimately totem names, given, for various reasons, in my theory. Thus
Mr. Haddon and myself do not seem to me to differ on this point: his
theory goes no further back in culture than mine does: nay, he assumes
that barter was a regular institution, which implies a state of peace,
almost a state of co-operation.
AN OBJECTION TO ALL THE THEORIES ENUMERATED
Not one of the theories here summarised, except the Dieri and Woeworung
myth, explains why members of the various totem kins are exogamous,
may not marry other members of the name. Suppose you do get your totem
name from that of a distinguished male ancestor, why may you not marry
another descendant? If because the common name, say Emu, is taken to
indicate some sort of blood-relationship, why may you not marry a
blood relation, even if there be no traceable kinship between you and
her? A Douglas may marry a Douglas, a Smith may marry a Smith; but an
Emu is often capitally punished if he marries an Emu. Suppose you get
your totem name from the beast for which you do magic. Why may you not
marry a person who bears the name of the same beast, and whose male
kindred do magic for it? Because it is sacrosanct to you and her? But
you are actually breeding it for the food-market. The answer must be
that you may not marry a person who bears your own totem name, and is
in the same branch of the Co-operative Magical Stores, because her
beast and yours are in the same phratry, and phratry mates may not
intermarry. But why may they not marry? The reply will probably be,
because the legislator divided the previously undivided commune into
two intermarrying exogamous phratries. But that theory we have shown
to be untenable. Thus not one of the extant hypotheses of the origin
of Totemism explains why totem kins are exogamous, unless Mr. Haddon
supposes that the totem names, once given from without, came to be
explained by myths asserting the sacred character and tribal kindred of
the totem. Mr. Haddon has not said anything about a previous exogamous
tendency in each of the groups which, by his scheme, received totem
names from without. By my hypothesis, these groups had already a
strongly exogamous tendency, which later was hall-marked and sanctioned
by the totem, with its myths and tabus. This advantage of explaining
the exogamous attribute of the totem, my scheme possesses, and its
rivals lack.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Let us concentrate, now, our attention on the character of the genuine
totem, the totem of the group or kin. It is not adopted by the savages
on a dream-warning; each man or woman for himself or herself: nor is it
chosen for each child at birth, nor by a diviner, like the _nagual_,
bush-soul, _nyarong_ of Sarawak, or the _secret_ animal friend of each
individual Australian. A savage _inherits_ his group totem name. The
name of any plant or animal which he may adopt for himself, or have
assigned to him as a personal name, by his parents, or, so to speak,
god-parents, is _not_ his totem. My meaning is, I repeat, that my
conjecture is only concerned with hereditary kin-totems and hereditary
totem names of kindreds. No others enter into my conjecture as to
origin. What some call ‘personal totems,’ adopted by the individual,
or selected by others for him after his birth, such as the Calabar
‘bush-soul,’ the Sarawak nyarong, the Central American _nagual_,
the Banks Island _tamaniu_, and the analogous special animal of the
Australian tribesman (observed chiefly, as far as I know, by Mr.
Howitt[38] and Mrs. Langloh Parker), do not here concern me. They are
not _hereditary group names_.
THE AUTHOR’S OWN CONJECTURE
I now approach my own conjecture as to the origins of the genuine,
hereditary, exogamous Totemism of groups of kin, real or imagined.
Totemism as we know it, especially in some tribes of North America
and in Australia, has certainly, as a necessary condition, that state
of mind in which man regards all the things in the world as very much
on a level in personality; the beasts being even more powerful than
himself. Were it not so, the totem myths about human descent from
beasts and plants: about friendly beasts, beasts who may marry men, and
about metamorphoses, could not have been invented and believed, even
to whatever extent myths _are_ believed. We may say that such beliefs
are real, where they regulate conduct. So far, there is probably no
difference of opinion, among anthropologists.
THE CONNECTION BETWEEN GROUPS AND TOTEMS
In all theories, the real problem is, how did the early groups get
their totem names? The names, once accepted and stereotyped, implied
a connection between each kindred, and the animal, plant, or other
thing in nature whose name the kindred bore. Round the mystery of this
connection the savage mind would play freely, and would invent the
explanatory myths of descent from, and kinship with, or other friendly
relations with, the name-giving objects. A measure of respect for
the objects would be established: they might not be killed or eaten,
except under necessity: magic might be worked by human Emus, Kangaroos,
Plum-trees, and Grubs for their propagation, as among the Arunta and
other tribes; or against them, to bar their ravaging of the crops, as
among the Sioux. As a man should not spear a real Emu, if the Emu was
his totem, so he does not, for reasons to be adduced, marry or have an
amour with a woman who is also of the Emu blood. That is part of the
tabu, resulting from the circumstances presently to be explained.
