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 totemism. In the case of the Arunta we have demonstrated that hereditary and exogamous totemism of the normal type preceded the actual conceptional method of acquiring, by local accident, “personal totems.” If the Banks' Islanders were ever totemists they have ceased to be so, and merely retain, in cases, a superstition analogous to that which, among the Arunta, with the aid of the stone churinga, has produced the present unique and abnormal state of affairs totemic.

For totemism in India, see Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal; for the north of Asia, Strahlenberg's Description, &c. (1738); and in all instances Mr Frazer's book.

Myths of Totem Origins.—The myths of savages about the origin of totemism are of no historical value. 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.

In their myths as to the origin of totemism, savages vary as much as the civilized makers of modern hypotheses. Some claim descent from the totem object; others believe that an original race of animals peopled the world; animals human in character, but bestial, vegetable, astral or what not, in form. These became men, while retaining the rapport with their original species; or their spirits are continually reincarnated in women and are born again (Arunta of Messrs Spencer and Gillen); or spirits emanating from the primal forms, or from objects in nature, as trees or rocks, connected with them, enter women and are reincarnated (Arunta of Mr Strehlow and some Australian north-western tribes, studied by Mrs Bates). Other Australians believe that the All-Father, Baiame, gave totems and totemic laws to men. There are many other explanatory myths wherever totemism, or vestiges thereof, is found in Australia, Africa, America and Asia.

All the myths of savages, except mere romantic Märchen, and most of the myths of peoples who, like the Greeks, later became civilized, are “aetiological,” that is, are fanciful hypotheses made to account for everything, from the universe, the skies, the sun, the moon, the stars, fire, rites and ceremonies, to the habits and markings of animals. It is granted that almost all of these fables are historically valueless, but an exception has been made, by scholars who believe that society was deliberately reformed by an act bisecting a tribe into two exogamous divisions, for savage myths which hit on the same explanation. We might as well accept the savage myths which hit on other explanations, for example the theory that Sibokoism arose from animal sobriquets. Exceptions are also made for Arunta myths in which the primal ancestors are said to feed habitually if not exclusively on their own totems. But as many totems, fruit, flowers, grubs, and so on are only procurable for no longer than the season of the May-fly or the March-brown, these myths are manifestly fabulous.

Again the Arunta primal ancestors are said to have cohabited habitually with women of their own totem, though without prejudice against women of other totems whom they encountered in their wanderings. These myths are determined by the belief in oknanikilla, or spots haunted by spirits all of one totem, which, again, determine the totem of every Arunta. The idea being that the fabled primal ancestors male and female in each wandering group of miracle-workers were always all of one totem, it follows that, if not celibate, which these savages never are, they must have cohabited with women of their own totem, and, by the existing Arunta system, there is no reason why they should not have done so. In no other field of research is historical value attributed to savage legends about the inscrutable past that lies behind existing institutions.

We are thus confronted by an institution of great importance socially where it regulates marriages and the blood-feud, or where it is a bond of social union between kinsmen in the totem or members of a society which does magic for the behoof

of its totem (central and north-western Australia), and is of some “religious” and mythical importance when, as in Samoa the sacred animal is regarded as the vehicle of a god. Of the origin of these beliefs, which have practical effects in the evolution of society and religion, much, we saw, is conjectured, but as we know no race in the act of becoming totemic—as in all peoples which we can study totemism is an old institution, and in most is manifestly decaying or being transmuted—we can only form the guesses of which examples have been given. Others may be found in the works of Herbert, Spencer and Lord Avebury, and criticisms of all of them may be read in A. Lang's Social Origins.

Whether or not survivals of totems are to be found in the animal worship of ancient Egypt, in the animal attendants of Greek gods, in Greek post-Homeric legends of descent from gods in various bestial disguises, and in certain ancient Irish legends, it is impossible to be certain, especially as so many gods are now explained as spirits of vegetation, to which folk-lore assigns carnal forms of birds and beasts.

Other Things called Totems.—As has been said, the name “totem” is applied by scholars to many things in nature which are not hereditary and exogamous totems. The “local totem” (so called) has been mentioned, also “linked totems.”

Personal Totems.—This is the phrase for any animal or other object which has been “given” to a person as a protective familiar, whether by a sorcerer or by a father, or by a congress of spaewives at birth; or whether the person selects it for himself, by the monition of a dream or by caprice. The Euahlayi call the personal totem Yunbeai, the true totem they style Dhe. They may eat their real but not their personal totems, which answer to the hares and black cats of our witches.

Three or four other examples of tribes in which “personal totems” are “given” to lads at initiation are recorded by Howitt. The custom appears to be less common in Australia than in America and Africa (except in South Australia, where people may have a number of “personal totems”). In one case the “personal totem” came to a man in a dream, as in North America. Here it may be noted that the simplest and apparently the easiest theory of the origin of totemism is merely to suppose that a man, or with female descent a woman, made his or her personal totem hereditary for ever in his or her descendants. But nobody has explained how it happened that while all had evanescent personal totems those of a few individuals only become stereotyped and hereditary for ever.

Sex-Totems.—The so-called “sex totem” is only reported in Australia. Each sex is supposed by some tribes to have its patron animal, usually a bird, and to injure the creature is to injure the sex. When lovers are backward the women occasionally kill the animal patron of the men, which produces horseplay, and “a sort of jolly fight,” like sky-larking and flirtation. The old English “jolly kind of fight,” between girls as partisans of ivy, and men as of the holly “sex-totem,” is a near analogue. It need not be added that “sex-totems” are exogamous, in the nature of things.

Sub-Totems.—This is the name of what are also styled “multiplex totems,” that is, numerous objects claimed for their own by totem kins in various Australian regions. The Emu totem kin, among the Euahlayi tribe, claims as its own twenty-three animals and the north-west wind. The whole universe, including mankind, was apparently divided between the totem kins. Therefore the list of sub-totems might be extended indefinitely. These “sub-totems” are a savage effort at universal classification.

Conclusion.—We have now covered the whole field of controversy as to the causes and origins of totemic institutions. Australia, with North America, provides the examples of those institutions which seem to be “nearest to the beginning,” and in Australia the phenomena have been most carefully and