§ VI.
TOTEMISM: BELIEF IN DESCENT FROM ANIMAL OR PLANT.
In addition to the beliefs in the transformation of men into animals and in the transmigration of souls into the bodies of animals, we find among barbarous peoples a belief which is probably the parent of one and certainly nearly related to both, namely, in descent from the animal or plant, more often the former, whose name they bear. Its connection with transmigration is seen in the belief of the Moquis of Arizona, that after death they live in the form of their totemic animal, those of the deer family becoming deer, and so on through the several gentes. The belief survives in its most primitive and vivid forms among two races, the aborigines of Australia and the North American Indians. The word “totemism,” given to it both in its religious and social aspects, is derived from the Algonquin “dodaim” or “dodhaim,” meaning “clanmark.” Among the Australians the word “kobong,” meaning “friend” or “protector,” is the generic term for the animal or plant by which they are known. It is somewhat akin in significance to the Indian words “manitou,” “oki,” etc., comprehending “the manifestations of the unseen world, yet conveying no sense of personal unity,” which are commonly translated by the misleading word “medicine;” hence “medicine-men.”
The family name, or second name borne by all the tribes in lineal descent, and which corresponds to our surname, i.e. super nomen, or “over-name,” is derived from names of beasts, birds, plants, etc., around which traditions of their transformation into men linger. Sir George Grey[44] says that there is a mysterious connection between a native and his kobong. It is his protecting angel, like the “daimôn” of Socrates, like the “genius” of the early Italian. “If it is an animal, he will not kill one of the species to which it belongs, should he find it asleep, and he always kills it reluctantly and never without affording it a chance of escape. The family belief is that some one individual of the species is their dearest friend, to kill whom would be a great crime,” as, in Hindu belief, when a Rajah was said to have entered at death into the body of a fish, a “close time” was at once decreed. Among the Indian tribes we find well-nigh the whole fauna and flora represented, their totems being the Bear, Turtle, Deer, Snake, Eagle, Pike, Corn, Tobacco, etc. Like the Australians, these tribes regarded themselves as being of the breed of their particular animal-totem, and avoided hunting, slaying, and eating (of which more presently) the creature under whose form the ancestor was thought to be manifest. The Chippeways carried their respect even farther. Deriving their origin from the dog, they at one time refrained from employing their supposed canine ancestors in dragging their sledges. The Bechuana and other people of South Africa will avoid eating their tribe-animal or wearing its skin. The same prohibitions are found among tribes in Northern Asia, and the Vogulitzi of Siberia, when they have killed a bear, address it formally, maintaining “that the blame is to be laid on the arrows and iron, which were made and forged by the Russians!” Among the Delawares the Tortoise gens claimed supremacy over the others, because their ancestor, who had become a fabled monster in their mythology, bore their world on his back. The California Indians are in interesting agreement with Lord Monboddo when, in claiming descent from the prairie wolf, they account for the loss of their tails by the habit of sitting, which, in course of time, wore them down to the stump! The Kickapoos say their ancestors had tails, and that when they lost them the “impudent fox sent every morning to ask how their tails were, and the bear shook his fat sides at the joke.” The Patagonians are said to have a number of animal deities, creators of the several tribes, some being of the caste of the guanaco and others of the ostrich. In short, the group of beliefs and practices found among races in the lower stages of culture point to a widespread common attitude towards the mystery of life around them. In speaking of totemism among the Red races Dr. Brinton thinks that the free use of animate symbols to express abstract ideas, which he finds so frequent, is the source of a confusion which has led to their claiming literal descent from wild beasts. But the barbaric mind bristles with contradictions and mutually destructive conceptions; nothing is too wonderful, too bizarre, for its acceptance, and the belief in actual animal descent is not the most remarkable or far-fetched among the articles of its creed.
The subject of totemism is full of interest both on its religious and social side:—
On its religious side it has given rise, or, if this be not conceded, impetus, to that worship of animals which assuredly had its source in the attribution of mysterious power through some spirit within them, making them deity incarnate.
On its social side it has led to prohibitions which are inwoven among the customs and prejudices of civilised communities. But, before speaking of these prohibitions, the barbaric mode of reckoning descent should be noticed.
