THE AUTHOR'S THEORY
Mr. Darwin's theory of man's early social condition—Either men lived in male communities, each with his own female mates, or man was solitary, living alone with his female mates and children—His adolescent sons he drove away—The latter view accepted—It involves practical exogamy—Misunderstood by M. Salomon Reinach—Same results would follow as soon as totems were evolved—Totemism begins in assumption, by groups of men, of the names of natural objects—Mr. Howitt states this opinion—Savage belief in magical rapport between men and things of the same name—Mr. Frazer and Professor Rhys died for this fact—Theory of Dr. Pikler—Totemism arises in the need of names to be represented in pictographs—But the pictograph is later than the name—Examples of magic of names—Men led to believe in a connection of blood kin between themselves and objects of the same names—These objects regarded with reverence—Hence totemic exogamy merely one aspect of the general totem name—Group names were sobriquets of local groups, given by members of other local groups—Proof that such names may be accepted and gloried in—Cases of tribal names given from without and accepted—Mr. Hill-Tout on influence of names—His objection to our theory answered—Mr. Howitt's objections answered—American and Celtic cases of derisive nicknames accepted—Two Australian totem names certainly sobriquets—Religious aspect of totemism—Results from a divine decree—Other myths—Recapitulation.
The problem has been to account for the world-wide development of kinships, usually named after animals, plants, and other objects, and for the rule that the members of these kins may never marry within the kinship as limited by the name, Crow, Wolf, or whatever it may be. Why, again, are these kinships regimented, in each tribe, into two "phratries," exogamous, which also frequently bear animal names? No system hitherto proposed seems satisfactory, for the reasons given in the preceding critical chapters.
In trying to construct a more satisfactory system than those which have been criticised, we must commence, like others, with an hypothesis as to what kind of social animal man was when he began his career. Now we really are not quite reduced to conjecture, for Mr. Howitt's knowledge of savage life, in such a country as Australia, proves that the economic conditions, the search for supplies, and the blunt inefficiency of the earliest weapons, instruments, and hunting methods must have forced men to live in small separate groups. The members, again, of each group, being animated by "individual likes and dislikes" (including love, hate, jealousy, maternal affection, and the associations of kindness between a male and those whom he provided for and protected), must soon have evolved some discrimination of persons, and certain practical restraints on amatory intercourse. In groups necessarily very small, these germinal elements of later morality could be evolved, as they could not be evolved in the gregarious communal horde of theory.
Even when man's ancestors were hardly men, Mr. Darwin thus states his opinion as to their social condition.
He says, "We may conclude, judging from what we know of the jealousy of all Male Quadrupeds,... that promiscuous intercourse in a state of Nature is extremely improbable. Therefore, looking far back in the stream of Time, and judging from the social habits of man as he now exists, the most probable view is (a) that he aboriginally lived in small communities, each [man] with a single wife, or, if powerful, with several, whom he jealously guarded from all other men. Or (b) he may not have been a social animal, and yet have lived with several wives, like the Gorilla—for all the natives agree that bat one adult male is found in a band. When the young male grows up, a contest takes place for the mastery, and the strongest, by killing or driving out the others, establishes himself as head of the community.
"Younger males, being thus expelled and wandering about, would, when at last successful in finding a partner, prevent too close interbreeding within the limits of the same family."[1]
There is no communal horde in either of Mr. Darwin's conjectures, and the males of these "families" were all exogamous in practice, all compelled to mate out of the group of consanguinity, except in the case of the sire, or male head, who, of course, could mate with his own daughters.
Were I forced to conjecture, I should adopt Mr. Darwin's second hypothesis (b) because, given man so jealous, and in a brutal state so very low as that postulated, he could not hope "jealously to guard his women from all other men," if he lived in a community with other men.
There would be fights to the death (granting Mr. Darwin's hypothesis of male jealousy, man being an animal who makes love at all seasons),[2] and the little community would break up. No respect would be paid to the Seventh Commandment, and Mr. Darwin's first conjectured community would end in his second—given the jealousy and brutality and animal passions of early man, as postulated by him.
On Mr. Darwin's second conjecture our system could be based. Small "family" groups, governed by the will of the sire or master, whose harem contains all the young females in the group, would be necessarily exogamous in practice—for the younger male members. The sire would drive out all his adult sons as they came to puberty, and such as survived and found mates would establish, when they could, similar communities.
With efflux of time and development of intellect the rule, now conscious, would become, "No marriage within this group of contiguity;" the group of the hearth-mates. Therefore, the various "family groups" would not be self-sufficing in the matter of wives, and the males would have to seize wives by force or stealth from other similar and hostile groups. Exogamy, in fact, so far as the rule was obeyed, would exist, with raiding for wives. (This is the view of Mr. Atkinson, in his Primal Law.)[3]
If, on the other hand, Mr. Darwin's second hypothesis as to the primal state of man's brutal ancestors be rejected, economic and emotional conditions, as stated by Mr. Howitt (ch. iv., supra), would still keep on constantly breaking up, in everyday life, each supposed communal horde of men into small individualistic groups, in which the jealousy of the sire or sires might establish practical exogamy, by preventing the young males from finding mates within the group. This would especially be the case if the savage superstitions about sexual separation and sexual taboo already existed, a point on which we can have no certainty.[4] Young males would thus be obliged to win mates, probably by violence, from other hostile camps. But, whether this were so or not, things would inevitably come to this point later, as soon as the totem belief was established, with the totemic taboo of exogamy," No marriage within the totem name and blood."
