Myths and Dreams

by Edward Clodd

Connected with this custom is the equally prevailing one which forbids intercourse between relations, as especially between a couple and their fathers and mothers-in-law, and which also forbids mentioning their names. So far as the aversion which the savage has to telling his own name, or uttering that of any person (especially of the dead) or thing feared by him is concerned, the reason is not far to seek. It lies in that confusion between names and things which marks all primitive thinking. The savage, who shrinks from having his likeness taken in the fear that a part of himself is being carried away thereby, regards his name as something through which he may be harmed. So he will use all sorts of roundabout phrases to avoid saying it, and even change it that he may elude his foes, and puzzle or cheat Death when he comes to look for him. But why a son-in-law should not see the face of his mother-in-law, for so it is among the Navajoes, (where the offender would, they say, go blind), the Aranaks of South America, the Caribs and other tribes of more northern regions, the Fijians, Sumatrans, Dyaks, the natives of Australia, the Zulus, in brief, along the range of the lower culture, is a question to which no satisfactory answer has been given, and to which reference is here made because of its connection with totemism.

2. That the animal which is the totem of the tribe should not be eaten, even where men did not hesitate to eat men of another totem, is a custom for which it is less hard to account. The division of flesh into two classes of forbidden and permitted, of clean and unclean, with the resulting artificial liking or repulsion for food which custom arising out of that division has brought about, is probably referable to old beliefs in the inherent sacredness of certain animals. The Indians of Charlotte Island never eat crows, because they believe in crow-ancestors, and they smear themselves with black paint in memory of that tradition; the Dacotahs would neither kill nor eat their totems, and if necessity compels these and like barbarians to break the law, the meal is preceded by profuse apologies and religious ceremonies over the slain. Although the aborigines of Victoria, who are to be ranked among the lowest savages extant, devour the most loathsome things, worms, slugs, and vermin, they have a classification of meats to be eaten or avoided. A Kumite is deeply grieved when hunger compels him to eat anything which bears his name, but he may satisfy his hunger with anything that is Krokee. The abstention of the Brahmans from meat, the pseudo-revealed injunction to the Hebrews against certain flesh-foods (has that against pork its origin in the forgotten tradition of descent from a boar?), need no detailing here. But, as parallels, some restrictions amongst the ancient dwellers in these islands are of value. It was, according to Cæsar,[47] a crime to eat the domestic fowl, or goose, or hare, and to this day the last-named is an object of disgust in certain parts of Russia and Brittany. The oldest Welsh laws contain several allusions to the magical character of the hare, which was thought to change its sex every month or year, and to be the companion of the witches, who often assumed its shape.[48] The revulsion against horse-flesh as food may have its origin in the sacredness of the white horses, which, as Tacitus remarks,[49] were kept by the Germans at the public cost in groves holy to the gods, whose secrets they knew, and whose decrees regarding mortals their neighings interpreted. That this animal was a clan-totem among our forefathers there can be no doubt, and the proofs are with us in the white horses carved in outline on the chalk hills of Berkshire and the west, as in the names and crests of clan descendants.

The totem is not only the clan-name indicating descent from a common ancestor. It is also the clan-symbol, badge, or crest. Where the tribes among whom it is found are still in the picture-writing stage, i.e. when the idea is expressed by a portrait of the thing itself instead of by some sound-sign—a stage in writing corresponding to the primitive stage in language, when words were imitative—there we find the rude hieroglyphic of the totem a means of intercourse between different tribes, as well as with whites. A striking example of the use of such totemic symbols occurs in a petition sent by some Western Indian tribes to the United States Congress for the right to fish in certain small lakes near Lake Superior.

The leading clan is represented by a picture of the crane; then follow three martens, as totems of three tribes; then the bear, the man-fish, and the cat-fish, also totems. From the eye and heart of each of the animals runs a line connecting them with the eye and heart of the crane, to show that they are all of one mind, and the eye of the crane has also a line connecting it with the lakes on which the tribes have their eyes, and another line running towards Congress.