All these things, given the savage stage of thought, would inevitably
follow from the recognised but mysterious _connection_ between
men and the plants and animals from which they were named. All
such connections, to the savage, are blood-relationships, and such
relationship involves the duties which are recognised and performed.
_But how did the early groups come to be named after the plants and
animals_; the name suggesting the idea of connection, and the idea of
connection involving the duties of the totemist to his totem, and of
the totem to the totemist?
NO ‘DISEASE OF LANGUAGE’
The names, I repeat, requiring and receiving mythical explanations,
and the explanations necessarily suggesting conduct to match, are the
causes of Totemism. This theory is not a form of the philological
doctrine, _nomina numina_. This is no case of disease of language, in
Mr. Max Müller’s sense of the words. A man is called a Cat, all of his
kin are Cats. The language is not diseased, but the man has to invent
some reason for the name common to his kin. It is not even a case of
Folk Etymology, as when a myth is invented to explain the _meaning_ of
the name of a place, or person, or thing. Thus the Loch of Duddingston,
near Edinburgh, is explained by the myth that Queen Mary, as a child,
used to play at ‘dudding’ (or skipping) stones across the water:
‘making ducks and drakes.’ Or again, marmalade is derived from _Marie
malade_. Queen Mary, as a child, was seasick in crossing to France, and
asked for _confiture_ of oranges; hence _Marie malade_--‘marmalade.’
In both cases, the name to be explained is perverted. There is no real
‘stone’ in Duddingston--‘Duddings’ town,’ the _ton_ or _tun_ of the
Duddings; while ‘marmalade’ is a late form of ‘marmalet,’ a word older
than Queen Mary’s day.
An example of a folk etymology bordering on Totemism is the supposed
descent of Clan Chattan, and of the House of Sutherland, from the Wild
Cat of their heraldic crests. Now Clan Chattan is named, not from the
cat, but from Gilla Catain, ‘the servant of Saint Catan,’ a common sort
of Celtic personal name, as in Gilchrist.[39] The Sutherland cat-crest
is, apparently, derived from Catness, or Caithness. That name, again,
is mythically derived from Cat, one of the Seven Sons of Cruithne who
gave their names to the seven Pictish provinces, as Fib to Fife, and
so on. These Seven Sons of Cruithne, like Ion and Dorus in Greece
(Ionians, Dorians), are mere mythical ‘eponymoi’ or name-giving-heroes,
invented to explain the names of certain districts. In Totemism this is
not so. Not fancied names, like _Duddingstone_, or _Marmalade_, are,
in Totemism, explained by popular etymologies. Emu, Kangaroo, Wolf,
Bear, Raven, are real, not perverted names, the question is, why are
these names borne by groups of human beings? Answers are: given in
all the numerous savage myths, whether of a divine ordinance (Dieri,
Woeworung) or of descent and kinship, of intermarriage with beasts, or
of adventures with beasts, or of a woman giving birth to beasts, or
of evolution out of bestial types, and all these myths suggest mutual
duties between men and their totems, as between men and their human
kinsfolk. It will be seen that here no disease of language is involved,
not even a _volks-etymologie_ (a _vera causa_ of myth).
If it could be shown by philologists that many totem names originally
meant something other than they now do, and that they were
misunderstood, and supposed to be names of plants and animals, then
‘disease of language’ would be present. Thus λύκος and ἅρκτος have
really been regarded, as meaning, each of them ‘the bright
one,’ and the Wolf Hero of Athens, and the Bear of the Arcadians, have
been explained away, as results of ‘disease of language.’ But nobody
will apply that obsolete theory to the vast menagerie of savage totem
names.
