After treating of the nature of totems, I propose to explain the object of totemism as a system, and to show its origin. I am not aware that this has yet been attempted in an adequate manner, although the subject has been referred to, as I shall have occasion to show, by several writers of authority. The late Dr. J. F. M’Lennan, who first dealt with the subject of totemism, which indeed he made his own, did not profess to explain its origin, notwithstanding certain remarks bearing on this question made in the course of his inquiries.
The first point to be considered is the nature of a “totem,” and this is shown by the meaning of the name itself. The word is taken from the language of the Ojibwas, a tribe of the widespread Algonkin stock, living near Lake Superior, in North America. It signifies the symbol or device of a gens or tribal division, that by which it is distinguished from all other such divisions. The kind of objects used as totems by the aborigines of North America may be seen from the names of the gentes into which the Ojibwa tribe is divided. These are twenty-three in number, and the totemic devices belonging to them comprise nine quadrupeds (the chief of which are the Wolf, the Bear, the Beaver, and the Turtle), eight birds, five248 fishes, and one reptile, the snake. There are numerous other totems among the American tribes, and they are not taken from the animal kingdom only. Thus, there are gentes with vegetable totems, such as Corn, Potatoe, Tobacco-Plant, and Reed-Grass. Natural objects, such as Sun, Earth, Sand, Salt, Sea, Snow, Ice, Water, and Rain, give names to other tribal divisions. Among natural phenomena, Thunder is widely spread as the name of a gens, while Wind is used among the Creek Indians; and the Omahas have a name meaning Many Seasons. Medicine, Tent, Lodge, Bonnet, Leggings, and Knife, have given titles to other gentes, and so also has colour. Thus, we have Black and Red Omahas, and Blue and Red-Paint Cherokees. Names denoting qualities have been taken by some gentes, such as Beloved People of the Choctas; Never Laugh, Starving, Half-Dead, Meat, Fish-Eaters, and Conjurers of the Blackfeet; and the Non-Chewing of the Delawares. How some of those ideas could be represented pictorially as totems is not very apparent, and Mr. Lewis Morgan very properly suggests, in relation to some of the terms, that nicknames for gentes may have superseded the original names; to which may be added that probably many of the totems are of comparatively modern origin.
The natives of Australia make the same use of totems as the Americans. The former have divisions of the tribe answering to the gentes of the latter, distinguished by a common device or totem; and the Australian totemic divisions are usually, like the American gentes, named after animals. Thus, the Kamilaroi tribes have Kangaroo, Opossum, Iguana,249 Emu, Bandicoot, and Blacksnake totems. Eaglehawk and Crow are widely spread throughout Eastern Australia as names of Class divisions. Totems taken from the vegetable kingdom appear to be uncommon, as only two are mentioned in the Rev. Lorimer Fison’s work on the Kamilaroi. The Rev. George Taplin names two others among the totems of the South Australian tribes, each of which has a “tutelary genius,” or “tribal symbol,” in the shape of some bird, beast, fish, reptile, insect, or substance. The divisions of a tribe in Western Victoria take their totems from natural features, such as Water, Mountain, Swamp, and River, and in North-Western Victoria the totemic divisions include Hot-Wind and Belonging-to-the-Sun.
Although no such developed totemic system as that in use by the natives of Australia and North America is known now to exist elsewhere, yet there are traces of the use of totems by many other peoples. Thus, among the Bechuanas of South Africa,306 each tribe takes its name from an animal or plant, and its members are known as “men of the crocodile,” “men of the fish,” “men of the monkey,” “men of the buffalo,” “men of the wild vine,” &c. The head of the family, which holds the first rank in the tribe, receives the title of “great man” of the animal whose name it bears, and no one belonging to the tribe will eat the flesh, or clothe himself with the skin, of its protecting animal, who is regarded250 as the father of the tribe. Many of the Arab tribes take their names from animals, such as the Lion, the Panther, the Wolf, the Bear, the Dog, the Fox, the Hyena, the Sheep, and many others.307 Professor Robertson Smith, who has endeavoured to establish the existence of totemism among the early Arabs, states that the totem animal was not used as ordinary food by those connected with it. Again, some of the Kolarian tribes of India are divided into clans named after animals, and we find the Heron, Hawk, Crow, and Eel clans among the Oraon and Munda tribes of Chota-Nagpur.