The establishment of totemic belief and practice cannot have been sudden. Men cannot have, all in a moment, conceived that each group possessed a protective and sacred animal or other object of one blood with themselves. Not in a moment could they have drawn, on Dr. Durkheim's lines, the inference that none must marry within the sacred totem blood. Before any such faith and rule could be evolved, there must have been dim beginnings of the belief (so surprising to us) that each human group had some intimate connection with this, that, or the other natural species, plants, or animals. We must first seek for a cause of this belief in the connection of human groups with animals, the idea of which connection must necessarily be prior to the various customs and rules founded on the idea. Mr. Baldwin Spencer remarks, "What gave rise in the first instance to the association of particular men with particular plants and animals it does not seem possible to say." Mr. Howitt asks, "How was it that men assumed the names of objects which, in fact, must have been the commencement of totemism?"[5] The answer may be very simple. It ought to be an answer which takes for granted no superstition as already active; magic, for instance, need not have yet been developed.
In criticising the theory of Mr. Baldwin Spencer, we have tried to show that human groups would not work magic each for a separate animal, unless they already believed in a connection of a mystic or peculiarly intimate kind between themselves and their animal. Whether late or early in evolution, the Arunta totem magic can only rest on the belief in a specially close and mystical rapport between the totem animal or plant, and the human beings of the same name. How could the belief in that rapport arise?
Manifestly, if each group woke to the consciousness that it bore the name of a plant or animal, and did not know how it came to bear that name, no more was needed to establish, in the savage mind, the belief in an essential and valuable connection between the human group Emu, and the Emu species of birds, and so on. As Mr. Howitt says, totemism begins in the bearing of the name of an object by a human group.
It is difficult to understand how a fact so obvious as this—that the community of name, if it existed, and if its origin were unknown, would come to be taken by the groups as implying a mystic connection between all who bore it, men or beasts—can have escaped the notice of any one who is acquainted with the nature of savage thinking, and with its survivals into civilised ritual and magic. Mr. Frazer has devoted forty-two pages of his Golden Bough[6] to the record of examples of this belief about names, in various forms. He quotes Professor Rhys to the effect that probably "the whole Aryan family believed at one time, not only that the name was a part of the man, but that it was that part of him which is termed the soul, the breath of life, or whatever you may choose to define it as being." So says Mr. Rhys in an essay on Welsh Fairies.[7] This opinion rests on philological analysis of the Aryan words for "name," and is certainly not understated.[8] But, if the name is the soul of its bearer, and if the totem also is his soul, then the name and the soul and the totem of a man are all one! There we have the rapport between man and totemic animal for which we are seeking.
Whether "name" in any language indicates "soul" or not, the savage belief in the intimate and wonder-working connection of names and things is a well-ascertained fact. Now as things equal to the same thing are equal to each other, animals and sets of men having the same name are, in savage opinion, mystically connected with each other. That is now the universal savage belief, though it need not have existed when names were first applied to distinguish things, and men, and sets of men. Examples of the belief will presently be given.
This essential importance, as regards the totemic problem, of the names, has not escaped Professor Julius Pikler.[9] Men, says Dr. Pikler, needed for each other, collectively, "ein bleibender schriftlich fixierbarer Name von Gemeinschaften und individuen." They wanted permanent names of human communities and of the members of these communities, names which could be expressed in pictographs, as in the pictures of the Red Indian totem, reversed on grave-posts; or erect, on pillars outside of the quarters of the totem kin in Red Indian villages; or in tattooing, and so forth.
This is practically the theory of Mr. Max Müller.[10] Mr. Max Müller wrote, "A totem is (i.) a clan mark, then (ii.) a clan name, then (iii.) the name of the ancestor of the clan, and lastly (iv.) the name of something worshipped by the clan," This anticipated Dr. Pikler's theory.[11]
It is manifest, of course, that the name necessarily comes into use before, not as Mr. Max Müller thought, and as Dr. Pikler seems to think, after its pictorial representation, "the clan mark." A kin must have accepted the name of "the Cranes," before it used the Crane as its mark on a pillar in a village (villages being late institutions), or on grave-posts, or in tattoo marks. A man setting up an inn determines to call it "The Green Boar," "The White Hart," or "The Lochinvar Arms," before he has any of these animals, or the scutcheon of the Gordons of Lochinvar, painted on the signboard. He does not give his inn the name because it has the signboard; it has the signboard because it has the name. In the same way, a community must have had a name, say Eagle Hawk or Crow, before a savage could sketch, or express by gesture, a Crow or Eagle Hawk, and expect the public to understand that he meant to indicate, whether by pictograph or gesture language, a member of that Eagle Hawk or Crow named community. Totemism certainly is not, as Dr. Pikler argues, "die Folge der Schriftart, der Schrifttechnik jenes Menschen."[12]
The names came before the pictographs, not the pictographs before the names, necessarily; but the animal or vegetable names had this advantage, among others, that they could be expressed in terms of pictograph, or of gesture language. You cannot express in art, without writing, a tribal name, such at least as are the tribal names of the men who say Wonghi or Kamil when they mean "No," or of other tribes when they mean "What?"
Dr. Pikler says that "the germ of totemism is the naming," and here we agree with him, but we cannot follow him when he adds that "the naming is a consequence of the primitive schriftteknik," a result of the representation in the pictograph. A man knows himself and is known by others to be, by group name, a Crane, or a Rain-cloud, or a Bear, before he makes his mark with the pictograph of the bird's footprint, as
, or of the Rain-cloud, as
or of the Bear's-foot, as
[13].
So far we must differ, then, from Dr. Pikler; naming is indeed the original germ of totemism, but the names came before the pictographs which represent the animals denoted by the names: it could not possibly be otherwise. But when once the name of the community, Eagle Hawk, Crow, Bear, Crane, Rain-cloud, or what not, is recognised and accepted, then, as Dr. Pikler writes, "even the Greeks,[14] in ages of philosophic thought relatively advanced, conceived that there was a material connection between things and their names," and, in the same way, savages, bearing an animal group-name, believed that there was an important connection, in fact, between the men and the name-giving animal, "and so conceived the idea of kinship with or descent from" the name-giving animal.[15]
Totemism, as Dr. Pikler says, "has its original germ, not in religion, but in the practical everyday needs of men," the necessity for discriminating, by names, between group and group. "Totems, probably, in origin, had nothing really religious about them," I had written.[16]
Thus, given a set of local groups[17] known by the names of Eagle Hawk, Crow, Wolf, Raven, or what not, the idea that these groups were intimately connected with the name-giving animals in each case was, in the long run, sure to occur to the savage thinker. On that assumed mystical connection, implied in the name, and suggested by the name, is laid the foundation of all early totemic practice. For the magical properties of the connection between the name and its bearer the reader has only to refer to Mr. Frazer's assortment of examples, already cited. We here give all that are needed for our purpose.
