Totemic clan

“ Members of the Small Bird (amur) clan perform ceremonies to prevent the birds from injuring the crops. The relationship between a clan and its animal ancestor or totem is commonly explained by a legend that in the beginning an ancestress gave birth to twins, one of whom was the totemic animal and the other the human ancestor. Like most totemic clans, the clans of the Dinka are exogamous, that is, no man may marry a woman of his own clan. The descent of the clans is in the paternal line; in other words, every man and woman belongs to his or her father's clan, not to that of his or her mother. ”

“ To me it seems that the crest is in origin a heraldic representation of the clan totem, and that, as in Australia, totemic names of clans are older than names derived from localities or "houses." The house, the fixed building, is part of a society later than the first bearing of totemic names by clans. The crest, as a badge of rank and wealth, is later than the totem; social advance, houses, towns, heraldry, as a mark of rank, appear to me to cause the perplexities, and to place these American tribes outside of the totemism of people without rank, wealth, and houses and heraldry. ”

“ In the totemic stage of society the totem-clan was the vital organism, and the individual scarcely realised his own separate existence, but regarded himself as a member of his totem-clan, being a piece or fraction of a common life which extended through all the members of the clan and all the totem animals of the species. They may have thought also that each species of animals and plants had a different kind of life, and consequently also each clan whose life was derived from, and linked to, that of its totem-species. ”

“ In these same societies, in fact, the ancestor of the clan is not a totemic animal; the founder of the group is generally represented in the form of a human being who, at a certain time, had entered into familiar relations with a fabulous animal from whom he received his totemic emblem. This emblem, together with the special powers which are attached to it, was then passed on to the descendants of this mythical hero by right of heritage. So these people themselves seem to consider the collective totem as an individual one, perpetuated in the same family. ”

“ The same process of dismemberment which broke up the original phratries and give birth to clans properly so-called still continues within these latter; as a result of this progressive crumbling, a clan frequently has only a very small effective force. [261] In America, on the contrary, the totemic system has better defined forms. Although the tribes there are considerably larger on the average, the clans are less numerous. A single tribe rarely has more than a dozen of them, [262] and frequently less; each of them is therefore a much more important group. ”

“ But there are others with exactly the same character. Thus, the Warramunga have a totem "of the laughing boy." Spencer and Gillen say that the clan bearing this name has the same organization as the other totemic groups. Like them, it has its sacred places (mungai) where the founder-ancestor celebrated ceremonies in the fabulous times, and where he left behind him spirit-children who became the men of the clan; the rites connected with this totem are indistinguishable from those relating to the animal or vegetable totems. ”

“ The bonds which unite the individual to his totem are even so strong that in the tribes on the North-west coast of North America, the emblem of the clan is painted not only upon the living but also upon the dead: before a corpse is interred, they put the totemic mark upon it. ”

“ Such clan alliances, for example, as the Germanic kinship groups, in which the fact of the blood relationship of the members receives particularly strong emphasis, form a sort of transition between the clan and the joint family. In the joint family, it is no longer the older generation as such that is dominant, but the oldest individual. This change, as a result of which authority becomes vested in an individual, is paralleled by that which leads to individual rulership within the State. Thus, totemic tribal organization is doubly exposed to disintegration, from below and from above. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Until a recent date it was an article of faith among anthropologists that, except in special circumstances, the life of a totem-animal was, in the eyes of the clan which belonged to it, sacred, and that marriage between the members of any one clan was absolutely tabooed. If a clansman of a Crocodile clan desired a wife, he must seek her from a Wolf clan or from some other. But within the last few years totemism has been carefully and minutely observed among the Arunta tribe of Central Australia; and the records of these observations mark a new era in anthropology. ”

“ From their nature totems are constantly undergoing change. Clans tend to become phrateries, split up into sub-phrateries; sub-phrateries decay and finally disappear. An individual becomes wealthy or otherwise distinguishes himself, [126] and being one of the leading men of the tribe, his totem, or rather his crest or sub-totem, which may previously have been an obscure one, rises with him as he advances in importance in his tribe. Under his successors, the totem widens in its numbers and influence, and finally eclipses other clan totems, which in time melt away, or are incorporated with it. ”

“ It will be seen that these two groups of ceremonies, the Intichiuma and the Engwura are of great importance in the life of the tribe. Upon the former depends the supply of food and other necessaries. The latter are the final rites in the admission of youths to manhood. Thus, on the one hand, their continuance is safeguarded; on the other hand, they have a conservative influence: totemism cannot die out while they continue to be performed. On the side of organisation, however, as distinguished from the ceremonial side, the totem-clan is in decay. Nay, it has already ceased to be a clan. ”

