The Secret of the Totem

by Andrew Lang

"Tradition says that about the time the separation took place between the Bahurutshe and the Bakuena, Baboons entered the gardens of the Bahurutshe and ate their pumpkins, before the proper time for commencing to eat the fruits of the new year. The Bahurutshe were unwilling that the pumpkins which the baboons had broken off and nibbled should be wasted, and ate them accordingly. This act is said to have led to the Bahurutshe being called Buchwene, Baboon people—which" (namely, the Baboon) "is their Siboko to this day—and their having the precedence ever afterwards in the matter of taking the first bite of the new year's fruits. If this be the true explanation," adds Mr. Price, "it is evident that what is now used as a term of honour was once a term of reproach. The Bakuena, too, are said to owe their Siboko (the Crocodile) to the fact that their people once ate an ox which had been killed by a crocodile."

Mr. Price, therefore, is strongly inclined to think "that the Siboko of all the tribes was originally a kind of nickname or term of reproach, but," he adds, "there is a good deal of mystery about the whole thing."

On this point Mr. Stow, to whom Mr. Price wrote the letter just cited, remarks in his MS.: "From the foregoing facts it would seem possible that the origin of the Siboko among these tribes arose from some sobriquet that had been given to them, and that, in course of time, as their superstitious and devotional feelings became more developed, these tribal symbols became objects of veneration and superstitious awe, whose favour was to be propitiated or malign influence averted...."[3]

Here it will be seen that these South African tribes account for their Siboko now by the myth deriving the sacredness of the tribal animal from ancestor-worship, as reported by Mr. Theal, and again by nicknames given to the tribes on account of certain undignified incidents.

This latter theory is very like my own as stated in Social Origins, and to be set forth and reinforced later in this work. But the theory, as held by the Bahurutsche and Bakuena, does not help to confirm mine in the slightest degree. Among these very advanced African tribes, the Siboko or tribal sacred animal, is the animal of the local tribe, not, as in pure totemism, of the scattered exogamous kin. It is probably a lingering remnant of totemism. The totem of the most powerful local group in a tribe having descent through males, appears to have become the Siboko of the whole tribe, while the other totems have died out. It is not probable that a nickname of remembered origin, given in recent times to a tribe of relatively advanced civilisation, should, as the myth asserts, not only have become a name of honour, but should have founded tribal animal-worship.

It was in a low state of culture no longer found on earth, that I conceive the animal names of groups not yet totemic, names of origin no longer remembered, to have arisen and become the germ of totemism.

Myths of the origin of totemism, in short, are of absolutely no historic value. Siboko no longer arise in the manner postulated by these African myths; these myths are not based on experience any more than is the Tsimshian myth of the Bear Totem, to be criticised later in a chapter on American Totemism. We are to be on our guard, then, against looking for the origins of totemism among the myths of peoples of relatively advanced culture, such as the village-dwelling Indians of the north-west coast of America. We must not look for origins among tribes, even if otherwise pristine, who reckon by male descent. We must look on all savage myths of origins merely as savage hypotheses, which, in fact, usually agree with one or other of our scientific modern hypotheses, but yield them no corroboration.

On the common fallacy of regarding the tribe of to-day, with its relative powers, as primitive, we have spoken in Chapter I.

By the nature of the case, as the origin of totemism lies far beyond our powers of historical examination or of experiment, we must have recourse as regards this matter to conjecture.

Here a word might be said as to the method of conjecture about institutions of which the origins are concealed "in the dark backward and abysm of time."