In Australia, each individual Arunta has a secret name, Aritna Churinga, "never uttered except on the most solemn occasions," "never to be spoken in the hearing of women, or of men, or of another group." To speak the secret name in these circumstances would be as impious "as the most flagrant case of sacrilege amongst white men."[18]
These ideas about the mystic quality of names are so familiar to all students, that I did not deem it necessary to dwell on them in Social Origins. But we should never take knowledge for granted, or rather, for every student does know the facts, we should never take it for granted that the knowledge will be applied. The facts prove, I repeat that, to the early mind names, and the things known by names, are in a mystic and transcendental connection of rapport. Other Australian examples of the secrecy of a man's name, and of the power of magically injuring him by knowledge of his name, are given by Mr. Howitt, Brough Smyth, Lumholtz, Bulmer, Dawson, and others. It would appear that this superstition as to names is later than the first giving of animal names to totem groups, and that totem names were not given to groups by the groups themselves (at least, were not given after the superstition about names came in), for to blazon their own group names abroad would be to give any enemy the power of injuring the group by his knowledge of its name. Groups, had they possessed the name-belief, would have carefully concealed their group names, if they could. There are a few American cases in which kins talk of their totems by periphrases, but every one knows the real names.
He who knew a group's name might make a magical use of his knowledge to injure the group. But the group or kin-names being already known to all concerned (having probably been given from without), when the full totemic belief arose it was far too late for groups to conceal the totem names, as an individual can and does keep his own private essential name secret. The totem animal of every group was known to all groups within a given radius. "It is a serious offence," writes Mr. Howitt, "for a man to kill the totem of another person,"[19] that is, with injurious intentions towards the person.
Mr. Frazer at one time thought that the totem was perhaps originally the soul-box, or life-receptacle, of the totemist, and said: "How close must be the concealment, how impenetrable the reserve in which he hides the inner keep and citadel of his being." I could but reply, as Mr. Hill-Tout also replies, that every savage knew the secret, knew what beast was a man's totem. I added that I knew no cases of a custom of injuring a man by killing his totem, "to his intention," but that I was "haunted by the impression that I had met examples."[20] Mr. Howitt, we see, mentions this kind of misdeed as punishable by native law. But it was too late, we repeat, to hide the totem names. Men now can only punish offenders who make a cruel magical use of their knowledge of an enemy's totem.
An individual, however, we must repeat, can and does keep his intimate essential personal name as dark as the secret name of the city of Rome was kept. "An individual," says Mr. Howitt, "has of course his own proper individual name, which, however, is often in abeyance, because of the disinclination to use it, or even to make it generally known, lest it might come into the knowledge and possession of some enemy, who thus having it might thereby 'sing' its owner—in other words, use it as an incantation."[21]
Thus, in Australia, the belief that names imply a mystic rapport between themselves and the persons who bear them is proved to be familiar, and it is acted upon by each individual who conceals his secret name.
This being so, when the members of human groups found themselves, as groups, all in possession of animal group-names, and had forgotten how they got the names (all known groups having long been named), it was quite inevitable that men, always speculative, should ask themselves, "What is the nature of this connection between us and the animals whose names we bear? It must be a connection of the closest and most important kind." This conclusion, I repeat, was inevitable, given the savage way of thinking about names. Will any anthropologist deny this assertion?
Probably the mere idea of a mystic connection between themselves and their name-giving animals set the groups upon certain superstitious acts in regard to these animals. But being men, and as such speculative, and expressing the results of their speculations in myths, they would not rest till they had evolved a myth as to the precise nature of the connection between themselves and their name-giving animals, the connection indicated by the name.
Now, men who had arrived at this point could not be so inconceivably unobservant as not to be aware of the blood connection between mother and children, indicated in the obvious facts of birth. A group may not have understood the facts of reproduction and procreation (as the Arunta are said not to understand them),[22] but the facts of blood connection, and of the relation of the blood to the life, could escape no human beings.[23] As savages undeniably do not draw the line between beasts and other things on one side, and men on the other, as we do, it was natural for them to suppose that the animal bearing the group name, and therefore solidaire with the group, was united with it, as the members of the group themselves were visibly united, namely, by the blood bond. The animal in myth is thus men's ancestor, or brother, or primal ancestral form. This belief would promote kindness to and regard for the animal.
Next, as soon as the animal-named groups evolved the universally diffused beliefs about the wakan or mana, or mystically sacred quality of the blood as the life, they would also develop the various totem tabus, such as not to kill the totem animal, not to shed its blood, and the idea that, by virtue of this tabu, a man must not marry a maid who was of one blood with him in the totem. Even without any blood tabu, the tabu on women of the same totem might arise. "An Oraon clan, whose totem is the Kujzar-tree, will not sit in its shade." So strong is the intertotemic avoidance.[24] The belief grew to the pitch that a man must not "use" anything of his totem (χρῆσθαι γυναίκι), and thus totemic exogamy, with the sanction of the sacred totem, was established.[25]
Unessential to my system is the question, how the groups got animal names, as long as they got them and did not remember how they got them, and as long as the names, according to their way of thinking, indicated an essential and mystic rapport between each group and its name-giving animal. No more than these three things—a group animal-name of unknown origin; belief in a transcendental connection between all bearers, human and bestial, of the same name; and belief in the blood superstitions—was needed to give rise to all the totemic creeds and practices, including exogamy.
