The Secret of the Totem

by Andrew Lang

It seems sanguine to look for the origins of totemism among tribes so advanced in material culture. The origin of totemism lies far behind the lowest savagery of Australia. It is found in a more primitive form among the southern and eastern than in most of the north-western American tribes, but the north-western are chiefly studied, for example, by Mr. Hill-Tout, and by Dr. Boas. A new difficulty is caused by the alleged intermixture of tribes in very different states of social organisation. That intermixture, if I understand Mr. Hill-Tout, causes some borrowing of institutions among tribes of different languages, and different degrees of culture, in the west of British Columbia and the adjacent territories. We find, in the north, the primitive Australian type of organisation (Thlinket tribe), with phratries, totems, and descent in the female line. South of these are the Kwakiutl, with descent wavering in a curious fashion between the male and female systems. Further south are the Salish tribes, who have evolved something like the modern family, reckoning on both sides of the house. I, with Mr. McGee of the United States Bureau of Ethnology, suppose the Kwakiutl to be moving from the female to the male line of descent. In the opinions of Mr. Hill-Tout and Dr. Boas, they are moving from the advanced Salish to the primitive Thlinket system, under the influence of their primitive neighbours. It is not for me to decide this question. But it is unprecedented to find tribes with male reverting to female reckoning of descent

Next, Mr. Hill-Tout employs "totem" in various senses. As totems he reckons (1) the sacred animals of the tribe; (2) of the religious or magical societies (containing persons of many totems of descent); (3) of the individual and (4) the hereditary totems of the kin. All these, our author says, are, by their original concept, Guardian Spirits. All such protective animals, plants, or other objects, which patronise and give names to individuals, or kins, or tribes, or societies, are "totems," in the opinion of the late Major Powell, and the "American School," and are essentially "guardian spirits." All are derived by the American theory[2] from the manitu, or guardian, of some individual to whom the animal or other object has been revealed in an inspired dream or otherwise. The object became hereditary in the family of that man, descended to his offspring, or, in early societies with reckoning in the female line, to the offspring of his sisters (this is Mr. Hill-Tout's theory), and so became the hereditary totem of a kin, while men of various totem kins unite in religious societies with society "totems" suggested by dreams. These communities may or may not be exogamous, they may even be endogamous. By the friends of this theory the association of exogamy with hereditary kin-totemism is regarded as "accidental," rather than essential.

Using the word "totem" in this wide sense, or in these many senses, which are not ours, it is plain that a man and woman who chance to have the same "personal totem," (i) or belong to the same religious society with its "totem," (i) or to the same local tribe with its "totem," (3) may marry, and, by this way of looking at the matter, "totems" do permit marriage within the totem, and are not exogamous. But we, for our part (like Mr. E. B. Tylor, and M. Van Gennep[3]), call none of these personal, tribal, or society sacred animals "totems." That term we reserve for the hereditary totem of the exogamous kin. Thus it is not easy, it is almost impossible, for us to argue with Mr. Hill-Tout, as we and he use the term "totem" in utterly different senses.

On his theory there are all sorts of "totems," belonging to individuals and to various kinds of associations. The totems hereditary in the kins when they are exogamous, are exogamous (on Mr. Hill-Tout's theory) because the kins, in certain cases, made a treaty of alliance and intermarriage with other kins for purely political purposes. They might have made such treaties, and become exogamous, though they had no totems, no name-giving animals; and they might have had name-giving animals, and yet not made such treaties involving exogamy. Thus totemic exogamy is, on this theory, a mere accident: the totem has nothing to do with the exogamous rule.

Mr. Hill-Tout writes to me, "The totem groups are exogamous not because of their common totem, but because of blood relationship. It is the blood-tie[4] that bans marriage within the totem group, not the common totem. That exogamy and the totem group with female descent go together is accidental, and follows from the fact that the totem group is always, in Indian theory at least, blood related. Where I believe you err is in regarding exogamy as the essential feature of totemism. I cannot so regard it. To me it is secondary, and becomes the bar to marriage only because it marks kinship by blood, which is the real bar, however it may have arisen, and from whatever causes."

Here I am obliged to differ from Mr. Hill-Tout. I know no instance in which a tribe with female kin (the most primitive confessedly), and with hereditary totems, is not exogamous. Exogamy, then, if an accident, must be called an inseparable accident of totemism, with female descent, till cases to the contrary are proved to exist. Mr. Hill-Tout cites the Arunta case: totems among the Arunta are not exogamous. But of that argument we have disposed (see Chapter IV.), and it need no longer trouble us.

Again, it is not possible to agree with Mr. Hill-Tout when he writes, "It is the blood-tie that bars marriage within the totem group, not the common totem." The totem does not by its law prevent marriages of blood kin. A man, as far as totem law goes, may marry his daughter by blood, a brother may marry his sister on the father's side (with female descent), and a man may not marry a woman from a thousand miles away if she is of his totem, though she is not of his blood. It is not the real blood-tie itself, but the blood-tie as defined and sanctioned by the totem, that is not to be violated by marriage within it.

To return to the theory that totems are tutelary spirits in animal or other natural forms. A man may have a spirit guardian in animal form, that is his "totem," on the theory. He may transmit it to his descendants, and then it is their "totem"; or his sisters may adopt it, and hand it down in the female line, and then it is the totem of his nephews and nieces for ever; or the man may not transmit it at all. Usually, it is manifest, he did not transmit it; for there must have been countless species of animal protectors of individuals, but tribes in America have very few totems. If a man does transmit his animal protector, his descendants, lineal or collateral, may become exogamous, on the theory, by making other kins treaties of intermarriage to secure political alliances; or they may not, just as taste or chance direct. All the while, every "totem" of every sort, hereditary or not, is, on this theory, a guardian spirit. That spiritual entity is the essence of totemism, exogamy is an accident—according to Mr. Hill-Tout.

Such is his theory. It is, perhaps, the result of studying the North-West American Sulia, or "personal totem" answering to the nyarongs of Borneo, the naguals of the Southern American tribes, the yunbeai of the Euahlayi of New South Wales, and the "Bush Souls" of West Africa. All of these are, as the Ibans of Borneo imply in the term nyarong, "spirit helpers," in animal or material form. Some tribes call genuine totems by one name, but call animal familiars of an individual by another name. Budjan, among the Wiradjuri, stands both for a man's totem, and for the animal familiar which, rduring apparently hypnotic suggestion," he receives on being initiated.[5] Among the Ibans (but not among the few Australian tribes which have yunbeai), the spirit helper may befriend the great-grandchildren of its original protégé.[6]

But in no case recorded does this nyarong become the hereditary totem of an exogamous kin.