TOTEMISM: BELIEF IN DESCENT FROM ANIMAL OR PLANT.
In addition to the beliefs in the transformation of men into animals and in the transmigration of souls into the bodies of animals, we find among barbarous peoples a belief which is probably the parent of one and certainly nearly related to both, namely, in descent from the animal or plant, more often the former, whose name they bear. Its connection with transmigration is seen in the belief of the Moquis of Arizona, that after death they live in the form of their totemic animal, those of the deer family becoming deer, and so on through the several gentes. The belief survives in its most primitive and vivid forms among two races, the aborigines of Australia and the North American Indians. The word “totemism,” given to it both in its religious and social aspects, is derived from the Algonquin “dodaim” or “dodhaim,” meaning “clanmark.” Among the Australians the word “kobong,” meaning “friend” or “protector,” is the generic term for the animal or plant by which they are known. It is somewhat akin in significance to the Indian words “manitou,” “oki,” etc., comprehending “the manifestations of the unseen world, yet conveying no sense of personal unity,” which are commonly translated by the misleading word “medicine;” hence “medicine-men.”
The family name, or second name borne by all the tribes in lineal descent, and which corresponds to our surname, i.e. super nomen, or “over-name,” is derived from names of beasts, birds, plants, etc., around which traditions of their transformation into men linger. Sir George Grey[44] says that there is a mysterious connection between a native and his kobong. It is his protecting angel, like the “daimôn” of Socrates, like the “genius” of the early Italian. “If it is an animal, he will not kill one of the species to which it belongs, should he find it asleep, and he always kills it reluctantly and never without affording it a chance of escape. The family belief is that some one individual of the species is their dearest friend, to kill whom would be a great crime,” as, in Hindu belief, when a Rajah was said to have entered at death into the body of a fish, a “close time” was at once decreed. Among the Indian tribes we find well-nigh the whole fauna and flora represented, their totems being the Bear, Turtle, Deer, Snake, Eagle, Pike, Corn, Tobacco, etc. Like the Australians, these tribes regarded themselves as being of the breed of their particular animal-totem, and avoided hunting, slaying, and eating (of which more presently) the creature under whose form the ancestor was thought to be manifest. The Chippeways carried their respect even farther. Deriving their origin from the dog, they at one time refrained from employing their supposed canine ancestors in dragging their sledges. The Bechuana and other people of South Africa will avoid eating their tribe-animal or wearing its skin. The same prohibitions are found among tribes in Northern Asia, and the Vogulitzi of Siberia, when they have killed a bear, address it formally, maintaining “that the blame is to be laid on the arrows and iron, which were made and forged by the Russians!” Among the Delawares the Tortoise gens claimed supremacy over the others, because their ancestor, who had become a fabled monster in their mythology, bore their world on his back. The California Indians are in interesting agreement with Lord Monboddo when, in claiming descent from the prairie wolf, they account for the loss of their tails by the habit of sitting, which, in course of time, wore them down to the stump! The Kickapoos say their ancestors had tails, and that when they lost them the “impudent fox sent every morning to ask how their tails were, and the bear shook his fat sides at the joke.” The Patagonians are said to have a number of animal deities, creators of the several tribes, some being of the caste of the guanaco and others of the ostrich. In short, the group of beliefs and practices found among races in the lower stages of culture point to a widespread common attitude towards the mystery of life around them. In speaking of totemism among the Red races Dr. Brinton thinks that the free use of animate symbols to express abstract ideas, which he finds so frequent, is the source of a confusion which has led to their claiming literal descent from wild beasts. But the barbaric mind bristles with contradictions and mutually destructive conceptions; nothing is too wonderful, too bizarre, for its acceptance, and the belief in actual animal descent is not the most remarkable or far-fetched among the articles of its creed.
The subject of totemism is full of interest both on its religious and social side:—
On its religious side it has given rise, or, if this be not conceded, impetus, to that worship of animals which assuredly had its source in the attribution of mysterious power through some spirit within them, making them deity incarnate.
On its social side it has led to prohibitions which are inwoven among the customs and prejudices of civilised communities. But, before speaking of these prohibitions, the barbaric mode of reckoning descent should be noticed.
The family name borne by most Australian tribes is perpetuated by the children, whether boys or girls, taking their mother’s name. Precisely the same custom is found among some American Indians, the children of both sexes being of the mother’s clan. Among the Moquis of Arizona all the members of each gens trace descent from a common ancestor; they are regarded as brothers and sisters.[45] Now, the family, as we define it, does not exist in savage communities, nor, as Mr. McLennan says in his very remarkable work on Primitive Marriage, had “the earliest human groups any idea of kinship, ... the physical root of which could be discerned only through observation and reflection.” Where the relations of the sexes were confused and promiscuous, the oldest system in which the idea of blood-ties was expressed was a system of kinship through the mother. The habits of the “much-married” primitive men made mistake about any one’s mother less likely than mistake about his father; and, if in civilised times it is, as the saying goes, a wise child that knows its own father, he was, in barbarous times, a wise father who knew his own child. Examples tracing the kinship through females, father and offspring being never of the same clan, abound in both ancient and modern authorities, and perhaps the most amusing one that can be given is found in Dr. Morgan’s Systems of Consanguinity. He says that the “natives of the province of Keang-se are celebrated among the natives of the other Chinese provinces for the mode or form used by them in address, namely, ‘Laon peaon,’ which, freely translated, means, ‘Oh, you old fellow, brother mine by some of the ramifications of female relationship!’”[46]
The prohibitions arising out of or confirmed by totemism are two: 1. Against intermarriage between those of the same name or crest. 2. Against the eating of the totem by any member of the tribe called after it.
1. Among both Australians and Indians a man is forbidden to marry in his own clan, i.e. any woman of his own surname or badge, no matter where she was born or however distantly related to him. The Navajoes of Arizona say that if they married in their own clan “their bones would dry up and they would die.”
Were this practice of “Exogamy,” as marriage outside the totem-kin is called, limited to one or two places, it might be classed among exceptional local customs based on a tradition, say, of some heated blood-feud between the tribes. But its prevalence among savage or semi-savage races all the world over points to reasons the nature of which is still a crux to the anthropologists. The late Mr. McLennan, whose opinion on such a matter is entitled to the most weight, connects it with the custom of female infanticide, which, rendering women scarce, led at once to polyandry, or one female to several males, within the tribe, and to the capturing of women from other tribes. This last-named practice strengthens Mr. McLennan’s theory. He cites numerous instances from past and present barbarous races, and traces its embodiment in formal code until we come to the mock relics of the custom in modern times, as, for example, the harmless “survival” in bride-lifting, that is, stealing, as in the word “cattle-lifting.”