Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/488

Rh never kill his totem animal; if he sees another do it, he will hide his face for shame, and afterwards demand compensation for the act. Whenever one of these Indians exhibits his totem badge (as by painting it on his forehead), all persons of the same totem are bound to do honour to it by casting property before it. The Damaras in South Africa are divided into totem clans, called "eandas"; and according to the clan to which they belong they refuse to partake, e.g., of an ox marked with black, white, or red spots, or of a sheep without horns, or of draught oxen. Some of them will not even touch vessels in which such food has been cooked, and avoid even the smoke of the fire which has been used to cook it. The negroes of Senegambia do not eat their totems. The Mundas (or Mundaris) and Oraons in Bengal, who are divided into exogamous totem clans, will not kill or eat the totem animals which give their names to the clans. A remarkable feature of some of these Oraon totems is that they are not whole animals, but parts of animals, as the head of a tortoise, the stomach of a pig. In such cases (which are not confined to Bengal) it is of course not the whole animal, but only the special part, that the clansmen are forbidden to eat. Such totems may be distinguished as split totems. The Jagannáthi Kumhár in Bengal abstain from killing or injuring the totems of their respective clans, and they bow to their totems when they meet them.

When the totem is a plant the rules are such as these. A native of western Australia, whose totem is a vegetable, "may not gather it under certain circumstances and at a particular period of the year." An Oraon clan, whose totem is the kujrar tree, will not eat the oil of that tree, nor sit in its shade. The Red Maize clan of the Omahas will not eat red maize. Those of the people of Ambon and Uliase who are descended from trees may not use these trees for firewood.

The rules not to kill or eat the totem are not the only taboos; the clansmen are often forbidden to touch the totem or any part of it, sometimes even to look at it.

Thus the Elk clan of the Omahas neither eat the flesh nor touch any part of the male elk. The Deer-Head clan of the Omahas may not touch the skin of any animal of the deer family, nor wear moccasins of deer skin, nor use the fat of the deer for hair-oil; but they may eat the flesh of deer. Of the totem clans in Bengal it is said that they "are prohibited from killing, eating, cutting, burning, carrying, using, &c.," the totem. The Bechuanas in South Africa, who have a well-developed totem system, may not eat nor clothe themselves in the skin of the totem animal. They even avoid, at least in some cases, to look at the totem. Thus to a man of the Bakuena (Bakwain) or Crocodile clan, it is "hateful and unlucky" to meet or gaze on a crocodile; the sight is thought to cause inflammation of the eyes.

Sometimes the totem animal is fed or even kept alive in captivity. Among the mountaineers of Formosa each clan or village keeps its totem (serpent, leopard, &c.) in a cage. A Samoan clan whose totem was the eel used to present the first fruits of the taro plantations to the eels. Amongst the Narrinyeri in South Australia men of the Snake clan sometimes catch snakes, pull out their teeth or sew up their mouths, and keep them as pets. In a Pigeon clan of Samoa a pigeon was carefully kept and fed. Amongst the Kalang in Java, whose totem is the red dog, each family as a rule keeps one of these animals, which they will on no account allow to be struck or ill-used by any one.

The dead totem is mourned for and buried like a dead clansman. In Samoa, if a man of the Owl totem found a dead owl by the road side, he would sit down and weep over it and beat his forehead with stones till the blood flowed. The bird would then be wrapped up and buried with as much ceremony as if it had been a human being. "This, however, was not the death of the god. He was supposed to be yet alive, and incarnate in all the owls in existence." The generalization here implied is characteristic of totemism; it is not merely an individual but the species that is reverenced. The Wanika in eastern Africa look on the hyæna as one of their ancestors, and the death of an hyæna is mourned by the whole people; the mourning for a chief is said to be as nothing compared to the mourning for an hyæna. A tribe of southern Arabia used to bury a dead gazelle wherever they found one, and the whole tribe mourned for it seven days. A Californian tribe which reverenced the buzzard held an annual festival at which the chief ceremony was the killing of a buzzard without losing a drop of its blood. It was then skinned, the feathers were preserved to make a sacred dress for the medicine-man, and the body was buried in holy ground amid the lamentations of the old women, who mourned as for the loss of a relative or friend.

As some totem clans avoid looking at their totem, so others are careful not to speak of it by its proper name, but use descriptive epithets instead. The three totems of the Delawares—the wolf, turtle, and turkey—were referred to respectively as "round foot," "crawler," and "not chewing," the last referring to the bird's habit of swallowing its food; and the clans called themselves, not Wolves, Turtles, and Turkeys, but "Round Feet," "Crawlers" and "Those who do not chew." The Bear clan of the Ottawas called themselves not Bears but Big Feet. The object of these circumlocutions is probably to give no offence to the worshipful animal.

The penalties supposed to be incurred by acting disrespectfully to the totem are various. The Bakalai think that if a man were to eat his totem the women of his clan would miscarry and give birth to animals of the totem kind, or die of an awful disease. The Elk clan among the Omahas believe that if any clansman were to touch any part of the male elk, or eat its flesh or the flesh of the male deer, he would break out in boils and white spots in different parts of the body. The Red Maize subclan of the Omahas believe that, if they were to eat of the red maize, they would have running sores all round their mouth. And in general the Omahas believe that to eat of the totem, even in ignorance, would cause sickness, not only to the eater, but also to his wife and children. The worshippers of the Syrian goddess, whose creed was saturated with totemism, believed that if they ate a sprat or an anchovy their whole bodies would break out in ulcers, their legs would waste away, and their liver melt, or that their belly and legs would swell up.

The Samoans thought it death to injure or eat their totems. The totem was supposed to take up his abode in the sinner's body, and there to gender the very thing which he had eaten till it caused his death.

Thus if a Turtle man ate of a turtle he grew very ill, and the voice of the turtle was heard in his inside saying, " He ate me; I am killing him." In such cases, however, the Samoans had a mode of appeasing the angry totem. The offender himself or one of his clan was wrapped in leaves and laid in an unheated oven, as if he were about to be baked. Thus if amongst the Cuttle-Fish clan a visitor had caught a cuttle-fish and cooked it, or if a Cuttle-Fish man had been present at the eating of a cuttle-fish, the Cuttle-Fish clan met and chose a man or woman who went through the pretence of being baked. Otherwise a cuttle-fish would grow in the stomach of some of the clan and be their death.

In Australia, also, the punishment for eating the totem appears to have been sickness or death. But it is not merely the totem which is tabooed to the Australians, they have, besides, a very elaborate code of food prohibitions, which vary chiefly with age, being on the whole strictest and most extensive at puberty, and gradually relaxing with advancing years. Thus young men are for bidden to eat the emu; if they ate it, it is thought that they would be afflicted with sores all over their bodies.