CHAPTER XIII.
TOTEMS, TITLES, AND NAMES.
The employment of pictographs to designate tribes, groups within tribes, and individual persons has been the most frequent of all the uses to which they have been applied. Indeed, the constant need that devices to represent the terms styled by grammarians proper names should be readily understood for identification has, more than any other cause, maintained and advanced pictography as an art, and in some parts of the world has evolved from it syllabaries and afterwards alphabets. From the same origin came heraldry, which in time designated with absolute accuracy persons and families for the benefit of letterless people. Trade-marks have the same history.
From the earliest times men have used emblems to indicate their tribes or clans. Homer makes no clear allusion to their manifestation at the poetic siege of Troy; but even if his Greeks did not bear them, other nations of the period did. The earlier Egyptians carried images of bulls and crocodiles into battle, probably at first with religious sentiments. Each of the twelve tribes of Israel had a special ensign of its own, which is now generally considered to have been totemic. The subjects of Semiramis adopted doves and pigeons as their token in deference to their queen, whose name meant “dove.”
At later dates Athens chose an owl for her sign, as a compliment to Minerva; Corinth, a winged horse, in memory of Pegasus and his fountain; Carthage, a horse’s head, in homage to Neptune; Persia, the sun, because its people worshiped fire; Rome, an eagle, in deference to Jupiter. These objects appear to have been carved in wood or metal. There is no evidence of anything resembling modern flags, except, perhaps, in parts of Asia, until the Romans began to use something like them about the time of Cæsar. But these small signs had no national or public character so as to be comparable with the eagles on the Roman standard; nor was any floating banner associated with ruling power until Constantine gave a religious meaning to the labarum.
Emblems also were often adopted by political and religious parties, e. g., the cornstalks and slings of the Mazarinists and anti-Mazarinists during the Fronde, the caps and hats in the Swedish diet in 1788, the scarf of the Armagnacs, and the cross of the Burgundians. The topic of emblems is further discussed in Chapter [XVIII].
As with increased culture clans and tribes have become nations, so there has been an evolution by which the ensigns of bands and orders have been discontinued and replaced by the emblems of nationalities. Frederic Marshall (a) well says: “Images of animals, badges, war cries, cockades, liveries, coats of arms, tokens, tattooing, are all replaced practically by national ensigns.” This change is toward the higher and nobler significance and employment, all members of the community being protected and designated by the simple exhibition of a single emblem.
This chapter is naturally divided into (1) Pictorial tribal designations, (2) Gentile and clan designations, (3) Significance of tattoo, (4) Designations of individuals.
SECTION 1.
PICTORIAL TRIBAL DESIGNATIONS.
Capt. de Lamothe Cadillac (a) writing in the year 1696 of the Algonquians of the Great Lake region near Mackinac, etc., describes the emblems on their canoes as follows: “On y voit la natte de guerre le corbeau, l’ours on quelque autre animal * * * estant l’esprit qui doit conduire cette enterprise.”
This, however, was a mistake as applicable to the time when it was written. The animals used as emblems may originally have been regarded as supernatural totemic beings, but had probably become tribal designations.