The family name borne by most Australian tribes is perpetuated by the children, whether boys or girls, taking their mother’s name. Precisely the same custom is found among some American Indians, the children of both sexes being of the mother’s clan. Among the Moquis of Arizona all the members of each gens trace descent from a common ancestor; they are regarded as brothers and sisters.[45] Now, the family, as we define it, does not exist in savage communities, nor, as Mr. McLennan says in his very remarkable work on Primitive Marriage, had “the earliest human groups any idea of kinship, ... the physical root of which could be discerned only through observation and reflection.” Where the relations of the sexes were confused and promiscuous, the oldest system in which the idea of blood-ties was expressed was a system of kinship through the mother. The habits of the “much-married” primitive men made mistake about any one’s mother less likely than mistake about his father; and, if in civilised times it is, as the saying goes, a wise child that knows its own father, he was, in barbarous times, a wise father who knew his own child. Examples tracing the kinship through females, father and offspring being never of the same clan, abound in both ancient and modern authorities, and perhaps the most amusing one that can be given is found in Dr. Morgan’s Systems of Consanguinity. He says that the “natives of the province of Keang-se are celebrated among the natives of the other Chinese provinces for the mode or form used by them in address, namely, ‘Laon peaon,’ which, freely translated, means, ‘Oh, you old fellow, brother mine by some of the ramifications of female relationship!’”[46]
The prohibitions arising out of or confirmed by totemism are two: 1. Against intermarriage between those of the same name or crest. 2. Against the eating of the totem by any member of the tribe called after it.
1. Among both Australians and Indians a man is forbidden to marry in his own clan, i.e. any woman of his own surname or badge, no matter where she was born or however distantly related to him. The Navajoes of Arizona say that if they married in their own clan “their bones would dry up and they would die.”
Were this practice of “Exogamy,” as marriage outside the totem-kin is called, limited to one or two places, it might be classed among exceptional local customs based on a tradition, say, of some heated blood-feud between the tribes. But its prevalence among savage or semi-savage races all the world over points to reasons the nature of which is still a crux to the anthropologists. The late Mr. McLennan, whose opinion on such a matter is entitled to the most weight, connects it with the custom of female infanticide, which, rendering women scarce, led at once to polyandry, or one female to several males, within the tribe, and to the capturing of women from other tribes. This last-named practice strengthens Mr. McLennan’s theory. He cites numerous instances from past and present barbarous races, and traces its embodiment in formal code until we come to the mock relics of the custom in modern times, as, for example, the harmless “survival” in bride-lifting, that is, stealing, as in the word “cattle-lifting.”
Connected with this custom is the equally prevailing one which forbids intercourse between relations, as especially between a couple and their fathers and mothers-in-law, and which also forbids mentioning their names. So far as the aversion which the savage has to telling his own name, or uttering that of any person (especially of the dead) or thing feared by him is concerned, the reason is not far to seek. It lies in that confusion between names and things which marks all primitive thinking. The savage, who shrinks from having his likeness taken in the fear that a part of himself is being carried away thereby, regards his name as something through which he may be harmed. So he will use all sorts of roundabout phrases to avoid saying it, and even change it that he may elude his foes, and puzzle or cheat Death when he comes to look for him. But why a son-in-law should not see the face of his mother-in-law, for so it is among the Navajoes, (where the offender would, they say, go blind), the Aranaks of South America, the Caribs and other tribes of more northern regions, the Fijians, Sumatrans, Dyaks, the natives of Australia, the Zulus, in brief, along the range of the lower culture, is a question to which no satisfactory answer has been given, and to which reference is here made because of its connection with totemism.
2. That the animal which is the totem of the tribe should not be eaten, even where men did not hesitate to eat men of another totem, is a custom for which it is less hard to account. The division of flesh into two classes of forbidden and permitted, of clean and unclean, with the resulting artificial liking or repulsion for food which custom arising out of that division has brought about, is probably referable to old beliefs in the inherent sacredness of certain animals. The Indians of Charlotte Island never eat crows, because they believe in crow-ancestors, and they smear themselves with black paint in memory of that tradition; the Dacotahs would neither kill nor eat their totems, and if necessity compels these and like barbarians to break the law, the meal is preceded by profuse apologies and religious ceremonies over the slain. Although the aborigines of Victoria, who are to be ranked among the lowest savages extant, devour the most loathsome things, worms, slugs, and vermin, they have a classification of meats to be eaten or avoided. A Kumite is deeply grieved when hunger compels him to eat anything which bears his name, but he may satisfy his hunger with anything that is Krokee. The abstention of the Brahmans from meat, the pseudo-revealed injunction to the Hebrews against certain flesh-foods (has that against pork its origin in the forgotten tradition of descent from a boar?), need no detailing here. But, as parallels, some restrictions amongst the ancient dwellers in these islands are of value. It was, according to Cæsar,[47] a crime to eat the domestic fowl, or goose, or hare, and to this day the last-named is an object of disgust in certain parts of Russia and Brittany. The oldest Welsh laws contain several allusions to the magical character of the hare, which was thought to change its sex every month or year, and to be the companion of the witches, who often assumed its shape.[48] The revulsion against horse-flesh as food may have its origin in the sacredness of the white horses, which, as Tacitus remarks,[49] were kept by the Germans at the public cost in groves holy to the gods, whose secrets they knew, and whose decrees regarding mortals their neighings interpreted. That this animal was a clan-totem among our forefathers there can be no doubt, and the proofs are with us in the white horses carved in outline on the chalk hills of Berkshire and the west, as in the names and crests of clan descendants.