A totem origin may probably be ascribed to the animal ancestry claimed by a chief or his tribe. Thus, it is said by M. M. Valikhanof308 that “a characteristic feature in Central Asiatic traditions is the derivation of their origin from some animal.” The Kastsché, or Tele people, are said to have sprung from the marriage of a wolf and a beautiful Hun Princess. The Tugas professed to be descended from a she-wolf, and the Tufans, or Tibetans, from a dog. The Chinese affirmed, moreover, that Balaché, the hereditary chief of the Mongol Khans, was the son of a blue wolf309 and a white hind. Traces of the use of totems by the251 Chinese themselves are not wanting. Their expression for the people is Pih-sing, meaning “the hundred family names.” As a fact, there are about four hundred such names in China, and the intermarriage of persons having the same family name is absolutely forbidden. The importance of this prohibition will be apparent when we come to consider the incidents of totemism. Mr. Robert Hart states310 that some of the Chinese surnames have reference to animals, fruits, metals, natural objects, &c., such as Horse, Sheep, Ox,311 Fish, Bird, Flower, Rice, River, Water, Cloud, Gold, &c., &c. He adds, “In some parts of the country large villages are met with, in each of which there exists but one family name; thus, in one district will be found, say, three villages, each containing two or three thousand people, the one of the ‘Horse,’ the second of the ‘Sheep,’ and the third of the ‘Ox’ family name.” According to the rule that a man cannot marry a woman of his own family name, a ‘Horse’ cannot marry a ‘Horse,’ but must marry a ‘Sheep,’ or an ‘Ox,’ and we may suppose that these animals were originally the totems or devices of particular family groups; in like manner, as the Wolf, the Bear, and the Beaver are, among the American aborigines, totems of the groups of kin to which the term gens is applied.
The former use of totems may probably be assumed also when animal names are applied, not to tribal divi252sions, but to the tribes themselves, as we have seen is the case with the Arabs. Thus, when the great Hindu Epic,312 in describing the adventures of Arjuna, one of the Pandavan Princes, says that the Nagas or Serpents were defeated with the aid of Peacocks, we must understand that a people known as Peacocks, from their totemic device, defeated a people whose badge was a serpent. The Peacock was indeed the heraldic device of the Tambouk Kings of Orissa. Probably the existence of the Singhs or Lions, the warrior caste of the tribes of North-Western India, may be accounted for in the same way. Dr. M’Lennan313 refers to numerous facts to prove that many animals, among others the Serpent, the Horse, the Bull, the Lion, the Bear, the Dog, and the Goat gave names to ancient tribes, who used the animals after whom they were called as badges. He goes further than this, and supposes that all the ancient nations passed through a totem stage, in which they had animals and plants for gods. This question, however, we shall have occasion to refer to later on.
The nature of totems having been shown, the object of totemism as a system has now to be explained. The Rev. George Taplin remarks that each Narrinyeri tribe is regarded as a family, every member of which is a blood relation, and the totem borne by the Australian tribe, or rather tribal division, is thus the symbol of a family group, in like manner as the American totem is the device of a gens. The first question asked of a stranger by the Dieyerie tribe of253 Cooper’s Creek, in Central Australia, is “Of what family (murdoo) are you?” Each murdoo is distinguished by a special name, being that of some object which, according to a tribal legend, may be animate or inanimate, such as a dog, mouse, emu, iguana, rain, &c.314 It is evident that the Australian totemic device is equivalent to a family name, a name which belongs to all the members of a particular group, and which cannot be held by any person not belonging by birth or adoption to that group, so that it is aptly termed by the Rev. Lorimer Fison315 a “badge of fraternity.” This badge answers to the “device of a gens,” as the token of the American tribes is defined, and its possession by any person is proof that he belongs to a particular gens or tribal division, and that he is entitled or subject to all the rights, privileges, and obligations of its members. Schoolcraft very properly terms the gens the totemic institution, and as the rights, privileges, and obligations of the gens are attached to the totem, a consideration of them will throw much light on the subject of this paper.
According to Mr. Morgan,316 the gens came into being upon three principal conceptions, the bond of kin, a pure lineage through descent in the female line, and non-intermarriage in the gens. Leaving out of view for the present the question of descent, the other conceptions give rise to obligations of great importance. The bond of kin assumes the positive254 obligation of mutual help, defence, and redress of injuries among the members of the gens; while the third conception implies the negative obligation which prevents the intermarriage of persons belonging to a common totem. The negative obligation is, however, no less than the positive obligation, based on the conception of kinship, and the totem device of the gens is, therefore, well described as the badge of a fraternal group. The obligation of mutual aid and defence implies the co-relative duty of doing nothing to injure a fellow member of the gens, in accordance with which all individuals of the same totem must treat each other as brethren. This applies not only to human beings, but also to the totem objects, although these may be killed and eaten by persons not belonging to the fraternal group, by which they are regarded as sacred. Sir George Grey says,317 in relation to the kobongs or totems of the Western Australians, “a certain mysterious connection exists between the family and its kobong, so that a member of the family will never kill an animal of the species to which his kobong belongs, should he find it asleep; indeed, he always kills it reluctantly, and never without affording it a chance of escape.” He adds: “This arises from the family belief, that some one individual of the species is their nearest friend, to kill whom would be a great crime, and to be carefully avoided. Similarly a native who has a vegetable for his kobong may not gather it under certain circumstances, and at a particular period of the year.” So, also, the abo255rigines of North America will not hunt, kill, or eat any animal of the form of their own totem.
