Andrew Lang

“ Thus on every point—female descent, animal-named phratries, animal-named totem kins, and each phratry containing a totem kin of its own name, the Tlingit totemism is absolutely identical with that of many South-Eastern Australian tribes of the most archaic type.
But the Tlingit, unlike the Australians, live in villages, and "the families or households may occupy one or more houses. The families actually take their names from places." ”

“ It has now been proved that though, in very rare cases, such as those of the Arunta and Narran-ga, sets of people may have totemic names, yet marry within the name; and that, though "clans" may be exogamous and yet bear names which are not totemic, nevertheless the co-existence of totemic names with exogamy prevails in the overwhelming majority of instances, while the exceptions, as they have been accounted for by their causes, prove the rule. ”

“ Frazer observes that Dr. Boas variously denominates the kindred groups of the Kwakiutl tribe as "groups," "clans," "gentes," and "families." I must add that he also uses gentes as a synonym for phratries—"Phratries, viz. gentes." [10] Now a "phratry" is not a gens; a "group" may be anything you please; a "family" is not a gens;—a "gens" is an aggregate of families,—and a "clan" is not a "family."
Mr. Goldenweizer's tabulated form of his comparisons between British Columbia and Australia contains ten categories (see the last footnote of p. 6) . ”

“ It appears to me that when a tribe acquires settled habits and lives in villages, territorial names may oust totem names, and exogamy may become, as among the Navaho, local, just as it becomes local in several Australian tribes with male descent. ”

“ We do not know, elsewhere, that totemism has ever been borrowed by one tribe from another, especially by a tribe so advanced in culture as the Kwakiutl, and we have no example of a tribe in which the men have given up their social prerogatives, and transmitted them to their nephews in the female line. ”

“ The Tlingit, now living in towns, and with clans of town-names, may naturally fancy that from the first their clans bore local or town-names. But society that begins in people who, like the Tlingit, have female descent, cannot form a local clan of descent, unless the men go to the homes of the women, which is not here the case. Originally I think their crests, as in Holmberg's report, were effigies of their clan totems, and the clans bore their totem names. ”

“ Exogamy, in my view, was prior to totemism; totem names were a later way of designating local groups which were already exogamous. [61] "The rule would be, No marriage within the local group." The totemic names were a later addition, and I can think of no reason why all peoples should necessarily accept totemic names; only, as it chances, the enormous majority among the lower races have done so.
Perhaps the Navaho and Apaches never had totemic names for their exogamous local groups. They are not known to exhibit any sign or vestige of totemism beyond the legend or myth of the wild animal pets. ”

“ Each phratry is subdivided into a number of "clans," which are named after various animals. As no "clan" is represented in both phratries, and as all folk are obliged to marry out of their own phratry, the "clans" are, inevitably, exogamous.
For purposes of comparison with other British Columbia tribes, I give the list of Tlingit totem kins furnished by Mr. Frazer, "on the authority of Mr. F. Boas" [20] :
As I found out, and proved, in many Australian tribes the name of each phratry also occurs as the name of a totem kin in the phratry ”

“ But, if the Tlingit clans have not totemic names, then it would appear that, among a people of dwellers in towns, local names of local groups have succeeded to totemic names of totemic kins. This can only occur where people have settled habitations, towns or villages, or where totem kins have been localised by male descent.
We know that, even among some of the Australian tribes with male descent, totem kins become local groups, and thus the predominant totem of each such group becomes attached to a locality, as among the Narran-ga of Yorke Peninsula. ”

“ The waverings of the Kwakiutl between the two lines of descent are, in fact, such as we expect to occur when a people has retained, like the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshians, the system of female descent after reaching a fair pitch of physical culture, and arriving at wealth, rank, and the attribution of children to the paternal stock. ”

“ The belief, or myth, of totemic descent is absent in British Columbia, says Mr. Goldenweizer, in the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian tribes, and present "among the Kwakiutl and further south." In Central Australia descent from the totem is "universal."
But it is a queer kind of "descent," is not, in the usual sense, descent at all, and, notoriously, is not descent by physical generation. ”

“ Are such names inherited? Is every child of a woman of Red Flat called "Red Flat"? Persons of the same clan or phratry (from eight to twelve phratries) may not intermarry. The phratries "have no formal names"; speaking of his phratry a man will often refer to it by the title of its oldest or most numerous clan—and that, it seems, is always a local name, "Dr. Washington Matthews," says Mr. Frazer, "who spoke with authority on the subject, was of opinion that the Navahos clans were originally and indeed till quite recently local exogamous groups and not true clans." ”

“ Now the Arunta associations of animal names are not (I must keep repeating) kindreds, are not "clans," are not composed of persons who are, "humanly speaking," akin. The totem is not inherited from either parent or through any kinsman or kinswoman. The Arunta bearers of the same totem name, in each case, do not constitute a "clan." This puts the so-called Arunta "totem clans," non-exogamous, out of action as proofs that "totem clans" may be non-exogamous. ”

“ I now give an American case, in which a tribe, the Mandans, exhibit female descent, exogamous clans, and a mixture of totemic clan names with local names or sobriquets. The people were settled, lived in villages or towns, "with houses very commodious, neat, and comfortable." ”

“ Duncan's evidence, in 1862, the Tsimshians (as we have seen) , carved faces of "Whale, Porpoise, Raven, Eagle, Wolf, Frog, etc.," on roof beams. He calls such effigies "crests." No person may marry another of the same "crest": the children take their mother's crest, and bear the name of the animal which it represents. None may kill the animal of his crest. All this is exogamy with totem kins, under the phratries, as the exogamous units, [38] and with the totemic taboo. If Mayne and Duncan are right, either more recent writers are wrong, or Tsimshian totemism has been much modified since 1862. ”

“ Only one thing is clear to me, a Tlingit of the Wolf phratry can only marry a bride of the Raven phratry; a Tlingit of the Raven phratry can only woo a maiden of the Wolf phratry. If totem kins there be in the phratries, these totem kins are exogamous. If there be no totem kins in the phratry, are Mr. Swanton's clans of local names locally exogamous? May persons marry within the region where they are settled? ”

“ F. Boas (whose list is quoted by Mr. Frazer) and Holmberg (1856) do assign totemic names to the Tlingit clans.
Let us examine this situation.
If we take a South-East Australian tribe of the Barkinji pattern, we find it divided into two animal-named intermarrying phratries (or exogamous intermarrying "classes" or "moieties," I call them "phratries") . In each phratry are totem kins, that is, kins named after animals, vegetables, or other things in nature. The names of phratries and totem kins (I know no other word for them but totem kins or totem clans) descend in the female line. ”

“ The first tribe has "clans" called Beaver, Eagle, Wolf, Salmon, Raven, Killer Whale: the usual totemic names in this region. These totemic clans are exogamous, like those of Mayne's Tsimshians. Descent is in the female line. In the next tribe we find three exogamous animal-named clans: Eagle, Raven, Killer Whale, Beaver, Wolf, and Salmon have vanished, or have never existed. In these two tribes a child is sometimes placed in the father's, not in the mother's clan, as a Dieri father sometimes "gives" his totem to his son, in addition to the inherited maternal totem. ”

“ Descent here is clearly maternal, but the form of paternal descent is preserved, a plausible condition for a people who; having become maternal, still stick at least in form to the traditional inheritance from the father. ”

“ I have already remarked that this is true; we find human associations, which are not kins or clans, bearing animal and other totemic names, while these associations are not exogamous (the Arunta nation) ; and we find exogamous sets, kins, or associations which do not bear animal names. ”

“ Goldenweizer added Wealth and Towns to his ten categories he would have given four factors in B.C. culture which affect B.C. totemism, and which do not exist in Central Australia, where realistic art is all but wholly unknown: art being occupied with archaic conventional patterns. ”

“ Boas that "patriarchate prevails." This appears to mean that descent is here reckoned not, as in the north, in the female, but in the male line. "We do not find a single clan that has, properly speaking, an animal for its totem; neither do the clans take their name from their crest, nor are there phratries." [40] As the northern Kwakiutl have animal-named exogamous "clans" with female descent, Dr. Boas now thinks that the northern Kwakiutl "have to a great extent adopted the maternal descent and the division into animal totems of the northern tribes." ”

“ There is no trace left of an inheritance from the wife's brothers; the young people do not live with the wife's parents. But the most important argument is that the customs cannot have been prevalent in the village communities from which the present tribal system originated, as in these' (village communities) 'the tribe is always designated as the direct descendants of the mythical ancestor. ”

“ It appears, then, that the privileges exercised by the young man before marriage are always derived from his mother, but formally he receives them from his father, who acts as a sort of guardian of these privileges until the son is ready for them. ”

“ By the old rule, if Emu phratry had to marry into Shark phratry, the localities were at the extreme ends of the peninsula, north and south; the other two phratries were as far asunder as the cast of the peninsula is from the west. Consequently, though the old machinery of exogamy existed, the practice of exogamy was dropped: persons might marry within their own totem kins. ”

“ Each of these four main divisions had totem kins within it, and, as usual, the same totem (all are animals) never occurred in more than one main division. (Howitt, N.T.S.E.A. p. 130.) In precisely the same way "crests" of animal name occur in each of the four Tsimshian "clans":
These "crests," thus arranged, no crest in more than one clan (or phratry?) look like old totems in the two pairs of clans, or, as I suspect, of phratries. The Australian parallel corroborates the view that the Tsimshian "clans" have been phratries.
[16] J. A. F. p. 187. quoting "Swanton 26th B. E. R., 1904-1905, p. ”

“ But this does not mean that I regard all exogamous social sets as at present totemic; or as always having borne totem names. Again, sets of people (I cannot call them "clans," for the word "clan" indicates persons claiming common descent from a male ancestor,—say Clan Gihean, Clan Diarmaid) , may bear animal or vegetable or other such names, yet not be at present, as such, exogamous. Of these are the Arunta, and the Narran-ga.
3. A religious attitude towards the totem. One cannot discuss this without a definition of religion. "Totemism is not a religion," says Mr. ”

“ This present arrangement, and this alone, makes the Arunta associations with totemic names non-exogamous. I proceed to give further evidence of Spencer and Gillen. "Whilst every now and then we come across traditions, according to which, as in the case of the Achilpa," (Cats) "the totem is common to all classes [54] we always find that in each totem one moiety of the tribe predominates, [55] and that, according to tradition, many of the groups" (totem groups) "of ancestral individuals consisted originally of men or women or of both men and women, who all belonged to one moiety. ”

“ The tribe was agricultural, growing maize, beans, pumpkins, and tobacco. Out of seven clan names four were totemic—Wolf, Bear, Prairie Chicken, Eagle; two—Flathead and Good Knife—look like nicknames; High Village is local. [63] Here we find other sorts of clan names encroaching on totem names.
Among the Crows, with exogamous clans and female descent, out of twelve clan names four are totemic—Prairie Dog, Skunk, Raven, Antelope; three are very unkind nicknames. [64]
The American tribes have been much disturbed by the whites, and many changes have occurred in their institutions. As Mr. ”

“ The terminology, too, of some American students has been extremely perplexing. I am sorry to be obliged to dwell on this point, but a terminology which seems to apply five or six separate terms to the same social unit needs reform.
Dr. Boas is one of the most energetic field-anthropologists of the United States. To him we owe sixteen separate disquisitions and reports on the natives of the North-West Pacific coast and Hinterland, all of them cited by Mr. Goldenweizer in his excellent Bibliography. But Mr. ”