“ Nor do we see why, if things occurred thus, the totem kins should not represent twenty or thirty differences of religious taste, in the original horde, as to the choice of animal gods. If the horde was going to vary in opinion, it is unlikely that only two factions put forward animal candidates for divinity. Again, a “clan” (a totem kin, with exogamy and descent derived through mothers) cannot overflow its territorial area and be therefore obliged to send out colonies, for such a clan (as Durkheim himself remarks) has no territorial area to overflow. It is not a local institution at all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Durkheim's statement as to how the totem kins (which he calls "secondary clans") came to exist within the phratries.
"When a clan increases beyond a certain measure, its population cannot exist within the same space: it therefore throws off colonies, which, as they no longer occupy the same habitat with, nor share the interests of the original group from which they emerged, end by taking a totem which is all their own: thenceforth they constitute new clans." ”

“ Such ceremonies exist, or have existed, in many regions and among peoples of various grades of culture, civilized as well as savage, but the cases in which they are, or were, conducted by totemistic clans are comparatively few. This sort of economic function of the totem clan is most definite and important in Central and parts of Southeast Australia, where every clan is charged with the duty of increasing the supply of its totem for the benefit of its connected clans ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hill Tout believes that he has found a proof supporting this theory in the way totemism has spread among certain societies of North-western America, especially among the Salish and certain Indians on the Thompson River. Individual totemism and the clan totemism are both found among these peoples; but they either do not co-exist in the same tribe, or else, when they do co-exist, they are not equally developed. They vary in an inverse proportion to each other; where the clan totem tends to become the general rule, the individual totem tends to disappear, and vice versa. ”

“ Gideon Scott Lang, 'No man can marry [Pg 127] a woman of the same clan, though the parties be no way related according to our ideas.' [3] By 'clan' Mr. Lang here meant totem kin, and if Lord Avebury thinks 'clan' equivalent to 'tribe,' a 'tribe' must be a totem kin, which it is not; at least if we understand 'tribe' as a local aggregate of various totem kindreds. ”

“ The leading principles of totemism have been so often defined that they are doubtless familiar to many readers. Evidently it originated at a time when men were not possessed by the fancy that they were a distinct branch of creation, but felt their kinship with other animals, which they had hardly begun to regard as inferior.167 The members of the clans which form a totemic tribe trace their descent generally from some animal, sometimes even from a plant or an object which we should call inanimate, and bear its name. ”

“ The Karan or writer caste of Orissa, similarly, have clans derived from the cobra, tortoise and calf, and most of the cultivating and other middle castes have clans with totemistic names. The usual characteristics of totemism, in its later and more common form at any rate, are that members of a clan regard themselves as related to, or descended from, the animal or tree from which the clan takes its name, and abstain from killing or eating it. ”

“ To trace the origin of the clan to the totem is only to do what is done abundantly among uncivilized and civilized peoples (Hebrews, Greeks, and others) ; the eponymous ancestor is constructed out of the current name of the clan. To refrain from killing or eating a friendly animal or plant is a simple mark of respect. The conception of special ability in a clan to insure a supply of its totem for food is in accord with savage ideas of magical endowment. When the custom of exogamy arose it would naturally attach to the clan as the social unit. ”

“ Persons belong to the same totem if they are fellow-members in a group which forms part of a tribe or of a clan. The term 'clan,' suggested by the clan divisions of the Scottish Highlanders, is the one usually employed by English ethnologists in referring to the smaller divisions of a tribe. The tribe consists of a number of clans, and each clan may include several totems. As a rule, the totem groups bear animal names. In North America, for example, there was an eagle totem, a wolf totem, a deer totem, etc. In this case the animal names regularly refer to particular clans within a tribe ”

“ This point, always overlooked by the partisans of a theory that the various totem kins are segments of "a primary clan," can be made plain. By the hypothesis there are two "clans" before us, of which Eagle Hawk (male) always marries Crow (female) , their children being Crows, and Crow (male) always marries Eagle Hawk (female) , the children being Eagle Hawks. The tribal territory is over-populated (the clan has no territory) . A tribal decree is therefore passed, that clan Eagle Hawk must "segment itself," and go to new lands. This decree means that a portion of clan Eagle Hawk must emigrate. ”

“ It is not only the clans and the Indi- sexes that have totems ; individuals also have their own vidual special totems, i.e., classes of objects (generally species of animals) , which they regard as related to themselves by those ties of mutual respect and protection which are characteristic of totemism. This relationship, however, in the case of the individual totem, begins and ends with the individual man, and is not, like the clan totem, transmitted by inheritance. ”