Where, therefore, we find particular animals forbidden for food to a class of individuals we may assume that such animals have a totemic character. Thus, Bosman relates318 that, on the Gold Coast of Guinea, each person “is forbidden the eating of one sort of flesh or other; one eats no mutton, another no goats’-flesh, beef, swines’-flesh, wild fowl, &c.” He points out that this restraint is not for a limited time, but for the whole of life; and as a son never eats what his father is restrained from, or a daughter that which her mother cannot eat, the forbidden object partakes of the nature of a totem. It is doubtful whether the Islanders of the Pacific ever possessed systematic totemism, although traces of the use of totems may, perhaps, be found in the names taken from plants met with in some of the islands, and even in the word “Samoa,” which is said by the Rev. Wyatt Gill319 to mean “the family or clan of the Moa,” the Polynesian term for fowl. The Samoans entertained ideas as to particular animals, such as the eel, the shark, the turtle, the dog, the owl, and the lizard, similar to the notions associated with the totems of other peoples. They supposed those animals to be incarnations of household deities, and no man dare injure or eat the animal which was the incarnation of his own god, although he could eat freely of the incarnation of another man’s god.320
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Notions of the same kind were prevalent throughout the islands of the Pacific.321 Thus, the Fijians supposed every man to be under the protection of a special god, who resided in or was symbolised by some animal, or other natural object, such as a rat, a shark, a hawk, a tree, &c. No one would eat the particular animal associated with his own god;322 which explains the fact that cannibalism was not quite universal among the Fijians, as some gods were believed to reside in human bodies. The heathen Fijians allow souls not only to all mankind, but to animals and plants, and even to houses, canoes, and all mechanical contrivances. As soon as their parents die they are enrolled among the family gods, whose protecting care is firmly believed in.323 It is very probable that these gods, who answer to the household deities of the Samoans, are regarded as being incarnate in the sacred animals, &c., of the tribe, towards whom, as being re-embodiments of deceased ancestors, they necessarily stand in a fraternal relation.
These ideas show a close connection between animal-worship and ancestor-worship, and they have an important bearing on the origin of totemism. We have seen that the obligations of the totemic institution are based on the conception of kinship. This is also essential to ancestor-worship, which, like257 totemism, rests on the obligation of mutual aid and protection. The worshippers make the offerings and perform the rites required by their deceased ancestors, who in return give their protection and assistance to their descendants. This mutual obligation is associated with the superstitious regard for certain animals and other objects. The venerated animals are not killed or eaten by those who are connected with them by superstitious ties, and they are supposed, on their part, to act as protectors to their human allies, by whom they are viewed as guardian spirits. Catlin, the American traveller, gives a vivid description of the mode in which the Indian acquires such a guardian. He states324 that every Indian must “make mystery,” that is, obtain the protection of some mysterious power which is supposed to be connected with what is known as the mystery bag. When a boy has attained the age of 14 or 15 years, he absents himself for several days from his father’s lodge,258 “lying on the ground in some remote or secluded spot, crying to the Great Spirit, and fasting the whole time. During this period of peril and abstinence, when he falls asleep, the first animal, bird, or reptile of which he dreams (or pretends to have dreamed, perhaps), he considers the Great Spirit has designated for his mysterious protector through life. He then returns home to his father’s lodge, and relates his success, and after allaying his thirst and satisfying his appetite, he sallies forth with weapons or traps until he can procure the animal or bird, the skin of which he preserves entire, and ornaments it according to his own fancy, and carries it with him through life, for good luck (as he calls it): as his strength in battle, and in death his guardian spirit, that is buried with him, and which is to conduct him safe to the beautiful hunting grounds, which he contemplates in the world to come.” In California it was thought that the Great Spirit sent, in a vision, to every child of seven years of age, the appearance of some animal to be its protector or guardian. The African fetish superstition is of much the same character, as the fetish object is worshipped solely that it may give the protecting aid which the Indian expects from his animal guardian. Mr. Cruickshank says,325 in relation to the natives of the Gold Coast of Western Africa, that they believe “the Supreme Being has bestowed upon a variety of objects, animate and inanimate, the attributes of Deity, and that he directs every individual man in his choice of his object of worship.... It may be a block, a stone, a tree, a river, a lake, a mountain, a snake, an alligator, a bundle of rags, or whatever the extravagent imagination of the idolater may pitch upon.” Here, although the nature of the protecting influence is apparently different from that which the Americans are supposed to obtain, it is in reality the same. In either case it is a guardian spirit, whether it is called a “mystery” animal or an object having the attributes of Deity.
