No closer parallel between our rural folk-lore sobriquets of village groups, given from without, and the names given from without of old savage totem groups (now reckoning in the male line, and, therefore, now settled together in given localities) could be invented. (For other examples see Appendix A.) I conceive, therefore, that my suggestion—the totem names of pristine groups were originally given from without, and were accepted (as in the case of the nicknames of Siouan gentes, now accepted by them)—may be reckoned no strain on our sense of probability. It is demonstrated that the name-giving processes of our villagers exist among American savage groups which reckon descent in the male line, and that they also existed among the savage groups which reckoned descent in the female line is, surely, a not unreasonable surmise. I add a list in parallel columns.
| English Village Names | Siouan Group Names |
| Rogues | Bad Sorts |
| Stags[50] | Elk[50] |
| Bull Dogs | Common Dogs |
| Horse Heads | Warts on Horses' Legs |
| Bone Pickers | Hide Scrapers |
| Pretty Girls | Girl Folk |
| Eaters of | Eaters of |
| Whitpot | Dried Venison |
| Cheese | Fish |
| Barley Bread | Dung |
| Dog. |
THEORY THAT SIOUAN GENTES NAMES ARE OF EUROPEAN ORIGIN
To produce, from North America, examples of group names conferred from without, as in the instances of our English villages, may, to some students, seem inadequate evidence. For example an unconvinced critic may say that the nicknames of Mr. Dorsey's 'Siouan gentes' were originally given by white men; the Sioux, Dacota, Asineboin, and other tribes having been long in contact with Europeans. Now it is quite possible that some of the names had this origin, as Mr. Dorsey himself observed. But no critic will go on to urge that the common totemic names which still designate many gentes were imposed by Europeans who came from English villages of 'Mice,' 'Cuckoos,' 'Tater Grubs,' 'Dogs,' and so forth. We might as wisely say that our peasantry borrowed these village names from what they had read about totem names in Cooper's novels. To name individuals, or groups, after animals, is certainly a natural tendency of the mind, whether in savage or civilised society.
If we take the famous Mandan tribe, now reckoning descent in the male line, but with undeniable survivals of descent in the female line, we find that the gentes are:
| Wolf | Bear | Prairie Chicken | Good Knife |
| Eagle | Flat Head | High Village |
Here, out of seven gentes, four names are totemic; one is a name of locality, 'High Village,' not a possible name in pristine nomadic society. While there are hundreds of such cases, we cannot reasonably regard the American group nicknames as generally of European origin. Still more does this theory fail us in the case of Melanesia, where contact with Europeans is recent and relatively slight. Among such tribes as the Mandans, and other Siouan peoples, we see Totemism with exogamy and female kinship waning, while kinship, recognised by male descent, plus settled conditions, brings in local names for gentes, and tends to cause the substitution of local names and nicknames for the totem group name. Precisely the same phenomena meet us, as we are to see, in Melanesia.
[1] As to the word 'totem,' but little is certainly known. Its earliest occurrence in literature, to my knowledge, is in a work by J. Long (1791), Voyages and Travels of an Indian Interpreter. Long sojourned among the Algonquin branch of the North American Indians. He spells the word 'Totam,' and even speaks of 'Totamism.' Mr. Tylor has pointed out that Long in one place confuses the totem, the hereditary group name, and protective object, with what used to be called the manitu or 'medicine,' of each individual Indian, chosen by him, or her, after a fast, at puberty. Remarks on Totemism, 1898, pp. 139-40. Cf. infra, 135, note.
[2] Man, 1902, No. 75.