Now, we can prove that the origin of the totem names of savage groups is unknown to the savages, because they have invented many various myths to account for the origin of the names. If they knew, they would not have invented such myths. That, by their way of thinking, the name denotes a transcendental connection, which must be exploited, between themselves and their name-giving animals we have proved.
In Social Origins I ventured a guess as to how the group names first arose, namely, in sobriquets given by group to group.[26] I showed that in France, England, the Orkneys, and I may now add Guernsey, and I believe Crete, villagers are known by animal names or sobriquets, as in France—Cows, Lizards, Pigeons, Frogs, Dogs; in Orkney—Starlings, Oysters, Crabs, Seals, Auks, Cod, and so forth. I also gave the names of ancient Hebrew villages, recorded in the Book of Judges, such as Lions, Jackals, Hornets, Stags, Gazelles, Wild Asses, Foxes, Hyænas, Cows, Lizards, Scorpions, and so forth. I also proved that in rural England, and in the Sioux tribe of Red Indians, rapidly ceasing to be totemic, the group sobriquets were usually "Eaters of" this or that animal, or (where totemism survived among the Sioux) "not Eaters of" this or that.[27] I thus established the prevalence in human nature, among peasants and barbarians, of giving animal group-sobriquets. "In Cornwall," writes an informant (Miss Alleyne), "it seems as if the inhabitants do not care to talk about these things for some reason or another," and "the names are believed to be very ancient." When once attention is drawn to this curious subject, probably more examples will be discovered.
I thus demonstrated (and I know no earlier statement of the fact) the existence in the European class least modified by education of the tendency to give such animal group-sobriquets. The same principle even now makes personal names derived from animals most common among individuals in savage countries, the animal name usually standing, not alone, but qualified, as Wolf the Unwashed, in the Saga; Sitting Bull, and so on. As we cannot find a race just becoming totemic, we cannot, of course, prove that their group animal-names were given thus from without, but the process is undeniably a vera causa, and does operate as we show.
As to this suggestion about the sources of the animal names borne by the groups, Dr. Durkheim remarks that it is "conjectural."[28] Emphatically it is, like the Doctor's own theories, nor can any theory on this matter be other than guess-work. But we do not escape from the difficulty by merely saying that the groups "adopted" animal names for themselves; for that also is a mere conjecture. Perhaps they did, but why? Is it not clear that, given a number of adjacent groups, each one group has far more need of names for its neighbours than of a name for itself? "We" are "we"; all the rest of mankind are "wild blacks," "barbarians," "outsiders." But there are a score of sets of outsiders, and "we," "The Men," need names for each and every one of them. "We" are "The Men," but the nineteen other groups are also "The Men"—in their own opinion. To us they are something else ("they" are not "we"), and we are something else to them; we are not they; we all need differentiation, and we and they, by giving names to outsiders, differentiate each other. The names arose from a primitive necessity felt in everyday life.
That such sobriquets, given from without, may come to be accepted, and even gloried in, has been doubted, but we see the fact demonstrated in such modern cases as "the sect called Christians" (so called from without), and in Les Gueux, Huguenots, Whigs, Tories, Cavaliers, Cameronians ("that nickname," cries Patrick Walker (1720), "why do they not call them Cargillites, if they will give them a nickname?")[29] I later prove that two ancient and famous Highland clans have, from time immemorial, borne clan names which are derisive nicknames. Several examples of party or local nicknames, given, accepted, and rejoiced in, have been sent to me from North Carolina.
Another example, much to the point, may be offered. The "nations," that is, aggregates of friendly tribes, in Australia, let us say the Kamilaroi, are usually known by names derived from their word for "No," such as Kamil (Kamilaroi), Wira (Wirajuri), Wonghi (Wonghi tribe), Kabi (Kabi tribe). Can any one suppose that these names were given from within? Clearly they were given from without and accepted from within. One of the Wonghi or of the Wiraidjuri or Kamilaroi tribe is "proud of the title." Messrs. Spencer and Gillen write, "It is possible that the names of the tribes were originally applied to them by outsiders, and were subsequently adopted by the members of the tribes themselves, but the evidence is scanty and inconclusive."[30] There can hardly be any evidence but what we know of human nature. Do the French call themselves Oui Oui? Not much I but the natives of New Caledonia call them Oui Oui.[31]
Moreover, to return to totem names, savage groups would have no reason for resenting, as derisive, animal names given from without. Considering the universal savage belief in the mystic wisdom and wakan, or power, of animals, there was no kind of objection among savages to being known by animal group-names. I repeat that the names were rather honour-giving than derisive. This has not been understood by my critics. They have said that among European villages, and among the Sioux of to-day, group nicknames are recognised, but not gloried in or even accepted meekly. My answer is obvious. Our people have not the savage ideas about animals.
Here it may be proper to reply to this objection as urged by Mr. Hill-Tout. That scholar might seem, in one passage of his essay on "Totemism: Its Origin and Import," to agree fully with these ideas of mine. He says, "To adopt or receive the name of an animal or plant, or other object, was, in the mind of the savage, to be endowed with the essence or spirit of that object, to be under its protection, to become one with it in a very special and mysterious sense." That is exactly my own opinion. The very early groups received animal names, I suggest, and when they had forgotten how they received them, believed themselves, as Mr. Hill-Tout says they naturally would do, to be "under the protection" of their name-giving animals, "and one with them in a very special and mysterious sense." Mr. Hill-Tout proceeds to give many examples of the process from America.[32]
It might appear, then, that Mr. Hill-Tout accepts my theory, namely, that group names, of forgotten origin, are the germs of totemism. But he rejects it, partly, no doubt, because he owns a different theory. His reasons for objecting, however, as offered, are that, while I prove that modern villages give each other collective animal names, I do not prove that the villagers—styled Grubs, Mice, Geese, Crows, and so on—accept and rejoice in these names, as totemists rejoice in being Grubs, Mice, Crows, and so forth. But I never said that the modern villagers delighted in being called Mice or Cuckoos! They very much resent such appellations. The group names of modern villagers were cited merely to prove that the habit of giving such collective names survives in Folk Lore, not to prove that modern villagers accept them gladly. The reason why they resent them is that our country folk are not savages, and have not the beliefs about the mystic force of names and the respect for animals which Mr. Hill-Tout justly ascribes to savages.