HYPOTHETICAL EARLY GROUPS BEFORE TOTEMISM
But, discarding this old philological hypothesis, how did the
pristine groups get their totem names? We ought first to return to
our conjecture as to what these pristine groups were like. They must
have varied in various environments. Where the sea, or a large lake,
yields an abundant food-supply, men are likely to have assembled
in considerable numbers, as ‘kitchen middens’ show, at favourable
stations. In great woods and jungles the conditions of food-supply are
not the same as in wide steppes and prairies, especially in the uniform
and arid plateaus of Central Australia. Rivers, like seas and lakes,
are favourable to settlement; steppes make nomadism inevitable, before
the rise of agriculture. But, if the earliest groups were mutually
hostile, strongly resenting any encroachment on their region of
food-supply, the groups would necessarily be small, as in Mr. Darwin’s
theory of small pristine groups, the male, with his females, daughters,
and male sons not adult.[40] A bay, or inlet, or a good set of pools
and streams, would be appropriated and watchfully guarded by a group,
just as every area of Central Australia has its recognised native
owners, who wander about it, feeding on grubs, lizards, snakes, rats,
frogs, grass-seeds, roots, emus, kangaroos, and opossums.
The pristine groups, we may be allowed to conjecture, were small. If
they were not, the hypotheses which I venture to present are of no
value, while that of Mr. Atkinson shares their doom. Mr. McLennan,
as far as one can conjecture from the fragments of his speculations,
regarded the earliest groups as at least so large, and so bereft
of women, that polyandry was the general rule. Mr. Darwin, on the
other hand, began with Polygyny and Monogamy, ‘jealousy determining
the first stage.’[41] This meant that there was a jealous old sire,
who kept the women to himself, as in Mr. Atkinson’s theory. As we
can scarcely expect to reach certainty on this essential point,
anthropology becomes (like history in the opinion of a character in
_Silas Marner_) ‘a process of ingenious guessing.’ But, embarking on
conjecture, I venture to suggest that the problem of the commissariat
must have kept the pristine groups very small.[42]
They ‘lived on the country,’ and the country was untilled. They
subsisted on the natural supplies, and the more backward their material
culture, the sooner would they eat the country bare, as far as its
resources were within their means of attainment. One can hardly
conceive that such human beings herded in large hordes, rather they
would wander in small ‘family’ groups. These would be mutually hostile,
or at least jealous: they could scarcely yet have established a _modus
vivendi_, and coalesced into the friendly aggregate of a local tribe,
such as Arunta, Dieri, Urabunna, and so on. Such tribes have now their
common councils and mysteries lasting for months among the Arunta. We
cannot predicate such friendly union of groups in a tribe, for the
small and jealous knots of really early men; watchfully resenting
intrusion on their favourite bays, pools, and hunting of browsing
grounds. As to marriage relations, it is not improbable that ‘sexual
solidarity’ (as Mr. Crawley calls it), the separation of the sexes--the
little boys accompanying the men, the little girls accompanying the
women--and perhaps that ‘sexual tabu,’ coupled with the jealousy of
male heads of groups, may already have led to prohibition of marriage
within the group, and to raids for women upon hostile groups. The
smaller the group, the more easily would sexual jealousy prohibit the
lads from dealings with the lasses of their own group. There might
thus, in different degrees, arise a tendency towards exogamy, and
specially against son and mother, or father’s mates, and brother and
sister marriage. The thing would not yet be a sin, forbidden by a
superstition, but still, the tendency might (as we have already said)
run strong against marriage within each little group.
HOW THE GROUPS GOT NAMES
Up to this point we may conceive that the groups were _anonymous_.
Each group would probably speak of itself as ‘the Men’ (according to
a well-recognised custom among the _tribes_ of to-day; for instance,
the Gournditch-mara of Australia, _mara_ meaning ‘men’; Kurnai and
Narinyeri, also mean ‘the men’), while it would know neighbouring
groups as ‘the others,’ or ‘the wild blacks.’ But this arrangement
manifestly lacks distinctness. Even ‘the others down there’ is too
like the vague manner in which the Mulligan indicated his place
of residence. Each group will need a special name for each of its
unfriendly neighbours.
