Up to this point, we have treated of totems just as we find them in savage practice. We have seen that totem names are the titles of groups of kindred, real or imagined; they are derived from animals, plants, and other natural objects; they appear among tribes who reckon descent either on the sword or spindle side, and the totem name of each group is usually (but not in the case of the Arunta) one mark of the exogamous limit. None may marry a person of the same totem name. But, in company with this prohibition, is found a body of myths, superstitions, rites, magical practices, and artistic uses of the totem.[1] We have shown (Chapter II.) that we cannot move a step without a clear and consistent hypothesis of the origins of Totemism. This we now try to produce.
SACRED ANIMALS IN SAVAGE SOCIETY
Savages, both in their groups of kin, in their magical societies, or clubs, and privately, as individuals, are apt to regard certain beasts, plants, and so on, as the guardians of the group, of the society, and of the private person. To these animal guardians, whether of the individual, the society, or the group of kin, they show a certain amount of reverence and respect. That reverence naturally takes much the same forms—the inevitable forms—as of not killing or eating the animal, occasionally praying to it, or of burying dead representatives of the species, as may happen. But I am unaware that the savage ever calls his personal selected animal or plant, or the guardian animal of his magical society (except among the Arunta, where the totem groups are evolving into magical clubs), by the same term as he applies to the hereditary guardian of his group of kindred; his totem, as I use the word. If I am right, this distinction has been overlooked, or thought insignificant, by some modern inquirers. Major. Powell, the Director of the Ethnological Bureau at Washington, appears to apply, the word totem both to the chosen animal friend of the individual, and to that of the magical society in America, which includes men of various group totems.[2] He also applies it to the totem of the kin.
Mr. Frazer, too, writes of (1) The Clan Totem, (2) The Sex Totem (in Australia), (3) 'The Individual Totem, belonging to a single individual, and not passing to his descendants,' and even indicates that one savage may have five totems.[3] This third rule as to the non-hereditable character of 'the individual totem' has, since Mr. Frazer wrote in 1887, been found to admit of more exceptions than we then knew. In a few cases and places, the animal selected by, or for, the private individual, is found to descend to his or her children. In my opinion it is better, for the present at least, to speak of such protective animals of individuals, by the names which their savage protégés give to them in each case: nyarongs (Sarawak) 'bush-souls,' (Calabar) naguals, (Central America) manitus (?) as among the Algonquins, Yunbeai in some Australian dialects, and so forth.[4] I myself here use 'totem' only of the object which lends its name, hereditarily, to a group of kin.
PROPOSED RESTRICTION OF THE USE OF THE WORD 'TOTEM'
This restriction I make, not for the purpose of simplifying the problem of totemism by disregarding 'the individual totem,' 'the sex totem,' and so on, but because I understand that savages everywhere use one word for their hereditary kin totem, and other words for the plant or animal protectors of individuals, of magical societies, and so forth. The true totem is a plant or animal or other thing, the hereditary friend and ally—of the kin—but all plant or animal allies of individuals or of magical societies are not totems. Though the attitude of a private person to his nagual, or of a magical society to its protective animal, may often closely resemble the attitude of the group to its hereditary totem, still, the origin of this attitude of respect may be different in each case.
This is obvious, for the individual or society deliberately adopts an animal protector and friend, usually suggested in a dream, after a fast, whereas we can scarcely conceive that the totem was deliberately adopted by the first members of the first totem groups. Savages look on animals as personalities like themselves, but more powerful, gifted with more wakan, or mana, or cosmic rapport: each man, therefore, and each organised magical society, looks out for, and, for some reason of dream or divination, adopts, a special animal friend. But it is hard to believe that the members of a primeval human group of unknown antiquity, consciously and deliberately made a compact to adopt, and for ever be faithful to—this or that plant, animal, element, or the like—to be inherited in the female line. For, on this plan, the group, say Wolves, instantly loses the totem it has adopted.
We cannot prove that it was not so, that a primitive group of rudimentary human beings did not make a covenant with Bear, or Wolf, as Israel did with Jehovah, and as an individual savage does with his nyarong, or nagual, or manitu. This covenant, if made and kept by each group, would be the Origin of Totemism. But, with female descent, the covenant could not be kept. I am not certain that this theory, involving joint and deliberate selection and retention of a totem, by a primeval human group, has ever been maintained, unless it be by Mr. Jevons. 'The primary object of a totem alliance between a human kin and an animal kind is to obtain a supernatural ally against supernatural foes.'[5] The term 'supernatural' seems here out of place—both the animal kind and the human kin being natural; and one has a difficulty in conceiving that very early groups of kin would make, and would adhere to, such alliances. Indeed, how could they adhere to their totems, when these descended through women of alien totem groups? But there seems to be nothing otherwise impossible or self-contradictory in this theory; nor can it be disproved, for lack of evidence. Only such theories as are self-contradictory, or inconsistent with the known and admitted facts of the case, are capable of absolute disproof.
It may, of course, be objected here that, though totems, in actual savage society, descend sometimes in the female line, still, descent in the male line may be the original rule; and that thus a group, like an individual, could seek, make a covenant with, and cleave to a grub, or frog, or lizard, as a supernatural ally. But, for reasons already indicated, in an earlier part of this work, I conceive that, originally, totems descended in the female line only. One reason for this opinion is that, as soon as descent of the totem comes by the male line, a distinct step in the upward movement towards civilisation and a settled life is made. It is not very probable that the backward step, from reckoning by male lineage to descent in the female line, has often been taken. On the other hand, tribes which now inherit the totem in the male line, exhibit in their institutions many survivals of female descent. An instance is that of the Mandans, as recorded by Mr. Dorsey.[6] Among the Melanesians, where female descent still exists, there is at work the most obvious tendency towards descent through males, as Dr. Codrington proves in an excellent work on that people. Dr. Durkheim, too, has pointed out the traces of uterine descent among the Arunta, who now reckon in the male line.[7] On the other hand, where we find descent in the male line, I am not aware that we discover signs of movement in the opposite direction. In this opinion that, as a general rule, descent was reckoned in the female, not the male line, originally, I have the support of Mr. E. B. Tylor.[8] For these reasons the hypothesis of the selection of and covenant with a 'supernatural ally,' plant or animal, by the deliberate joint action of an early group, at a given moment, involving staunch adherence to the original resolution, rather strains belief; and a suggestion perhaps more plausible will be offered later.