In the barbaric custom of painting or carving the totem on oars, on the bows and sides of canoes, on weapons, on pillars in the front of houses, and on the houses themselves; in tattooing it on various parts of the body (in the latter case, in some instances, together with pictures of exploits; so that the man carries on his person an illustrated history of his own life) we have the remote and forgotten origin of heraldic emblems. The symbols of civilised nations, as, e.g. the Imperial eagle, which so many states of ancient and modern renown have chosen; the crests of families of rank, with their fabulous monsters, as the cherub, the Greek gryps, surviving in the griffin, the dragon, the unicorn, which, born of rude fancy or terrified imagination, are now carved on the entrance-gates to the houses of the great; the armorial bearings on carriages; the crest engraven on ring or embossed on writing-paper, these are the lineal descendants of the totem; and the Indians, who could see no difference between their system of manitous and those of the white people, with their spread-eagle or their lion-rampant, made a shrewd guess that would not occur to many a parvenu applying at the Heralds’ College for a crest. The continuity is traceable in the custom of the Mexicans and other civilised nations of painting the totemic animals on their banners, flags, crests, and other insignia; and it would seem that we have in the totem the key to the mystery of those huge animal-shaped mounds which abound on the North American continent.

The arbitrary selection in the “ages of chivalry” of such arms as pleased the knightly fancy or ministered to its pride, or, as was often the case, resembled the name in sound, together with the ignorance then and till recently existing as to the origin of crests, and also the discredit into which a seemingly meaningless vanity had fallen, have made it difficult to trace the survival of the totem in the crests even of that numerous company of the Upper Ten who claim descent from warriors who came over with the Conqueror. But there is no doubt that an inquiry conducted on the lines suggested above, and not led into by-paths by false analogies, would yield matter of interest and value. It would add to the evidence of that common semi-civilised stage out of which we have risen. Such names as the Horsings, the Wylfings, the Derings, the Ravens, the Griffins, perhaps hold within themselves traces of the totem name of the horse, wolf, deer, raven, and that “animal fantasticall,” the griffin. In Scotland we find the clan Chattan, or the wild cat; in Ireland “the men of Osory were called by a name signifying the wild red deer.” On the other hand such names may have been given merely as nicknames (i.e. ekename or the added name, from eke, “also,” or “to augment”), suggested by the physical or mental likeness to the thing after which they are called.

But it is time to turn to the religious significance of the totem, as shown among races worshipping the animal which is their supposed ancestor.

At first glance this seems strong argument in support of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s theory that all forms of religion, and all myth, have their origin in ancestor worship. The mysterious power of stimulation, of excitation to frenzy, or of healing and soothing, or of poisoning, which certain plants possess, has been attributed to indwelling spirits, which, as Mr. Spencer contends, are regarded as human and ancestral. Very many illustrations of this occur, as, e.g. the worship of the Soma plant, and its promotion as a deity among the Aryans; the use of tobacco in religious ceremonies among the tribes of both Americas; whilst now and again we find trees and plants as totems. The Moquis have a totem-kin called the tobacco-plant, and also one called the seed-grass. One of the Peruvian Incas was called after the native name of the tobacco-plant; and among the Ojibways the buffalo grass was carried as a charm, and its god said to cause madness.

In Algonquin myth “there is a spirit for the corn, another for beans, another for squashes. They are sisters, and are very kind to each other. There are spirits in the water, in fire, in all the trees and berries, in herbs and in tobacco, in the grass.”

The worship of animals is on Mr. Spencer’s theory explained as due to the giving of a nickname of some beast or bird to a remote ancestor, the belief arising in course of time that such animal was the actual progenitor, hence its worship. We call a man a bear, a pig, or a vampire, in symbolic phrase, and the figure of speech remains a figure of speech with us. But the savage loses the metaphor, and it crystallises into hard matter-of-fact. So the traditions have grown, and Black Eagle, Strong Buffalo, Big Owl, Tortoise, etc., take the shape of actual forefathers of the tribe bearing their name and crest. According to the same theory the adoration of sun, moon, and mountains, etc., is due to a like source. Some famous chief was called the Sun; the metaphor was forgotten; the personal and concrete, as the more easily apprehended, remained; hence worship of the powers of nature “is a form of ancestor-worship, which has lost in a still greater degree the character of the original.”[50]