These names, as likely as not, or more likely than not, will be animal
or plant names, given for various reasons, perhaps, among others from
fancied resemblances. It may be objected that an individual may bear
a resemblance to this or that animal, but that a group cannot. But it
is a peculiarity of human nature, to think that strangers (of another
school eleven, say) are all very like each other, and if one of them
reminds us of an Emu or a Kangaroo, all of them will. Moreover the name
may be based on some real or fancied group trait of character, good or
bad, which also marks this or that type of animal, such as cunning,
cruelty, cowardice, strength, and so forth, and animal names may even
be laudatory. We have also to reckon with the kinds of animals, plants,
trees, useful flints, and other objects which may be more prevalent in
the area occupied by each group; and with specialities in the food of
each group’s area, as in Mr. Haddon’s theory. Thus there are plenty of
reasons for the giving of plant and animal names, which, I suggest,
were imposed on each group _from without_.
It is true that local names would serve the turn, if they were in use.
But the ‘hill-men,’ ‘the river-men,’ ‘the bush-men,’ ‘the men of the
thorn country,’ ‘the rock-men,’ are at once too scanty and too general.
Many groups might fall collectively under each such local name. Again,
it is as society moves away from Totemism, towards male kinship,
and settled abodes, that local names are given to human groups, as
in Melanesia, or even to individuals, as in the case of the Arunta,
and the Gournditcha Mara. Among the Arunta a child is ‘of’ the place
where he or she was born, like our _de_ and _von_.[43] The piquancy
of plant and animal names for groups probably hostile must also be
considered. We are dealing with a stage of society far behind that of
Mincopies, or Punans of Borneo, or Australians, and in imagining that
the groups were, as a rule, hostile, we may or may not be making a
false assumption. We are presuming that the jealousy of the elder males
drove the younger males out of the group, or at least compelled them to
bring in females from other groups, which would mean war. We are also
assuming jealousy of all encroachments on feeding grounds. These are
the premises, which cannot be demonstrated, but only put in for the
sake of argument. In any case no more hostility than our and the French
villages have for each other is enough to provide the giving of animal
_sobriquets_.
As to hostility, Mr. Atkinson, in New Caledonia, had a set of labourers
brought in from a distant island. Among them was a young boy, who,
being employed as cook, had a good deal of popularity with his mates.
He went home for a holiday, with a few men from his own island. He was
put down at their little harbour, only a few miles from that of his
tribe, and was instantly killed and eaten.
In ‘Notice sur la Nouvelle-Calédonie’ (1900) this ferocious hostility
between near neighbouring groups is corroborated. It is certain death
for the crew of a canoe to be driven into a harbour, however near their
own, which is not their own. This is among the islanders not under
the French. Count von Pfeil remarks on the violent hostility between
Kanakas and others near adjacent.[44]
On this point of unfriendly _sobriquets_ I may quote MM. Gaidoz and
Sébillot.[45]
‘In all ages men love to speak ill of their neighbour: to blazon him,
in the old phrase of a time when our speech was less prudish, and
more gay. Pleasantries are exchanged not only between man and man,
but between village and village. Sometimes in one expressive word,
the defect, or the quality (usually the defect), the dominant and
apparently hereditary trait of the people of a race or a province is
stated ... in a kind of verbal caricature.... _Les hommes se sont donc
blazonnés de tout le temps_?
_De tout le temps!_ MM. Gaidoz and Sébillot were not thinking of the
origin of totem names, but their theory applies ‘to all ages,’ even the
most primitive. Among French village _sobriquets_ I note, at a hasty
glance,
Largitzen Cows Houmeau Frogs
Angoulême Lizards Artois Dogs
Aire Pigeons Avalon Birds
and villages named as eaters of:
Old Ewes
Onions
Crows.
We shall see that many Sioux groups, many English villages are
blazoned, as in Mr. Haddon’s theory, by the names of the things which
they eat: or are accused of eating.
Thus, among very early men, the names by which the groups knew their
neighbours would be names given from without. To call them ‘nicknames,’
is to invite the objection that nicknames are essentially _derisive_,
and that groups so low could not yet use the language of derision. I
see no reason why early articulate-speaking men (or even men whose
language is gesture language) should be so modern as to lack all sense
of humour, all delight in derision. But the names need not have been
derisive. If these people had the present savage belief in the wakan,
or mystic power of animals, the names may even have been laudatory. I
ask for no more than names conferred from without, call them nicknames,
_sobriquets_, or what you like.
