The Clan Totem.— The clan totem 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. Totemism is thus both a religious and a social system. In its religious aspect it consists of the relations of mutual respect and protection between a man and his totem; in its social aspect it consists of the relations of the clansmen to each other and to men of other clans. In the later history of totemism these two sides, the religious and the social, tend to part company; the social system sometimes survives the religious; and, on the other hand, religion sometimes bears traces of totemism in countries where the social system based on totemism has disappeared. We begin with the religious side.

Totemism, as a Religion, or the Relation between a Man and his Totem. — The members of a totem clan call themselves by the name of their totem, and commonly believe themselves to be actually descended from it.

Thus the Turtle clan of the Iroquois are descended from a fat turtle, which, burdened by the weight of its shell in walking, contrived by great exertions to throw it off, and thereafter gradually developed into a man. The Cray-Fish clan of the Choctaws were originally Cray-fish and lived underground, coming up occasionally through the mud to the surface. Once a party of Choctaws smoked them out, and, treating them kindly, taught them the Choctaw language, taught them to walk on two legs, made them cut off their toe nails and pluck the hair from their bodies, after which they adopted them into the tribe. But the rest of their kindred, the cray-fish, are still living underground. The Osages are descended from a male snail and a female beaver. The snaü burst his shell, developed arms, feet, and legs, and became a fine tall man; afterwards he married the beaver maid. Some of the clans of western Australia are descended from ducks, swans, and other waterfowl. In Senegambia each family or clan is descended from an animal (hippopotamus, scorpion, &c.) with which it counts kindred.

Somewhat different are the myths in which a human ancestress is said to have given birth to an animal of the totem species. Thus the Snake clan among the Moquis of Arizona are descended from a woman who gave birth to snakes. The Bakalai in western equatorial Africa believe that their women once gave birth to the totem animals; one woman brought forth a calf, others a crocodile, hippopotamus, monkey, boa, and wild pig.

Believing himself to be descended from, and therefore akin to, his totem, the savage naturally treats it with respect. If it is an animal he will not, as a rule, kill nor eat it. In the Mount Gambier tribe (South Australia) “a man does not kill or use as food any of the animals of the same subdivision with himself, excepting when hunger compels; and then they express sorrow for having to eat their wingong (friends) or tumanang (their flesh). When using the last word they touch their breasts, to indicate the close relationship, meaning almost a part of themselves.

To illustrate :—One day one of the blacks killed a crow. Three or four days afterwards a Boortwa (crow) named Larry died. He had been ailing for some days, but the killing of his wvngοng hastened his death. The tribes about the Gulf of Carpentaria greatly reverence their totems: if any one were to kill the totem animal in presence of the man whose totem it was, the latter would say, “What for you kill that fellow? that my father !” or “That brother belonging to me you have killed; why did you do it ?” Sir George Grey says of the western Australian tribes that a man will never kill an animal of his kobong (totem) species if he finds it asleep; “indeed, he always kills it reluctantly, and never without affording it a chance to escape. This arises from the family belief that some one individual of the species is their nearest friend, to kill whom would be a great crime, and to be carefully avoided.” Amongst the Indians of British Columbia a man will never kill his totem animal; if he sees another do it, he will hide his face for shame, and afterwards demand compensation for the act. Whenever one of these Indians exhibits his totem badge (as by painting it on his forehead), all persons of the same totem are bound to do honour to it by casting property before it. The Damaras in South Africa are divided into totem clans, called “eandas”; and according to the clan to which they belong they refuse to partake, e.g., of an ox marked with black, white, or red spots, or of a sheep without horns, or of draught oxen. Some of them will not even touch vessels in which such food has been cooked, and avoid even the smoke of the fire which has been used to cook it. The negroes of Senegambia do not eat their totems. The Mundas (or Mundaris) and Oraons in Bengal, who are divided into exogamous totem clans, will not kill or eat the totem animals which give their names to the clans. A remarkable feature of some of these Oraon totems is that they are not whole animals, but parts of animals, as the head of a tortoise, the stomach of a pig. In such cases (which are not confined to Bengal) it is of course not the whole animal, but only the special part, that the clansmen are forbidden to eat. Such totems may be distinguished as split totems. The Jagannáthi Kumhár in Bengal abstain from killing or injuring the totems of their respective clans, and they bow to their totems when they meet them.

When the totem is a plant the rules are such as these. A native of western Australia, whose totem is a vegetable, “may not gather it under certain circumstances and at a particular period of the year.” An Oraon clan, whose totem is the kujrar tree, will not eat the oil of that tree, nor sit in its shade. The Red Maize clan of the Omahas will not eat red maize. Those of the people of Ambon and Uliase who are descended from trees may not use these trees for firewood.

The rules not to kill or eat the totem are not the only taboos; the clansmen are often forbidden to touch the totem or any part of it, sometimes even to look at it.