The totem is not only the clan-name indicating descent from a common ancestor. It is also the clan-symbol, badge, or crest. Where the tribes among whom it is found are still in the picture-writing stage, i.e. when the idea is expressed by a portrait of the thing itself instead of by some sound-sign—a stage in writing corresponding to the primitive stage in language, when words were imitative—there we find the rude hieroglyphic of the totem a means of intercourse between different tribes, as well as with whites. A striking example of the use of such totemic symbols occurs in a petition sent by some Western Indian tribes to the United States Congress for the right to fish in certain small lakes near Lake Superior.
The leading clan is represented by a picture of the crane; then follow three martens, as totems of three tribes; then the bear, the man-fish, and the cat-fish, also totems. From the eye and heart of each of the animals runs a line connecting them with the eye and heart of the crane, to show that they are all of one mind, and the eye of the crane has also a line connecting it with the lakes on which the tribes have their eyes, and another line running towards Congress.
In the barbaric custom of painting or carving the totem on oars, on the bows and sides of canoes, on weapons, on pillars in the front of houses, and on the houses themselves; in tattooing it on various parts of the body (in the latter case, in some instances, together with pictures of exploits; so that the man carries on his person an illustrated history of his own life) we have the remote and forgotten origin of heraldic emblems. The symbols of civilised nations, as, e.g. the Imperial eagle, which so many states of ancient and modern renown have chosen; the crests of families of rank, with their fabulous monsters, as the cherub, the Greek gryps, surviving in the griffin, the dragon, the unicorn, which, born of rude fancy or terrified imagination, are now carved on the entrance-gates to the houses of the great; the armorial bearings on carriages; the crest engraven on ring or embossed on writing-paper, these are the lineal descendants of the totem; and the Indians, who could see no difference between their system of manitous and those of the white people, with their spread-eagle or their lion-rampant, made a shrewd guess that would not occur to many a parvenu applying at the Heralds’ College for a crest. The continuity is traceable in the custom of the Mexicans and other civilised nations of painting the totemic animals on their banners, flags, crests, and other insignia; and it would seem that we have in the totem the key to the mystery of those huge animal-shaped mounds which abound on the North American continent.
The arbitrary selection in the “ages of chivalry” of such arms as pleased the knightly fancy or ministered to its pride, or, as was often the case, resembled the name in sound, together with the ignorance then and till recently existing as to the origin of crests, and also the discredit into which a seemingly meaningless vanity had fallen, have made it difficult to trace the survival of the totem in the crests even of that numerous company of the Upper Ten who claim descent from warriors who came over with the Conqueror. But there is no doubt that an inquiry conducted on the lines suggested above, and not led into by-paths by false analogies, would yield matter of interest and value. It would add to the evidence of that common semi-civilised stage out of which we have risen. Such names as the Horsings, the Wylfings, the Derings, the Ravens, the Griffins, perhaps hold within themselves traces of the totem name of the horse, wolf, deer, raven, and that “animal fantasticall,” the griffin. In Scotland we find the clan Chattan, or the wild cat; in Ireland “the men of Osory were called by a name signifying the wild red deer.” On the other hand such names may have been given merely as nicknames (i.e. ekename or the added name, from eke, “also,” or “to augment”), suggested by the physical or mental likeness to the thing after which they are called.
But it is time to turn to the religious significance of the totem, as shown among races worshipping the animal which is their supposed ancestor.
At first glance this seems strong argument in support of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s theory that all forms of religion, and all myth, have their origin in ancestor worship. The mysterious power of stimulation, of excitation to frenzy, or of healing and soothing, or of poisoning, which certain plants possess, has been attributed to indwelling spirits, which, as Mr. Spencer contends, are regarded as human and ancestral. Very many illustrations of this occur, as, e.g. the worship of the Soma plant, and its promotion as a deity among the Aryans; the use of tobacco in religious ceremonies among the tribes of both Americas; whilst now and again we find trees and plants as totems. The Moquis have a totem-kin called the tobacco-plant, and also one called the seed-grass. One of the Peruvian Incas was called after the native name of the tobacco-plant; and among the Ojibways the buffalo grass was carried as a charm, and its god said to cause madness.
In Algonquin myth “there is a spirit for the corn, another for beans, another for squashes. They are sisters, and are very kind to each other. There are spirits in the water, in fire, in all the trees and berries, in herbs and in tobacco, in the grass.”