We are acquainted with no race that is just entered on Totemism,
unless we agree with Mr. Hill Tout that Totemism is nascent among the
Salish tribe, who live in village communities. Consequently we cannot
_prove_ that early hostile groups would name each other after plants
and animals. I am only able to demonstrate that, alike in English and
French folk-lore, and among American tribes who reckon by the male
line, who are agricultural and settled, the villages or groups are
named, _from without_, after plants and animals, and after what they
are supposed to be specially apt to use as articles of food, and also
by nick-names--often derisive. What I present is, not proof that the
primal groups named each other after plants and animals, but proof that
among our rustics, by congruity of fancy, such names are given, with
other names exactly analogous to those now used among settled savages
moving away from Totemism.
ILLUSTRATION FROM FOLK-LORE
I select illustrative examples from the _blason populaire_ of
modern folk-lore. Here we find the use of plant and animal names
for neighbouring groups, villages, or parishes. Thus two informants
in a rural district of Cornwall, living at a village which I shall
call Loughton, found that, when they walked through the neighbouring
village, Hillborough, the little boys ‘called cuckoo at the sight of
us.’ They learned that the cuckoo was the badge, in folk-lore, of their
village. An ancient carved and gilded dove in the Loughton church ‘was
firmly believed by many of the inhabitants to be a representation of
the Loughton Cuckoo,’ and all Loughton folk were Cuckoos. ‘It seems as
if the inhabitants do not care to talk about these things, for some
reason or other.’ A travelled Loughtonian ‘believes the animal names
and symbols to be very ancient, and that each village has its symbol.’
My informants think that ‘some modern badges have been substituted
for more ancient ones,’ such as tiger and monkey. There is apparently
no veneration of the local beast, bird, or insect, which seems often,
on the other hand, to have been imposed from without as a token of
derision. Australians make a great totem of the Witchetty Grub (as
Spencer and Gillen report), but the village of Oakditch is not proud of
its potato grub, the natives themselves being styled ‘tater grubs.’ I
append a list of villages (with false names[46]) and of their badges:
Hillborough Mice Brailing Peesweeps
Loughton Cuckoos Wickley Tigers
Miltown Mules Fenton Rooks
(it used to be rats) Linton Men
Ashley Monkeys Oakditch Potato grubs
Yarby Geese St. Aldate’s Fools
Watworth Bulldogs
At Loughton, when the Hillborough boys pass through on a holiday
excursion, the Loughton boys hang out dead mice, the Hillborough badge,
in derision. The boys have even their ‘personal totem,’ and a lad who
wishes for a companion in nocturnal adventure will utter the cry of
his peculiar beast or bird, and a friend will answer with _his_. If
boys remained always boys (that is, savages), and if civilisation were
consequently wiped out, myths about these group names of villages would
be developed, and Totemism would flourish again. Later I give other
instances of village names answering to totem names, and in an Appendix
I give analogous cases collected by Miss Burne in Shropshire, and
others, we saw, are to be found in the _blason populaire_ of France.
It appears to me that totem group names may, originally, have been
imposed _from without_, just as the Eskimo are really Inuits; ‘Eskimo,’
‘Eaters of raw flesh,’ being the derisive name conferred by their
Indian neighbours. Of course I do not mean that the group names would
always, or perhaps often, have been, in origin, derisive nicknames.
Many reasons, as has been said, might prompt the name-giving. But each
such group would, I suggest, evolve animal and vegetable nicknames for
each neighbouring group. Finally some names would ‘stick,’ would be
stereotyped, and each group would come to answer to its nickname, just
as ‘Pussy Moncrieff,’ or ‘Bulldog Irving,’ or ‘Piggy Frazer,’ or ‘Cow
Maitland,’ does at school.
HOW THE NAMES BECAME KNOWN
Here the questions arise, how would each group come to know by what
name each of its neighbours called it, and how would hostile groups
Come to have the same nicknames for each other? Well, they would know
the nicknames through taunts exchanged in battle.
‘Run, you deer, run!’
‘Off with you, you hares!’
‘Skuttle, you skunks!’