Thus the Elk clan of the Omahas neither eat the flesh nor touch any part of the .male elk. The Deer-Head clan of the Omahas may not touch the skin of any animal of the deer family, nor wear moccasins of deer skin, nor use the fat of the deer for hair-oil; but they may eat the flesh of deer. Of the totem clans in Bengal it is said that they “are prohibited from killing, eating, cutting, burning, carrying, using, &c.,” the totem. The Bechuanas in South Africa, who have a well-developed totem system, may not eat nor clothe themselves in the skin of the totem animal. They even avoid, at least in some cases, to look at the totem. Thus to a man of the Bakuena (Bakwain) or Crocodile clan, it is “hateful and unlucky” to meet or gaze on a crocodile; the sight is thought to cause inflammation of the eyes.

Sometimes the totem animal is fed or even kept alive in captivity. Among the mountaineers of Formosa each çlan or village keeps its totem (serpent, leopard, &c.) in a cage. A Samoan clan whose totem was the eel used to present the first fruits of the taro plantations to the eels. Amongst the Narrinyeri in South Australia men of the Snake clan sometimes catch snakes, pull out their teeth or sew up their mouths, and keep them as pets. In a Pigeon clan of Samoa a pigeon was carefully kept and fed. Amongst the Kalang in Java, whose totem is the red dog, each family as a rule keeps one of these animals, which they will on no account allow to be struck or ill-used by any one.

The dead totem is mourned for and buried like a dead clansman. In Samoa, if a man of the Owl totem found a dead owl by the road side, he would sit down and weep over it and beat his forehead with stones till the blood flowed. The bird would then be wrapped up and buried with as much ceremony as if it had been a human being. “This, however, was not the death of the god. He was supposed to be yet alive, and incarnate in all the owls in existence.” The generalization here implied is characteristic of totemism; it is not merely an individual but the species that is reverenced. The Wanika in eastern Africa look on the hyaena as one of their ancestors, and the death of an hyaena is mourned by the whole people; the mourning for a chief is said to be as nothing compared to the mourning for an hyaena. A tribe of southern Arabia used to bury a dead gazelle wherever they found one, and the whole tribe mourned for it seven days. A Californian tribe which reverenced the buzzard held an annual festival at which the chief ceremony was the killing of a buzzard without losing a drop of its blood. It was then skinned, the feathers were preserved to make a sacred dress for the medicine-man, and the body was buried in holy ground amid the lamentations of the old women, who mourned as for the loss of a relative or friend.

As some totem clans avoid looking at their totem, so others are careful not to speak of it by its proper name, but use descriptive epithets instead. The three totems of the Delawares—the wolf, turtle, and turkey—were referred to respectively as “round foot,” “crawler,” and “not chewing,” the last referring to the bird’s habit of swallowing its food; and the clans called themselves, not Wolves, Turtles, and Turkeys, but “Round Feet,” “Crawlers,” and “Those who do not chew.” The Bear clan of the Ottawas called themselves not Bears but Big Feet. The object of these circumlocutions is probably to give no offence to the worshipful animal.

The penalties supposed to be incurred by acting disrespectfully to the totem are various. The Bakalai think that if a man were to eat his totem the women of his clan would miscarry and give birth to animals of the totem kind, or die of an awful disease. The Elk clan among the Omahas believe that if any clansman were to touch any part of the male elk, or eat its flesh or the flesh of the male deer, he would break out in boils and white spots in different parts of the body. The Red Maize subclan of the Omahas believe that, if they were to eat of the red maize, they would have running sores all round their mouth. And in general the Omahas believe that to eat of the totem, even in ignorance, would cause sickness, not only to the eater, but also to his wife and children. The worshippers of the Syrian goddess, whose creed was saturated with totemism, believed that if they ate a sprat or an anchovy their whole bodies would break out in ulcers, their legs would waste away, and their liver melt, or that their belly and legs would swell up.

The Samoans thought it death to injure or eat their totems. The totem was supposed to take up his abode in the sinner’s body, and there to gender the very thing which he had eaten till it caused his death.

Thus if a Turtle man ate of a turtle he grew very ill, and the voice of the turtle was heard in his inside saying, He ate me; I am killing him.” In such cases, however, the Samoans had a mode of appeasing the angry totem. The offender himself or one of his clan was wrapped in leaves and laid in an unheated oven, as if he were about to be baked. Thus if amongst the Cuttle-Fish clan a visitor had caught a cuttle-fish and cooked it, or if a CuttleFish man had been present at the eating of a cuttle-fish, the CuttleFish clan met and chose a man or woman who went through the pretence of being baked. Otherwise a cuttle-fish would grow in the stomach of some of the clan and be their death.