The worship of animals is on Mr. Spencer’s theory explained as due to the giving of a nickname of some beast or bird to a remote ancestor, the belief arising in course of time that such animal was the actual progenitor, hence its worship. We call a man a bear, a pig, or a vampire, in symbolic phrase, and the figure of speech remains a figure of speech with us. But the savage loses the metaphor, and it crystallises into hard matter-of-fact. So the traditions have grown, and Black Eagle, Strong Buffalo, Big Owl, Tortoise, etc., take the shape of actual forefathers of the tribe bearing their name and crest. According to the same theory the adoration of sun, moon, and mountains, etc., is due to a like source. Some famous chief was called the Sun; the metaphor was forgotten; the personal and concrete, as the more easily apprehended, remained; hence worship of the powers of nature “is a form of ancestor-worship, which has lost in a still greater degree the character of the original.”[50]
The objection raised in these pages to the extreme application of the solar theory applies with equal force to Mr. Spencer’s limitation of the origin of myth and religion to one source. Having cleared Scylla, we must not dash against Charybdis. Religion has its origin neither in fear of ghosts, as Mr. Spencer’s theory assumes, nor in a perception of the Infinite inherent in man, as Professor Max Müller holds. Rather does it lie in man’s sense of vague wonder in the presence of powers whose force he cannot measure, and his expressions towards which are manifold. There is underlying unity, but there are, to quote St. Paul, “diversities of operation.” There is just that surface unlikeness which one might expect from the different physical conditions and their resulting variety of subtle influences surrounding various races; influences shaping for them their gods, their upper and nether worlds; influences of climate and soil which made the hell of volcanic countries an abyss of sulphurous stifling smoke and everlasting fire, and the hell of cold climates a place of deathly frost; which gave to the giant-gods of northern zones their rugged awfulness, and to the goddesses of the sunny south their soft and stately grace. The theory of ancestor-worship as the basis of every form of religion does not allow sufficient play for the vagaries in which the same thing will be dressed by the barbaric fear and fancy, nor for the imagination as a creative force in the primitive mind even at the lowest at which we know it. And, of course, beneath that lowest lies a lower never to be fathomed. We are apt to talk of primitive man as if his representatives were with us in the black fellows who are at the bottom of the scale, forgetting that during unnumbered ages he was a brute in everything but the capacity by which at last the ape and tiger were subdued within him. Of the beginnings of his thought we can know nothing, but the fantastic forms in which it is first manifest compel us to regard him as a being whose feelings were uncurbed by reason. That ancestor-worship is one mode among others of man’s attitude towards the awe-begetting, mystery-inspiring universe, none can deny. That his earliest temples, as defined sacred spots, were tombs; that he prayed to his dead dear ones, or his dead feared ones, as the case may be, is admitted. From its strong personal character, ancestor-worship was, without doubt, one of the earliest expressions of man’s attitude before the world which his fancy filled with spirits. It flourishes among barbarous races to-day; it was the prominent feature of the old Aryan religion; it has entered into Christian practice in the worship of saints, and perhaps the only feature of religion which the modern Frenchman has retained is the culte des morts. That it was a part of the belief of the Emperor Napoleon III. the following extract from his will shows:—“We must remember that those we love look down upon us from heaven and protect us. It is the soul of my great Uncle which has always guided and supported me. Thus will it be with my son also if he proves worthy of his name.”
But the worship of ancestors is not primal. The comparatively late recognition of kinship by savages, among whom some rude form of religion existed, tells against it as the earliest mode of worship. Moreover, Nature is bigger than man, and this he was not slow to feel. Even if it be conceded that sun-myth and sun-worship once arose through the nicknaming of an ancestor as the Sun, we must take into account the force of that imagination which enabled the unconscious myth-maker, or creed-maker, to credit the moving orbs of heaven with personal life and will. The faculty which could do that might well express itself in awe-struck forms without intruding the ancestral ghost. Further, the records of the classic religions, themselves preserving many traces of a primitive nature-worship, point to an adoration of the great and bountiful, as well as to a sense of the maleficent and fateful, in earth and heaven which seem prior to the more concrete worship of forefathers and chieftains.
If for the worship of these last we substitute a general worship of spirits, there seems little left on which to differ. As aids to the explanation of the belief in animal ancestors and their subsequent deification and worship, as of the lion, the bull, the serpent, etc., we have always present in the barbaric mind the tendency to credit living things, and indeed lifeless, but moving ones, with a passion, a will, and a power to help or harm immeasurably greater than man’s. This is part and parcel of that belief in spirits everywhere which is the key to savage philosophy, and the growth of which is fostered by such secondary causes as the worship of ancestors.