They would readily recognise the appropriateness of the names, if
derived from the plants, trees, or animals most abundant in their area,
and most important to their food supply: for, at this hypothetical
stage, and before myths had crystallised round the names, they would
have no scruples about eating their name-giving plants, fruits,
fishes, birds, and animals. They would also hear their names from war
captives at the torture stake, or on the road to the oven, or the
butcher. But the chief way in which the new group names spread would
be through captured women; for, though there might as yet be only a
tendency towards exogamy, still girls of alien groups would be captured
as mates. ‘We call you the Skunks,’ or whatever it might be, such a
bride might remark, and so knowledge of the new group names would be
diffused. These names would adhere to groups, on my hypothesis, already
exogamous in tendency, and, when the totem myth arose, the exogamy
would be sanctioned by the totem tabu.[47]
TOTEMIC AND OTHER GROUP NAMES--ENGLISH AND NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN
It may seem almost flippant to suggest that this old mystery of
Totemism arises only from group names given from without, some of them,
perhaps, derisive. But I am able to demonstrate that, in North America,
the names of what some American authorities call _gentes_ (meaning old
totem groups, which now reckon descent through the male, not the female
line), actually _are_ nicknames--in certain cases derisive. Moreover,
I am able to prove that, when the names of these American gentes are
not merely totem names, they answer, with literal precision, to our
folk-lore village _sobriquets_, even when these are not names of plants
or animals. The late Rev. James Owen Dorsey left, at his death, a paper
on _The Siouan Sociology_.[48] Among the _gentes_ (old totem kindreds
with male descent) he noted, the _gentes_ of a tribe, ‘The Mysterious
Lake Tribe.’ There were, in 1880, seven _gentes_. Three names were
derived from localities. One name meant ‘Breakers of (exogamous) Law.’
One was ‘Not encumbered with much baggage.’ One was Rogues (‘Bad
Nation’). These three last names are derisive nicknames. The seventh
name was ‘Eats no Geese,’ obviously a totemic survival. Of the Wahpeton
tribe all the seven _gentes_ derived their names from localities. Of
the Sisseton tribe, the twelve names of _gentes_ were either nicknames
(one, ‘a name of derision’), or derived from localities.
Of the Yankton _gentes_, five names out of seven were nicknames,
mostly derisive, the sixth was ‘Bad Nation’ (‘Rogues’), the seventh
was a totem name, ‘Wild Cat.’ Of the Hunpatina (seven _gentes_), three
names were totemic (Drifting Goose, Dogs, Eat no Buffalo Cows); the
others were nicknames, such as ‘Eat the Scrapings of Hides.’ Of the
Sitcanxu, there were thirteen gentes. Six or seven of their titles
were nicknames, three were totemic, the others were dubious, such as
‘Smellers of Fish.’ The Itaziptec had seven gentes; of their names all
were nicknames, including ‘Eat dried venison from the hind quarter.’ Of
the Minikooju, there were nine _gentes_. Eight names were nicknames,
including ‘Dung Eaters.’ One seems totemic, ‘Eat no Dogs.’ Of five
Asineboin gentes the names were nicknames from the habits or localities
of the communities. One was ‘Girl’s Band,’ that is, ‘Girls.’
Now compare parish _sobriquets_ in Western England.[49] In this list
of parish or village nicknames, twenty-one are derived from plants and
animals, like most totemic names. We also find ‘Dog Eaters,’ ‘Bread
Eaters,’ ‘Burd Eaters,’ ‘Whitpot Eaters,’ and, answering to ‘Girl’s
Band’ (_Gens des Filles_), ‘Pretty Maidens:’ answering to ‘Bad Nation,’
‘Rogues’: answering to ‘Eaters of Hide Scrapings’ ‘Bone Pickers’: while
there are, as among the Siouans, names derived from various practices
attributed to the English villagers, as to the Red Indian _gentes_.
No closer parallel between our rural folk-lore _sobriquets_ of village
groups, given from without, and the names given from without of old
savage totem groups (now reckoning in the male line, and, therefore,
now settled together in given localities) could be invented. (For
other examples see Appendix A.) I conceive, therefore, that my
suggestion--the totem names of pristine groups were originally given
from without, and were accepted (as in the case of the nicknames of
Siouan _gentes_, now accepted by them)--may be reckoned no strain
on our sense of probability. It is demonstrated that the name-giving
processes of our villagers exist among American savage groups which
reckon descent in the male line, and that they also existed among the
savage groups which reckoned descent in the female line is, surely, a
not unreasonable surmise. I add a list in parallel columns.