In Australia, also, the punishment for eating the totem appears to have been sickness or death. But it is not merely the totem which is tabooed to the Australians, they have, besides, a very elaborate code of food prohibitions, which vary chiefly with age, being on the whole strictest and most extensive at puberty, and gradually relaxing with advancing years. Thus young men are forbidden to eat the emu; if they ate it, it is thought that they would be afflicted with sores all over their bodies.

The relation between a man and his totem is one of mutual help and protection. If the man respects and cares for the totem, he expects that the totem will do the same by him. In Senegambia the totems, when they are dangerous animals, will not hurt their clansmen; e.g., men of the Scorpion clan affirm that scorpions (of a very deadly kind) will run over their bodies without biting them. A Snake clan (Ophiogenes) in Asia Minor, believing that they were descended from snakes, and that snakes were their kinsmen, submitted to a practical test the claims of any man amongst them whom they suspected of being no true clansman. They made a snake bite him; if he survived, he was a true clansman; if he died, he was not. The Psylli, a Snake clan in Africa, had a similar test of kinship; they exposed their new-born children to snakes, and if the snakes left them unharmed or only bit without killing them, the children were legitimate; otherwise they were bastards. In Senegambia, at the present day, a python is expected to visit every child of the Python clan within eight days after birth.

Other totem clans regard a man who has been bitten by the totem, even though he survives, as disowned by the totem, and therefore they expel him from the clan. Among the Crocodile clan of the Bechuanas, if a man has been bitten by a crocodile, or merely had water splashed over him by a crocodile’s tail, he is expelled the clan.

But it is not enough that the totem should merely abstain from injuring, he must positively benefit the men who put their faith in him. The Snake clan (Ophiogenes) of Asia Minor believed that if they were bitten by an adder they had only to put a snake to the wound and their totem would suck out the poison and soothe away the inflammation and the pain. Hence Omaha medicinemen, in curing the sick, imitate the action and voice of their (individual) totem. Members of the Serpent clan in Senegambia profess to heal by their touch persons who have been bitten by serpents. A similar profession was made in antiquity by Snake clans in Africa, Cyprus, and Italy.

Again, the totem gives his clansmen important information by means of omens. In the Coast Murring tribe of New South Wales each man’s totem warned him of coming danger; if his totem was a kangaroo, a kangaroo would warn him against his foes. The Samoan totems gave omens to their clansmen. Thus, if an owl flew before the Owl clan, as they marched to war, it was a signal to go on; but if it flew across their path, or backwards, it was a sign to retreat. Some kept a tame owl on purpose to give omens in war.

When the conduct of the totem is not all that his clansmen could desire, they have various ways of putting pressure on him.

Thus, in harvest time, when the birds eat the corn, the Small Bird clan of the Omahas take some corn which they chew and spit over the field. This is thought to keep the birds from the crops. If worms infest the corn the Reptile clan of the Omahas catch some of them and pound them up with some grains of com which have been heated. They make a soup of the mixture and eat it, believing that the corn will not be infested again, at least forthat year. During a fog the men of the Turtle subclan of the Omahas used to draw the figure of a turtle on the ground with its face to the south. On the head, tail, middle of the back, and on each leg were placed small pieces of a red breech-cloth with some tobacco. This was thought to make the fog disappear.

In order, apparently, to put himself more fully under the protection of the totem, the clansman is in the habit of assimilating himself to the totem by dressing in the skin or other part of the totem animal, arranging his hair and mutilating his body so as to resemble the totem, and representing it on his body by cicatrices, tattooing, or paint.

Among the Thlinkets on solemn occasions, such as dances, memorial festivals, and burials, individuals often appear disguised in the full form of their totem animals; and, as a rule, each clansman carries at least an easily recognizable part of his totem with him. Amongst the Omahas, the smaller boys of the Black Shoulder (Buffalo) clan wear two locks of hair in imitation of horns. The Small Bird clan of the Omahas “leave a little hair in front, over the forehead, for a bill, and some at the back of the head, for the bird’s tail, with much over each ear for the wings.” The Turtle subclan of the Omahas “cut off all the hair from a boy’s head, except six locks; two are left on each side, one over the forehead, and one hanging down the back in imitation of the legs, head, and tail of a turtle.” The practice of knocking out the upper front teeth at puberty, which prevails in Australia and elsewhere, is, or was once, probably an imitation of the totem. The Batoka in Africa who adopt this practice say that they do so in order to be like oxen, while those who retain their teeth are like zebras.

The Haidas of Queen Charlotte Islands are universally tattooed, the design being in all cases the totem, executed in a conventional style. When several families of different totems live together in the same large house, a Haida chief will have all their totems tattooed on his person. Tribes in South America are especially distinguished by their tattoo marks, but whether these are totem marks is not said. The Australians do not tattoo but raise cicatrices; in some tribes these cicatrices are arranged in patterns which serve as the...