Our author goes on: "A totem, in fact, is not a mere name, it is, above all and before all, a religious principle, one with the individual in whom it dwells; and part of his personality. One can no more change his totem, than he can change his soul...."
In that case, how did the supposed colonies thrown off by a segmented clan, manage to change their totems, as they did, on Dr. Durkheim's theory?[25] They lived in the early vigour of totemic beliefs, and during that blooming age of totemism, says Dr. Durkheim, "the totem is not a thing which men think they can dispose of at will," and yet, on his theory, they did dispose of it, they took new totems.[26]
The supposed process seems to me doubly impossible by Dr. Durkheim's premises. A "clan," exogamous, with female kin, cannot overflow its territory, for it has confessedly, as a "clan," no delimitations of territory. Consequently a clan cannot throw off a colony (only a tribe can do that); therefore, as there can be no "clan" colony, the tribal colony cannot change its one totem, for it has two. Moreover, Dr. Durkheim says that there can be no such cavalier treatment of the totem: "Tant du moins que les croyances totémiques sont encore en vigueur." Yet he also says that the totems were thus cavalierly treated when totemic beliefs were in vigour.
Dr. Durkheim, however, might reply: "A tribe with two 'clans' can throw off colonies, each colony necessarily consisting of members of both clans, and these can change their two totems." That might pass, if he had not said that, while totemic beliefs are in vigour, men cannot dispose of the totem, "a part of their personalities," at their will.
One argument, based on certain facts, has been advanced to show that the totem kins in the phratries are really the result of the segmentation of a "clan" into new clans with new totems. This argument, however, breaks down on a careful examination of the facts on which it is based, though I did not see that when I wrote Social Origins, p. 59, Note 1. The chief circumstance appealed to is this. The Mohegans in America have three phratries: (1) WOLF, with totem kins Wolf, Bear, Dog, Opossum; (2) TURKEY, with totem kins Turkey, Crane, Chicken; (3) TURTLE, with totem kins Little Turtle, Mud Turtle, Great Turtle, Yellow Eel. "Here we are almost forced to conclude," wrote Mr. Frazer in 1887, "that the Turtle phratry was originally a Turtle clan which subdivided into a number of clans, each of which took the name of a particular kind of turtle, while the Yellow Eel clan may have been a later subdivision."[27]
Mr. Frazer has apparently abandoned this position, but it seems to have escaped his observation, and the observation of Dr. Durkheim, who follows him here, that in several cases given by himself the various species of totem animals are not grouped (as they ought to be on the hypothesis of subdivision) under the headship of one totem of their own kind—like the three sorts of Turtle in the Mohegan Turtle phratry—but quite the reverse. They are found in the opposite phratry, under an animal not of their species.
Thus Mr. Dawson, cited by Mr. Frazer, gives for a Western Victoria tribe, now I believe extinct:—
Phratry A.
Totem kins:
Long-billed Cockatoo.
Pelican.
Phratry B.
Totem kins:
Banksian Cockatoo.
Boa Snake.
Quail.
The two cockatoos are, we see, in opposite phratries, not in the same, as they should be by Mr. Frazer's theory.[28]
This is a curious case, and is explained by a myth. Mr. Dawson, the recorder of the case (1881) was a scrupulous inquirer, and remarks that it is of the utmost importance to be able to converse with the natives in their own language. His daughter, who made the inquiries, was intimately acquainted with the dialects of the tribes in the Port Fairy district. The natives collaborated "with the most scrupulous honesty." The tribes had an otiose great Being, Pirmeheeal, or Mam Yungraak, called also Peep Ghnatnaen, that is, "Father Ours." He is a gigantic kindly man, living above the clouds. Thunder is his voice. "He is seldom mentioned, but always with respect."[29] This Being, however, did not institute exogamy. The mortal ancestor of the race "was by descent a Kuurokeetch, or Long-billed Cockatoo." His wife was a female Kappatch (Kappaheear), or Banksian Cockatoo. These two birds now head opposite phratries. Their children could not intermarry, so they brought in "strange flesh"—alien wives—whence, by female descent, came from abroad the other totem kins, Pelican, Boa Snake, and Quail. Pelican appears to be in Long-billed Cockatoo phratry; Boa Snake in Banksian Cockatoo phratry. At least these pairs may not intermarry. Quail, as if both a phratry and a totem kin by itself, may intermarry with any of the other four, while only three kins are open to each of the other four.[30] In this instance a Cockatoo phratry has not subdivided into Cockatoo totem kins, but two species of Cockatoos head opposite phratries, and are also totem kins in their own phratries.