English Village Names Siouan Group Names
Rogues Bad Sorts
Stags[50] Elk[50]
Bull Dogs Common Dogs
Horse Heads Warts on Horses’ Legs
Bone Pickers Hide Scrapers
Pretty Girls Girl Folk
Eaters of Eaters of
Whitpot Dried Venison
Cheese Fish
Barley Bread Dung
Dog.
THEORY THAT SIOUAN GENTES NAMES ARE OF EUROPEAN ORIGIN
To produce, from North America, examples of group names conferred from
without, as in the instances of our English villages, may, to some
students, seem inadequate evidence. For example an unconvinced critic
may say that the nicknames of Mr. Dorsey’s ‘Siouan _gentes_’ were
originally given by white men; the Sioux, Dacota, Asineboin, and other
tribes having been long in contact with Europeans. Now it is quite
possible that some of the names had this origin, as Mr. Dorsey himself
observed. But no critic will go on to urge that the common totemic
names which still designate many _gentes_ were imposed by Europeans who
came from English villages of ‘Mice,’ ‘Cuckoos,’ ‘Tater Grubs,’ ‘Dogs,’
and so forth. We might as wisely say that our peasantry borrowed these
village names from what they had read about totem names in Cooper’s
novels. To name individuals, or groups, after animals, is certainly a
natural tendency of the mind, whether in savage or civilised society.
If we take the famous Mandan tribe, now reckoning descent in the male
line, but with undeniable survivals of descent in the female line, we
find that the _gentes_ are:
Wolf Bear Prairie Chicken _Good Knife_
Eagle _Flat Head_ _High Village_
Here, out of seven _gentes_, four names are totemic; one is a name
of locality, ‘High Village,’ not a possible name in pristine nomadic
society. While there are hundreds of such cases, we cannot reasonably
regard the American group nicknames as generally of European origin.
Still more does this theory fail us in the case of Melanesia, where
contact with Europeans is recent and relatively slight. Among such
tribes as the Mandans, and other Siouan peoples, we see Totemism with
exogamy and female kinship waning, while kinship, recognised by male
descent, _plus_ settled conditions, brings in local names for _gentes_,
and tends to cause the substitution of local names and nicknames for
the totem group name. Precisely the same phenomena meet us, as we are
to see, in Melanesia.
[Footnote 1: As to the _word_ ‘totem,’ but little is certainly known.
Its earliest occurrence in literature, to my knowledge, is in a work by
J. Long (1791), _Voyages and Travels of an Indian Interpreter_. Long
sojourned among the Algonquin branch of the North American Indians. He
spells the word ‘Totam,’ and even speaks of ‘Totamism.’ Mr. Tylor has
pointed out that Long in one place confuses the totem, the hereditary
group name, and protective object, with what used to be called the
_manitu_ or ‘medicine,’ of each individual Indian, chosen by him, or
her, after a fast, at puberty. _Remarks on Totemism_, 1898, pp. 139-40.
Cf. _infra_, 135, note.]
[Footnote 2: _Man_, 1902, No. 75.]
[Footnote 3: _Totemism_, p. 2, 1887.]
[Footnote 4: So also Mr. Hartland writes, _Man_, 1902, No. 84. But
_manitu_ is perhaps too wide and vague a term: it usually connotes
anything mystical or supernormal.]
[Footnote 5: _Introduction to the History of Religion_, p. 214. Major
Powell has said something to the same effect, but that was in a journal
of ‘popular science.’]
[Footnote 6: _Bureau of Ethnology_, 1893-1894, p. 241.]
[Footnote 7: _L’Année Sociologique_, v. 93, 99, 100. As far as the
proof rests on Arunta _traditions_, I lay no stress upon it.]
[Footnote 8: _J. A. I._ vol. xviii., no. 3, p. 254.]
[Footnote 9: Frazer, _Totemism_, p. 1.]
[Footnote 10: Major Powell, _Man_, 1901, no. 75.]
[Footnote 11: Howitt, _J. A. I._ xx. 40-41, 1891.]
[Footnote 12: The Marquis d’Eguilles kindly sends me extracts from an
official ‘Notice sur la Nouvelle-Calédonie,’ drawn up for the Paris
Exhibition of 1900. The author says that the names of relationships are
expressed, by the Kanaka, ‘in a touching manner.’ One name includes our
‘uncle’ and ‘father,’ another our ‘mother’ and ‘aunts;’ another name
includes our ‘brothers,’ ‘sisters,’ and ‘cousins.’ This, of course, is
‘the classificatory system.’ About animal ‘fathers’ nothing is said.]
