[9] Fortnightly Review, p. 463.
[10] Howitt, Native Races of South-East Australia, p. 500.
[11] Fortnightly Review, p. 452.
[12] Fortnightly Review, p. 6l.
[APPENDIX]
SOME AMERICAN THEORIES OF TOTEMISM
With some American theories of the origin of totemism, I find it extremely difficult to deal. They ought not to be neglected, that were disrespectful to the valued labours of the school of the American "Bureau of Ethnology." But the expositions are scattered in numerous Reports, and are scarcely focussed with distinctness. Again, the terminology of American inquirers, the technical words which they use, differ from those which we employ. That fact would be unimportant if they employed their technical terms consistently. Unluckily this is not their practice. The terms "clan," "gens," and "phratry" are by them used with bewildering inconsistency, and are often interchangeable. When "clan" or gens, means, now (i) a collection of gentes, or (2) of families, or (3) of phratries, and again (4) "clan" means a totem kin with female descent; and again (5) a village community; while a phratry may be (1) an exogamous moiety of a tribe, or (2) a "family," or (3) a magical society; and a gens may be (1) a clan, or (2) a "family," or (3) an aggregate of families, or (4) a totem kin with male descent, or (5) a magical society, while "tribal" and "sub-tribal divisions" are vaguely spoken of—the European student is apt to be puzzled! All these varieties of terminology occur too frequently in the otherwise most praiseworthy works of some of the American School of Anthropologists. I had collected the examples, but to give them at length would occupy considerable space, and the facts are only too apparent to every reader.[1]
Once more, and this point is of essential importance, the recent writers on totemism in America dwell mainly on the institution as found among the tribes of the north-west coast of the States and of British Columbia. These tribes are so advanced in material civilisation that they dwell in village settlements. They have a system of credit which looks like a satirical parody of the credit system of the civilised world. In some tribes there is a regular organisation by ranks, noblesse depending on ancestral wealth.