Dr. M’Lennan saw a necessary connection between259 totemism and animal-worship, and he affirms326 that the ancient nations passed, in pre-historic times, “through the totem stage, having animals and plants, and the heavenly bodies conceived as animals, for gods before the anthropomorphic gods appeared.” By totem, Dr. M’Lennan evidently understood merely the animal or plant friend or protector of the family or tribe, and if it had any reference to soul or spirit, it is the soul or spirit of the animal or plant. He speaks327 of men “believing themselves to be of the serpent-breed derived from serpent-ancestors,” and so of other animals. He does not see in the totem any reference to the actual progenitor of the family, and he could hardly do so in accordance with his view of the mental condition of men in the totem stage, where “natural phenomena are ascribable to the presence in animals, plants, and things, and in the forces of nature, of such spirits prompting to action as men are conscious they themselves possess.” Professor Robertson Smith accepts, in his work on the early Arabs,328 Dr. M’Lennan’s views on the subject of totemism and animal-worship, and gives as one of the three points which supply complete proof of early totemism in any race, “the prevalence of the conception that the members of the stock are of the blood of the eponym animal, or are sprung from a plant of the species chosen as totem.” When Prof. Smith comes to consider this point, however, it appears that among the Arabs certain animals260 were not eaten because “they were thought to be men in another guise,” that is, they were not merely animals but were men in disguise.329 This is very different from the animistic theory, which makes men trace their descent from animals or plants, although these may be supposed to have the same kind of spirits as their human descendants; but it is consistent with the doctrine of transmigration to which we shall have soon to refer.
Dr. M’Lennan’s hypothesis may be tested by what we know of the animal-worship of ancient Egypt, where some animals were universally worshipped, while others were regarded with veneration only in particular districts, of which they were the guardians, and by whose inhabitants they were carefully protected. We have here the operation of the idea of a special relation subsisting between certain persons and particular animals, such as we have seen to exist in connection with totemism; and that relationship must, according to Dr. M’Lennan’s hypothesis that animal and plant gods were the earliest to be worshipped, have depended on the animal descent of those persons. This explanation may appear to find some support in M. Maspero’s statement,330 that all the sacred animals of Egypt were at first adored in their animal character, and that afterwards they were identified with the gods of whom ultimately they became the incarnation or living tabernacle. It is very improbable, however, that the gods would be identified with animals, unless such animals261 were already regarded as divine, or as connected with the peoples of whom they were the guardians—by virtue of such a special relationship as is thought by the Pacific Islanders to subsist between certain persons and the sacred animals in which their ancestors are incarnated. As a fact, the worship of animals was established in ancient Egypt by a king of the second dynasty.331 Moreover, it has been shown by M. Pierret that the Egyptian religion was essentially monotheistic, the different gods represented on the monuments being merely symbols. “Their very form,” says that writer, “proves that we cannot see in them real beings. A god represented with the head of a bird or of a quadruped can have only an allegorical character, in like manner as the lion with a human head called a sphinx has never passed for a real animal. It is only a question of hieroglyphics. The various personages of the Pantheon represent the functions of the Supreme God, of the only and hidden God, who preserves His identity and the fulness of His attributes under each of His forms.” Dupuis, in his History of Religions,332 refers to the ancient opinion that the division of Egypt into thirty-six nomes or provinces was in imitation of the thirty-six decans into which the Zodiac was divided, each of which had its protector. The heavenly guardians became the protecting deities of the Egyptian nomes which took the names of the animals there revered as images of the patron gods. That opinion is consistent with the view expressed by M. Pierret as to the character of the Egyptian deities. Dr. M’Lennan262 supposes,333 however, that the heavenly bodies were conceived as gods before the anthropomorphic gods appeared. He argues that, as there is nothing in the grouping of the stars to suggest animal forms, and as stars, when named, were given names that commanded respect, if not veneration, “the animals whose names were transferred to the stars or Stellar groups, were on earth highly, if not religiously, regarded,” in support of which view he shows that nearly all the animals so honoured were anciently worshipped as gods. It by no means follows, however, that these animals were so worshipped before being transferred to the heavens; and possibly this had nothing to do with any special regard for such a............