A native of Dingley Dell may call all natives of Muggleton "Potato-grubs," and the Muggleton people, from time immemorial, may have called the Dingley Dell folk "Rooks." But, not being savages, they do not think—as Mr. Hill-Tout's savages do—that "to receive the name of an animal is to be under its protection, to become one with it in a very special and mysterious sense," and they do not, like savages, think nobly of grubs and rooks. The distinction is obvious, except to critics. Mr. Hill-Tout thus accepts my premises as regards savages and their ideas about names, but rejects my conclusion, because modern villagers do not reason like savages! As to villagers, my evidence was only meant to show the wide diffusion, from ancient Israel to the Orkneys, of the habit of giving animal names to village groups. For evidence of the effect which that habit would have on savages, I have now cited Mr. Hill-Tout himself. He has merely misunderstood a very plain argument,[33] which he advanced as representing his own opinion (pp. 64-66). But then Mr. Hill-Tout has a counter theory.
Is my argument intelligible? A modern villager resents the bawling out of "Mouse" as he passes, Mouse being the collective nickname of his village, because he does not think nobly of Mice. The savage does think nobly of all animals, and so has no reason for resenting, but rather for glorying in, his totem name, whether Mouse or Lion. These facts were plainly asserted in Social Origins, p. 169, to no avail.
Mr. Howitt, in his turn, does not approve of my idea, thus stated by him, that "the plant and animal names would be impressed upon each group from without, and some of them would stick, would be stereotyped, and each group would come to answer to its nickname." He replies—
"To me, judging of the possible feelings of the ancestors of the Australians by their descendants of the present time, it seems most improbable that any such nicknames would have been adopted and have given rise to totemism, nor do I know of a single instance in which such names have been adopted."[34] Mr. Howitt, of course, could not possibly find kinships now adopting animal and other such names given from without, because all kinships where totemism exists have got such names already, and with the names a sacred body of customs. But does he suppose that the many local tribes calling themselves by their word for "No" (as Kabi, Kamil, Wonghi, and so on), originally gave these names to themselves, saying, "We are the people who, when we mean 'No,' say 'Wonghi'"? That seems to me hardly credible! Much more probably tribes who used Kamil or Kabi for "No" gave the name of Wonghi to a tribe who used Wonghi in place of their Kamil or Kabi. In that case the tribes, as tribes, have adopted names given from without.
Again, I consider that the feelings of that noble savage, the Red Indian, are at least as sensitive to insult as those of Mr. Howitt's blacks. Now it so happens that the Blackfoot Indians of North America, who apparently have passed out of totemism, have "gentes, a gens being a body of consanguineal kinsmen in the male line," writes Mr. G. B. Grinnell.[35] These clans, no longer totemic, needed names, and some of their names, at least, are most insulting nicknames. Thus we have Naked Dogs, Skunks, They Don't Laugh, Buffalo Dung, All Crazy Dogs, Fat Roasters, and—Liars! No men ever gave such names to their own community. In a diagram of the arrangement of these clans in camp, made about 1850, we find the gentes of the Pi-kun'-I under such pretty titles as we have given.[36]
To return from America to Australia, the Narrinyeri tribe, like the Sioux and Blackfeet, have reckoning of descent in the male line, and, like the Sioux, have local settlements (called "clans" by Mr. Howitt), and these local settlements have names. Does Mr. Howitt think it likely that one such "clan" called itself "Where shall we go?" and another called itself "Gone over there"?[37] These look to me like names given by other groups. Tribes, local groups ("clans"), and totem kins having names already, I cannot expect to show Mr. Howitt the names of such sets of people in the act of being given from without and accepted. But, as regards individuals, they "often have what may be called a nickname, arising from some strongly marked feature in their figures, or from fancied resemblance to some animal or plant."[38] The individuals "answer to" such nicknames, I suppose, but they cannot evolve, in a lifetime, respect for the plant or animal that yields the nickname, because they cannot forget how they come to bear it.
Obvious at a glance as such replies to such objections are, it seems that they have not occurred to the objectors.
If we want to discover clans adopting and glorying in names which are certainly, in origin, derisive nicknames, we find Clan Diarmaid, whose name, Campbell, means "Wry Mouth,"[38] and Clan Cameron, whose name means "Crooked Nose."[39] Moreover, South African tribes believe that tribal siboko, as Baboon and Alligator, may, and did, arise out of nicknames; for, as we have seen, their myths assert that nicknames are the origin of such tribal and now honourable names. I cannot prove, of course, that the process of adopting a name given from without occurred among prehistoric men, but I have demonstrated that, among all sorts and conditions of men in our experience, the process is a vera causa.
Dismissing my theory, Mr. Howitt, in place of it, "could more easily imagine that these early savages might, through dreams, have developed the idea of relationship with animals, or even with plants."[40] They might; a man, as in the case given, might dream of a lace lizard, and believe that he was one. He might even be named, as an individual, "Lace Lizard," but that does not help us. Totem names, as Mr. Fison insists, are, and always were, group names. But Mr. Howitt "gets no forrarder," if he means that the children of his Lace Lizard become a totem kin of Lace Lizards, for under a system of female descent the man's children would not be Lace Lizards. Does Mr. Howitt know of a single instance in a tribe with female kin where the children of a man who, on dream evidence, believed himself to be a Kangaroo, were styled Kangaroos? He must adopt the line of saying that, while totemism was being evolved, women did the dreaming of being Hakea flowers, Witchetty Grubs, Kangaroos, Emus, and so forth, and bequeathed the names to their children. But he will not find that process going on in any known instance, I fear.
