(1) See also Mr. Frazer's Totemism, and Golden Bough, with chapter on Totemism in Modern Mythology.
The name "Totemism" or "Totamism" was first applied at the end of the last century by Long(1) to the Red Indian custom which acknowledges human kinship with animals. This institution had already been recognised among the Iroquois by Lafitau,(2) and by other observers. As to the word "totem," Mr. Max Muller(3) quotes an opinion that the interpreters, missionaries, Government inspectors, and others who apply the name totem to the Indian "family mark" must have been ignorant of the Indian languages, for there is in them no such word as totem. The right word, it appears, is otem; but as "totemism" has the advantage of possessing the ground, we prefer to say "totemism" rather than "otemism". The facts are the same, whatever name we give them. As Mr. Muller says himself,(4) "every warrior has his crest, which is called his totem";(5) and he goes on to describe a totem of an Indian who died about 1793. We may now return to the consideration of "otemism" or totemism. We approach it rather as a fact in the science of mythology than as a stage in the evolution of the modern family system. For us totemism is interesting because it proves the existence of that savage mental attitude which assumes kindred and alliance between man and the things in the world. As will afterwards be seen, totemism has also left its mark on the mythologies of the civilised races. We shall examine the institution first as it is found in Australia, because the Australian form of totemism shows in the highest known degree the savage habit of confusing in a community of kinship men, stars, plants, beasts, the heavenly bodies, and the forces of Nature. When this has once been elucidated, a shorter notice of other totemistic races will serve our purpose.
(1) Voyages and Travels, 1791.
(2) Moeurs des Sauvages (1724), p. 461.
(3) Academy, December 15, 1883.
(4) Selected Essays (1881), ii. 376.
(5) Compare Mr. Max Muller's Contributions to the Science of Mythology.
The society of the Murri or black fellows of Australia is divided into local tribes, each of which possesses, or used to possess, and hunt over a considerable tract of country. These local tribes are united by contiguity, and by common local interests, but not necessarily by blood kinship. For example, the Port Mackay tribe, the Mount Gambier tribe, the Ballarat tribe, all take their names from their district. In the same way we might speak of the people of Strathclyde or of Northumbria in early English history. Now, all these local tribes contain an indefinite number of stocks of kindred, of men believing themselves to be related by the ties of blood and common descent. That descent the groups agree in tracing, not from some real or idealised human parent, but from some animal, plant, or other natural object, as the kangaroo, the emu, the iguana, the pelican, and so forth. Persons of the pelican stock in the north of Queensland regard themselves as relations of people of the same stock in the most southern parts of Australia. The creature from which each tribe claims descent is called "of the same flesh," while persons of another stock are "fresh flesh". A native may not marry a woman of "his own flesh"; it is only a woman of "fresh" or "strange" flesh he may marry. A man may not eat an animal of "his own flesh"; he may only eat "strange flesh". Only under great stress of need will an Australian eat the animal which is the flesh-and-blood cousin and protector of his stock.(1) (These rules of marriage and blood, however, do not apply among the Arunta of Central Australia, whose Totems (if Totems they should be called) have been developed on very different lines.(2)) Clearer evidence of the confusion between man and beast, of the claiming of kin between man and beast, could hardly be.
(1) Dawson, Aborigines, pp. 26, 27; Howitt and Fison, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 169.
(2) Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia.