Totem

“ The function of the totem clan consists of carrying out a ceremony which in a subtle magic manner brings about an increase of the edible totem. (This ceremony is called Intichiuma.)
4. The Aruntas have a peculiar theory about conception and re-birth. They assume that the spirits of the dead who belonged to their totem wait for their re-birth in definite localities and penetrate into the bodies of the women who pass such a spot. When a child is born the mother states at which spirit abode she thinks she conceived her child. This determines the totem of the child. ”

“ In Totemism the mythical ancestor takes on a non-human form, being as a rule some animal, but sometimes also a plant or even an inanimate object. All examples of the totem class are, as a rule, held sacred by those who belong to the respective totem, and must be treated with care and reverence, but (in the case of animal Exogamy totems at any rate) are sometimes killed and eaten at a solemn sacrificial feast. ”

“ A totem is a rude picture or carving as of a bird or other animal, used as a symbol of a family. It represents a class of material objects which a savage regards with superstitious respect, believing that there exists between him and every member of the class an intimate and altogether special relation. The connection between a man and his totem is beneficial one to the other; the totem protects the man and in return he shows his respect by not killing it, if it be an animal, and by not cutting or gathering it if it be a plant. ”

“ This superstition is called Totemism, and the mythic ancestor is known as the Totem. As a people passes gradually into a higher stage of culture, greater stress is constantly laid on the human qualities of the Totem, until it becomes at length an anthropomorphic god. ”

“ Only a weak fanatic will find a totem in every animal connected with gods, sacred names, and religious symbols. But totemism is a fact, whether ‘totem’ originally meant a clan-mark or sign-board in America or not. And, like Mr. Sayce, Mr. Frazer, Mr. Rhys, Dr. Robertson Smith, I believe that totemism has left marks in civilised myth, ritual, and religion, and that these survivals, not a ‘disease of language,’ explain certain odd elements in the old civilisations. ”

“ A man who does not inherit his father's totem because of the accident of his conception in a local centre of another totem, does, none the less, inherit his totemic ceremonies and rites. Totemism is thus en pleine décadence among the Arunta, from whom, consequently, nothing can be learned as to the origin of totemism. ”

“ The amulet and the local totemic centre, with its haunted nanja rock or tree, determine the totem of the child. Thus, unlike all other totemists, the Arunta do not inherit their totems either from father or mother, or both. Totems are determined by local accident. Not being hereditary, they are not exogamous: here, and here alone, they do not regulate marriage. Men may, and do, marry women of their own totem, and their child's totem may neither be that of its father nor of its mother. ”

“ Australian tribes are divided into smaller septs or clans, each taking the name of its totem. Now what is a totem? As a rule it is an animal, either edible and harmless, or dangerous and feared; more rarely the totem is a plant or a force of nature (rain, water) , which stands in a peculiar relation to the whole clan. The totem is first of all the tribal ancestor of the clan, as well as its tutelary spirit and protector; it sends oracles and, though otherwise dangerous, the totem knows and spares its children. ”

“ Even a totem like Laughing Boys, which we find among the Arunta, is perfectly intelligible on the present theory. In fact, of all the things which the savage perceives or imagines, there is none which he might not thus convert into a totem, since there is none which might not chance to impress itself on the mind of the mother, waking or dreaming, at the critical season. ”

“ In myths the god is frequently transformed into an animal, often into the animal that is sacred to him. From this the assumption was obvious that the god himself was the animal, and that he had evolved from the totem animal at a later stage of religious feeling. But the reflection that the totem itself is nothing but a substitute for the father relieves us of all further discussion. Thus the totem may have been the first form of the father substitute and the god a later one in which the father regained his human form. ”

“ Nor must we confuse matters by regarding every animal now attached to any kind of association or individual as a totem. Each sex, in many Australian tribes, has an associated animal. Each dead man, in some communities, is classed under some name of an object of nature. Each individual may have a patron animal familiar revealed to him, in a dream, or by an accident, after a fast, or may have it selected for him by soothsayers. The totem kins may classify all things, in sets, each set of things under one totem. ”

“ It appears, then, that a man, having several totems, all the totems in his “clan,” must marry a woman of another “clan” who has all the totems of her “clan.”
Similar multiplicity of totems, each individual having a number of totems, is described in Western Australia (Mrs Bates) . In this case the word “totem” seems to be used rather vaguely and the facts require elucidation and verification. In this part of Australia, as in Fiji [72] “pour la naissance . . . l'apparition du totem-animal avait toujours lieu.” ”

“ Every warrior chooses a totem, some quadruped, bird, or fish, to which he prays, and which he will on no account kill or eat. Dr. Livingstone shows (chap. i.) that the same custom prevails in its entirety among the Kaffir Bakwaina, and opines that it shows traces of addiction to animal worship, like the ancient Egyptians; in the prophecies of Israel the tribes are compared with animals, a true totemic practice. The word totem also signifies a sub-clan or sub-tribe; and some nations, like the African Somal, will not allow marriage in the same totem. ”

“ Next come instances of special respect paid to the totem. Some idea of the kind may be partly the origin of the worship of the cow and the serpent. Dr. Ball describes how some Khândhs refused to carry the skin of a leopard because it was their totem.21 The Kadanballis of Kanara will not eat the Sâmbhar stag, the Bargaballis the Barga deer, and the Kuntiballis the woodcock. ”

“ Thus through the ages we see the identity of the totem feast with the animal sacrifice, the theanthropic human sacrifice, and the Christian eucharist, and in all these solemn occasions we recognize the after-effects of that crime which so oppressed men but of which they must have been so proud. ”

“ To return to the theory that totems are tutelary spirits in animal or other natural forms. A man may have a spirit guardian in animal form, that is his "totem," on the theory. He may transmit it to his descendants, and then it is their "totem"; or his sisters may adopt it, and hand it down in the female line, and then it is the totem of his nephews and nieces for ever; or the man may not transmit it at all. Usually, it is manifest, he did not transmit it; for there must have been countless species of animal protectors of individuals, but tribes in America have very few totems. ”

“ Not worshipping ancestral spirits, an Australian will not, like an ancestor worshipping African, explain his totem as an ancestral spirit. But where, as in the north and centre, he has an elaborate philosophy of spirits, there the primal totems exude spirits which are incarnated in women. ”

“ On such a view it is perfectly natural that a man, deeming himself one of his totem species, should regard it with respect and affection, and that he should imagine himself possessed of a power, such as men of other totems do not possess, to increase or diminish it, according to circumstances, for the good of himself and his fellows. Thus the practice of Intichiuma, that is, magical ceremonies, performed by men of a totem for its increase or diminution, would be a natural development of the original germ or stock of totemism. ”

“ This hypothesis agrees very well with a belief that one’s body and soul descend from the same ancestor as the Totem’s; and that at death one goes to, or becomes, the Totem; and excuses the fiction that the quickening of a pregnant woman may be caused by the entry into her of the spirit of some totem-plant or animal.
On the Gold Coast and elsewhere in West Africa, a man has more than one soul, it may be as many as four ”

“ Every Arunta born incarnates a pre-existent primal spirit attached to one of the stone churinga dropped by primal totemic beings, all of one totem in each case, at a place called an oknanikilla. Each child belongs to the totem of the primal beings of the place, where the mother became aware of the child's life. ”

“ The usages in regard to killing or eating the totem are so diverse, and often so uncertain, 188that it is not possible to lay down a general rule of prohibition. An edible totem is only a peculiar sort of sacred animal or plant, and respect for such objects often leads to refusal to kill or eat them—an interdiction of this sort does not in itself show whether or not the object in question is a totem. ”

“ The civilized races of antiquity all passed through the totem period. Our Indians all had their totems as their names indicate, Blackfeet, Crow and Sioux. Totems are common to all savage races, but the Alaskan Indian is the only North American who erects a monument to his totem.
While the totem protects the Indian the Indian is in duty bound to protect his totem. He may neither kill nor eat his own totem, but he may with impunity kill the god of another. If you kill his totem he will be grieved and sorrowfully ask, “Why you kill him, my brother?” ”

“ Thus it appears that the story of "The giant who had no heart in his body" may perhaps furnish the key to the relation which is supposed to subsist between a man and his totem. The totem, on this theory, is simply the receptacle in which a man keeps his life, as Punchkin kept his life in a parrot, and Bidasari kept her soul in a golden fish. ”

“ In view of these observations we consider ourselves justified in substituting the father for the totem animal in the male’s formula of totemism. We then notice that in doing so we have taken no new or especially daring step. For primitive men say it themselves and, as far as the totemic system is still in effect to-day, the totem is called ancestor and primal father. ”

“ Let us concentrate, now, our attention on the character of the genuine totem, the totem of the group or kin. It is not adopted by the savages on a dream-warning; each man or woman for himself or herself: nor is it chosen for each child at birth, nor by a diviner, like the nagual, bush-soul, nyarong of Sarawak, or the secret animal friend of each individual Australian. A savage inherits his group totem name. The name of any plant or animal which he may adopt for himself, or have assigned to him as a personal name, by his parents, or, so to speak, god-parents, is not his totem. ”

“ That mysterious business of totemism, which students of folk-lore have discovered among most primitive peoples, must be regarded as another of the forerunners of true heraldry, the totem of a tribe supplying a badge which was sometimes displayed on the body of the tribesman in paint, scars or tattooing. Totemism so far touches our heraldry that some would trace to its symbols the white horse of Westphalia, the bull’s head of the Mecklenburgers and many other ancient armories. ”

“ Perhaps some advance in culture, like the use of a new weapon, had given them the feeling of superiority. Of course these cannibalistic savages ate their victim. This violent primal father had surely been the envied and feared model for each of the brothers. Now they accomplished their identification with him by devouring him and each acquired a part of his strength. The totem feast, which is perhaps mankind’s first celebration, would be the repetition and commemoration of this memorable, criminal act with which so many things began, social organization, moral restrictions and religion. ”

“ Frazer's remarks on individual totems in his book on totemism: — "An Australian seems usually to get his individual totem by dreaming that he has been transformed into an animal of that species." "In America the individual totem is usually the first animal of which a youth dreams during the long and generally solitary fast which American Indians observe at puberty." ”

“ Supposed invulnerability of men who have weapons for their guardian spirits. In the former of these two initiatory rites of the Carrier Indians the prominent feature is the transformation of the man into his totem animal; in the latter it is his death and resurrection. But in substance, probably, both are identical. In both the novice dies as a man and revives as his totem, whether that be a bear, a “darding” knife, or what not; in other words, he has deposited his life or some portion of it in his totem, with which accordingly for the future he is more or less completely identified. ”

“ Durkheim's own definition. "The members of a clan literally deem themselves of one flesh, of one blood, and the blood is that of the mythic being" (the totem) "from which they are all descended." [23] How and why then, should emigrants from "clans," say Eagle Hawk and Crow, change their gods, their blood, their flesh, their souls? To imagine that totems or even the descent of totems can be changed, by legislation, from the female to the male line, is, says Dr. Durkheim, "to forget that the totem is not a thing which men think they can dispose of at will,... ”