The processes of my hypothesis, though necessarily conjectural, are at least veræ causæ, are in human nature, as we know it. A curious new example of totems, certainly based on sobriquets not derived from animals, occurs among the Warramanga tribe of Central Australia. One totem kin is merely called "The Men" (Kati), the name which, in dozens of cases, a tribe gives to itself. Another totem kin is called "The Laughing Boys" (Thaballa), a name which is obviously a nickname, and not given from within. The Thaballa have found it necessary to evolve a myth about descent from a giggling boy and his giggling playmates, and to practise magic for their behoof, as they are supposed not to be dead. All this has clearly been done by the Laughing Boy totem kin merely to keep themselves in line with other totem kins named from lower animal form.[41] This totem name can have been nothing but a group nickname.[42]
I have next to explain the nature of the superstitious regard paid by totemists to their name-giving animals.
My guess, says Dr. Durkheim, is "difficult for those who know the religious character of the totem, the cult of which it is our object to explain. How could a sobriquet become the centre of a regular religious system?"
Dr. Durkheim calls the system "religious," and adds that I "leave on one side this religious aspect of totemism: but to do so is to leave on one side the essential factor in the phenomenon to be explained."
Now, as a matter of fact, I left no element of Australian totemism "on one side." I mentioned every totemic tabu and magical practice that was known to me. But I do not (it is really a mere question of words) describe the beliefs as "religious." Dr. Durkheim does; he describes them, as we saw, almost in the terms of the Creed of St. Athanasius. But I find, in Australia, no case of such religious usages as praying to, or feeding, or burying, the totem. Such really "religious" rites are performed, in Samoa, for example, where an animal, once probably a totem, is now regarded as the shrine or vehicle of an ancestral spirit, who has become a kind of god,[43] and, in Egypt, the animal gods had once, it seems all but certain, been totems. In Australia, to be sure, two totems, Eagle Hawk and Crow, were creators, in some myths. So far, totemic conceptions may be called "religious" conceptions, more or less, and if Dr. Durkheim likes to call totems "gods," as he does, he has a right to do so. The difference here, then, is one of terminology.
We can also show how totems in Australia become involved in really religious conceptions, as I understand "religion," if we may cite Mr. Howitt's evidence. Mr. Howitt says: "This is certain, that when the aboriginal legends purport to account for the origin of totemy, that is to say the origin of the social divisions which are named after animals, it is not the totems themselves to whom this is attributed, nor to the black fellows, but it is said that the institutions of these divisions and the assumption of the animal names, were in consequence of some injunction of the great supernatural being, such as Bunjil, given through the mouth of the wizard of the tribe."[44] "Any tradition of the origin of the two classes" (phratries) "is one which attributes it to a supernatural agency."[45] Accepting Mr. Howitt's evidence (always welcomed on other points), one source of the "religious" character of totemism is at once revealed. The totemist obeys the decree of Bunjil, or Baiame, as the Cretans obeyed the divine decrees given by Zeus to Minos.
Though I had not observed this statement by Mr. Howitt, still, in Social Origins, I have quoted five cases in which a supernormal being or beings, licensed, or actually ordained, the totemic rules, thereby giving them, in my sense of the phrase, a real religious sanction. Rules with a religious sanction, vouched for by a myth which explained the divine origin of a name, might well become "the centre of a veritable religious system."[46]
As another example of the myth that totems are of divine or supernormal institution, Mrs. Langloh Parker gives the following case from the Euahlayi tribe, on the Queensland border of north-west New South Wales. Their nearest Kamilaroi neighbours live a hundred and fifty miles away, but they call their "over-god," or "All Father," by the Kamilaroi word Baiame, pronounced "Byamee"; in other respects they "have only a few words the same as the Kamilaroi." These words, however, indicate, I think, a previous community of language.
Mrs. Langloh Parker writes, on this matter of the divine institution of totems, "A poor old blind black fellow of over eighty came back here the other day. He told me some more legends, in one of which was a curiously interesting bit about the totems. The legend was about Byamee, and it spoke of him as having a totem name for every part of his body—even to a different one for each finger and toe. No one had a totem name at that time, but when Byamee was going away for good he gave each division of the tribe one of his totems, and said that every one hereafter was to have a totem name which they were to take, men and women alike, from their mother; all having the same totem must never marry each other, but be as brothers and sisters, however far apart were their hunting grounds. That is surely some slight further confirmation of Byamee as one apart, for no one else ever had all the totems in one person; though a person has often a second or individual totem of his own, not hereditary, given him by the wirreenuns (sorcerers or medicine men), called his yunbeai, any hurt to which injures him, and which he may never eat—his hereditary totem he may."
In such cases, myths give a "religious" origin for totemism.
Tribes which have religious myths, attributing totemism to the decree of a superhuman being, may also have other myths giving quite other explanations. Thus the Dieri were said to have a fable to the effect that Mura-Mura, "the creator," enjoined totemism, to regulate marriage.[47] Later, Mr. Howitt learned that "in the plural form Mura-Mura means the deceased ancestors themselves."[48] In fact, in the plural, the Mura-Mura answer more or less to the Alcheringa men of the Arunta, to that potent, magical, partly human, partly divine, partly bestial, race, which, like the Greek Titans, appears in so many mythologies, and "airs" the world for the reception of man. It is usual to find a divine word, like Mura-Mura, in the plural, meaning this kind of race, while in the singular, the term seems to denote a deity.[49]
Whether there be such a singular form of Mura-Mura in Dieri, with the sense of deity, I know not. Mr. Gason, an initiated man, says that he (Mura-Mura) made men out of Lizards. Ancestral spirits are not here in question.