[Footnote 13: Tylor, _Remarks on Totemism_, pp. 141-143. _Myth, Ritual,
and Religion_, ii. 56-58. Turner’s _Samoa_, p. 17 (1884).]
[Footnote 14: Howitt, _On the Organisation of Australian Tribes_, p.
136, note, 1889.]
[Footnote 15: The Mura Mura appear really to answer to the fabled
ancestors of the Arunta, but are addressed in prayers. Cf. Miss Howitt,
_Folk Lore_, January 1903.]
[Footnote 16: Tylor, _Remarks on Totemism_, p. 134.]
[Footnote 17: So also to explain the crest of the Hamiltons, the
Skenes, and many others.]
[Footnote 18: Frazer, _Totemism_, p. 7.]
[Footnote 19: Hose and McDougall, _J. A. I._ xxxi. 193, 1901.]
[Footnote 20: _Custom and Myth_, p. 262.]
[Footnote 21: _Contributions to the Science of Mythology_, i. 201.]
[Footnote 22: _The Principles of Sociology_, i. 362, 1876.]
[Footnote 23: The whole passage will be found in the work cited. Vol.
i. 359-368.]
[Footnote 24: I am haunted by the impression that I have met examples,
but where I know not.]
[Footnote 25: Howitt, _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_,
xviii. 58.]
[Footnote 26: _Golden Bough_, iii. 416, note 3.]
[Footnote 27: It is possible that I have failed to understand the
mode of reconciling the two hypotheses, and Mr. Frazer is not to be
understood as committed to either or both in the present state of our
information.]
[Footnote 28: _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 280.]
[Footnote 29: _J. A. I._ xiii. 191, note 1.]
[Footnote 30: Tylor, _Remarks on Totemism_, pp. 146-147, 1898.]
[Footnote 31: _The Import of the Totem_, by Alice C. Fletcher, Salem
Press, Mass., 1897.]
[Footnote 32: _Op. cit._ p. 12.]
[Footnote 33: ‘The Origin of the Totemism of the Inhabitants of British
Columbia,’ _Transactions of Royal Society of Canada_, second series,
vol. vii., 1901-1902. Quaritch, London.]
[Footnote 34: _J. A. I._ xxxi. 196, _et seq._]
[Footnote 35: _Golden Bough_, iii. 419, note 5.]
[Footnote 36: _Hose and McDougall_, _op. cit._ p. 211.]
[Footnote 37: Mr. Haddon’s theory involves the existence of barter
between groups that had special articles of food. Under ‘Hypothetical
early groups’ I show proof of the extreme hostility of adjacent groups
in some regions. The merchant, with his articles of barter, would there
himself be eaten. Mr. Atkinson’s cook was eaten by his neighbours. Mr.
Haddon does not hold that the primitive human groups were thus mutually
hostile. Here we differ in opinion.]
[Footnote 38: _J. A. I._ xiii.; Folk Lore, 10, 491.]
[Footnote 39: Macbain, _Etymological Dictionary_, 1896, quoting
manuscript of 1456.]
[Footnote 40: _Descent of Man_, ii. 362.]
[Footnote 41: _Studies in Ancient History_, second series, p. 50.]
[Footnote 42: This is the opinion not only of Mr. Darwin but of Major
Powell and Mr. McGee.]
[Footnote 43: Spencer and Gillen, p. 57, note.]
[Footnote 44: _J. A. I._ May 1897, p. 181.]
[Footnote 45: _Blason Populaire de la France_, p. 5. Paris, Cerf, 1884.]
[Footnote 46: Pseudonyms were given to avoid arousing local attention,
when I put forth these facts in _The Athenæum_. For reasons, I retain
the pseudonyms; but for the real village names see p. 173, note 1.]
[Footnote 47: Some objections are noticed later.]
[Footnote 48: Report of _American Bureau of Ethnology_, 1893-1894, p.
213 et seq.]
[Footnote 49: _Thirteenth Report of the Committee of Devonshire
Folk-Lore_, Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science,
1895, xxvii. 61-74.]
[Footnote 50: Many other animal and vegetable names--totem names in
America, village names in England--have already been cited. See p.
170.]