Mr. Howitt now knows a Dieri myth by which totems were not divinely decreed, but were children of a Mura-Mura, or Alcheringa female Titan. Or, in another myth, as animals, they came out of the earth in an isle, in a lake, and "being revived by the heat of the sun, got up and went away as human beings in every direction."[50]
Such are the various myths of the Dieri. Another myth attributes exogamy to a moral reformatory movement, which, of course, could only be imagined by men living under exogamy already.
In other cases, as in America among the north-western peoples, a myth of ancestral friendship with the totem animal is narrated. That myth is conditioned by the prevailing animistic belief that a man's soul is reincarnated in a man, a beast's, in a beast, though some tribes hold that a soul always incarnates itself in but one species. The Arunta myth is that semi-bestial forms became human, and that the souls of these totem ancestors are reincarnated in human children. As a rule, the totem, being explained in myth as a direct ancestor of the totemist, or a kinsman, or as the animal out of which he was evolved, receives such consideration as ancestral spirits, where they have a cult, obtain,... more or less religious. All these facts are universally known. There is here no conjecture. I do not need to guess that such more or less religious myths of the origin of the connection between totem and totemist would probably be evolved. They actually were evolved, and a large collection of them may be found in Mr. Frazer's Totemism.
In but one case known to me, a non-religious and thoroughly natural cause of the totem name is given. Two totem kins are said to be so called "from having, in former times, principally subsisted on a small fish, and a very small opossum." These are but two out of seven kins, in one Australian tribe. In the other five cases the totem kins, according to the myth, are descended from their totem animals, and, of course, owe to them, in each case, friendly kinship and regard.[51]
Enfin, it suffices for me to record all the known facts of totemic tabu and practice, in Australia, and, as long as I give them, it matters very little whether I call them "religious" or not. They certainly are on the frontiers of religion: it is more important to explain their evolution than to dispute about the meaning of a term, "religion," which every one defines as he pleases. To the evolution of totemic marriage rules out of a certain belief as to the name-giving animals of groups, we next turn.
So far we have reached these results: we guess that for the sake of distinction groups gave each other animal and plant names. These became stereotyped, we conjecture, and their origin was forgotten. The belief that there must necessarily be some connection between animals and men of the same names led to speculation about the nature of the connection. The usual reply to the question was that the men and animals of the same names were akin by blood. That kinship, with animals, being peculiarly mysterious, was peculiarly sacred. From these ideas arose tabus, and among others, that of totemic exogamy.
The nature and origin of the supposed connection or rapport between each human group and its name-giving animal is thus explained in a way consistent with universally recognised savage modes of thinking, and with the ordinary process by which collective names, even in modern times, are given from without. Dr. Pikler, Major Powell, Mr. Herbert Spencer, Lord Avebury, Mr. Howitt, and others have recognised that the names are the germ of totemism. But both Mr. Herbert Spencer and Lord Avebury appear to think that the name Eagle Hawk or Crow, or Wolf or Raven, was originally that of a male ancestor, who founded a clan that inherited his name. Thus a given Donald, of the Islay family, marrying a MacHenry heiress, gave the name "MacDonald" to the MacHenrys of Glencoe. But this theory is impossible, as we must repeat, in conditions of inheriting names through women, and such were the conditions under which totemism arose. The animal name, now totemic, from the first was a group name, as Mr. Fison argued long ago. "The Australian divisions show that the totem is, in the first place, the badge of a group, not of an individual.... And even if it were first given to an individual, his family, i.e. his children, could not inherit it from him."[52] These are words of gold.
[1] Darwin, Descent of Man, it pp. 361-363. 1871.
[2] I do not extend conjecture to a period when "our human or half-human ancestors" may hare had a rutting season, like stags. Cf. Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, pp. 27, 28.
[3] Here I cannot but remark on the almost insuperable difficulty of getting savants to understand an unfamiliar idea. M. Salomon Reinach writes, "Another theory (Atkinson, Letourneau) explains exogamy as the result of the sexual jealousy of the male, chief of the primitive group. (Cf. L'Année Sociologique, 1904, pp. 407, 434.) He is supposed to have tabooed all the women of the clan, reserving them for himself. This conception of a chief not only polygamous but omnigamous" (pasigamous must be meant!) "is founded on no known ethnological fact." (Cultes, Mythes et Religions, i. 161, Note I, 1905.) Mr. Atkinson does not speak of a "clan" at all. The "clan," in French, American, and some English anthropologists' terminology, is a totem kin with exogamy and female reckoning of descent. Mr. Atkinson speaks, in the first instance, of "family groups," "the cyclopean family," and a sire with his female mates and children. Such a sire is no more and no less "omnigamous" than a Turk in his harem, except that, as his condition is "semi-brutish," his daughters (as in Panama, in 1699) are not tabooed to him. Ethnology cannot now find this state of things of course; it is a theory of Mr. Darwin's, based on the known habits of the higher mammals.
[4] See Mr. Crawley's "The Mystic Rose" for this theory of sexual taboo.
[5] Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 153.
[6] Golden Bough, 2, i. pp. 404-446.
[7] Nineteenth Century, xxx. p. 566 sq.
[8] See examples in "Cupid and Psyche," in my Custom and Myth, and Mr. Clodd's Tom Tid Tot, pp. 91-93.
[9] Der Ursprung des Totemismus. Von Dr. Julius Pikler, Professor der Rechtsphilosophie an der Universität Budapest. K. Koffmann, Berlin, s.a. Apparently of 1900. This tract, "The Origin of Totemism," written in 1899, did not come to my knowledge till after this chapter was drafted.
[10] Contributions to the Science of Mythology, i. p. 201.
[11] Cf. Social Origins, pp. 141, 142.
[12] Ursprung des Totemismus, p. 7.
[13] See Colonel Mallery on Pictographs, Report of Bureau of Ethnology, 1888-1889, pp. 56-61.
[14] "From two inscriptions found at Elensis it appears that the names of the priests were committed to the depths of the sea, probably they were engraved on tablets of bronze or lead, and thrown into deep water in the Gulf of Salamis. ... A clearer illustration of the confusion between the incorporeal and the corporeal, between the name and its material embodiment, could hardly be found than in this practice of civilised Greece." (Golden Bough, 2, i p. 441.) Cf. Budge, Egyptian Magic, pp. 160-162, 1901. "The Egyptians regarded the creation as the result of the utterance of the name of the god Neb-er-tcher by himself Isis could not do her will on him till she learned the name of the god Ra." Messrs. Spencer and Gillen tell us that the great sky-dwelling Being of the Kaitish tribe "made himself and gave himself his name." He made himself very inadequately, according to the myth, which may rest on a false etymology, and the meaning of his name is not pretty, but it would not surprise one if, by uttering his name, he made himself. (Northern Tribes, p. 498.)
[15] Der Ursprung des Totemismus, pp. 10, 11.
[16] Social Origins, p. 138.
[17] I am sure to be told that in Chapter III. I declared local totem groups to be the result of reckoning in the male line, and not primitive, and that, here, I make the primitive animal-named group local. My reply is that in this passage I am not speaking of totem groups, but of local groups bearing animal names, a very different thing. A group may have borne an animal name long before it evolved totemic beliefs about the animal, and recognised it as a totem. No group that was not local could get a name to itself, at this early stage of the proceedings. The "local habitation" precedes the "name."
[18] Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 139.
[19] J. A. I., p. 53, August 1888.
[20] Social Origins, pp. 145, 146, and Note 1.
[21] J. A. I., August 1888, p. 51. South-Eastern Tribes, p. 736.
[22] Other tribes decidedly do understand. Can the Churinga nanja and reincarnation beliefs have set up nescience of obvious facts among the Arunta? "The children originate solely from the male parent, and only owe their infantine nurture to the mother," according to certain Australian tribes with female descent. (Howitt, J. A. I., 1882, p. 502. South-Eastern Tribes, pp. 283, 284. So, too, the Euahlayi. Mrs. Langloh Parker's MS.)
[23] Cf. Golden Bough, 2, i. pp. 360-362.
[24] Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, p. 254.
[25] On this point of the blood tabu see Dr. Durkheim, L'Année Sociologique, i. pp. 47-57. Also M. Reinach, L'Anthropologie, vol. x. p. 65. The point was laid before me long ago by Mr. Arthur Platt, when he was editing the papers of Mr. J. F. McLennan. Dr. Durkheim charges me (Folk Lore, December 1903) with treating these tabus "vaguely" in Social Origins. I merely referred the reader more than once, as in Social Origins, p. 57, Note I, to Dr. Durkheim's own exposition, also to M. Reinach, L'Anthropologie, x. p. 65. The theory of the sacredness of the blood is not absolutely necessary. The totem tabu often excludes all contact with the totem by the totemist.
[26] The passage will be found in Social Origins, pp. 166-175.
[27] Social Origins, pp. 295-301.
[28] Folk Lore, December 1903, p. 423.
[29] Vindication of Cameron's Name. "Saints of the Covenant," i. p. 251.
[30] Northern Tribes, p. 10, Note 2.
[31] J. J. Atkinson. The natives call us "White Men." We do not call ourselves "God dams," but Jeanne d'Arc did.
[32] Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada, vol. ix., vii. pp. 64, 66.
[33] Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada, ut supra, pp. 96, 97.
[34] Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 154.
[35] Blackfoot Lodge Tales, p. 208, 1893.
[36] Op. cit., p. 225.
[37] Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 131.
[38] Spencer and Gillen, Central Tribes, p. 638.
[39] Macbain, Gaelic Etymological Dictionary.
[40] Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 154.
[41] Northern Tribes, pp. 207-210.
[42] I am unable to understand how Mr. Howitt can say that he knows no Australian case of such nicknames being adopted. Mentioning Mr. Haddon's theory that groups were named each after its special variety of food, he says "this receives support from the fact that analogous names obtain now in certain tribes, e.g. the Yum." (Op. cit., p. 154.) I understand Mr. Haddon to mean that these names were sobriquets given from without and accepted. If so, Mr. Howitt does know such cases after all. Unluckily he gives no instances in treating of Yuin names, unless names of individuals derived from their skill in catching or spearing this or that bird or fish are intended. These exist among the more elderly Kunaï. (Op. cit., p. 738.) But Mr. Haddon was not thinking of such individual names of senior men, but of group names. On his theory Wolves and Ravens were so styled because wolves and ravens were their chief articles of diet.
[43] See Turner's Samoa, and Mr. Tylor, J. A. I., N.S., i. p. 142.
[44] J. A. I., August 1888, pp. 53, 54. Also volume xiii. p. 498. Cf., too Native Tribes of South-East Australia, pp. 89, 488, 498.
[45] J. A. I., August 1888, p. 67.
[46] Bureau of Ethnology Report, 1892, 1893, Part I. pp. 22, 23. Howitt, Organisation of Australian Tribes, p. 134 Information from Mrs. Langloh Parker. These sources give Menomini, Dieri, Murring, Woeworung, and Euahlayi myths, attributing totemic rules and names to divine institution.
[47] Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 25.
[48] J. A. I., 1888, p. 498. Cf. Native Tribes of South-East Australia, pp. 482-484. Mura-Mura, till further notice, are mythical ancestors, not reincarnated.
[49] Making of Religion, p. 232, 1898.
[50] Assoc. Adv. Science, p. 531, and Note 30, 1902. For other discrepant myths, cf. Native Tribes of S.E. Australia, pp. 475, 482.
[51] Grey, Vocabulary of the Dialects of South-Western Australia. That only two of seven totems in one tribe were explained is usually overlooked.
[52] Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 165, 1880.