Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/489

Rh TOTEMISM 469 The relation between a man and his totem is one of mutual help and protection. If the man respects and cares for the totem, he expects that the totem will do the same by him. In Senegambia the totems, when they are dangerous animals, will not hurt their clansmen; e.g., men of the Scorpion clan affirm that scorpions (of a very deadly kind) will run over their bodies without biting them. 1 A Snake clan (Ophiogenes) in Asia Minor, believing that they were descended from snakes, and that snakes were their kinsmen, submitted to a practical test the claims of any man amongst them whom they suspected of being no true clansman. They made a snake bite him; if he survived, he was a true clansman ; if he died, he was not. 2 The Psylli, a Snake clan in Africa, had a similar test of kinship ; they exposed their new-born children to snakes, and if the snakes left them unharmed or only bit without killing them, the children were legitimate ; otherwise they were bastards. 3 In Senegambia, at the present day, a python is expected to visit every child of the Python clan within eight days after birth. 4 Other totem clans regard a man who has been bitten by the totem, even though he survives, as disowned by the totem, and therefore they expel him from the clan. Among the Crocodile clan of the Bechuanas, if a man has been bitten by a crocodile, or merely had water splashed over him by a crocodile s tail, he is expelled the clan. 5 But it is not enough that the totem should merely abstain from injuring, he must positively benefit the men who put their faith in him. The Snake clan (Ophiogenes) of Asia Minor believed that if they were bitten by an adder they had only to put a snake to the wound and their totem would suck out the poison and soothe away the inflammation and the pain. 6 Hence Omaha medicine men, in curing the sick, imitate the action and voice of their (individual) totem. 7 Members of the Serpent clan in Senegambia profess to heal by their touch persons who have been bitten by serpents. 8 A similar profession was made in antiquity by Snake clans in Africa, Cyprus, and Italy. 9 Again, the totem gives his clansmen important informa tion by means of omens. In the Coast Murring tribe of New South Wales each man s totem warned him of com ing danger ; if his totem was a kangaroo, a kangaroo would warn him against his foes. 10 The Samoan totems gave omens to their clansmen. Thus, if an owl flew before the Owl clan, as they marched to war, it was a signal to go on ; but if it flew across their path, or back wards, it was a sign to retreat. 11 Some kept a tame owl on purpose to give omens in war. 12 When the conduct of the totem is not all that his clansmen could desire, they have various ways of putting pressure on him. Thus, in harvest time, when the birds eat the corn, the Small Bird clan of the Omahas take some corn which they chew and spit over the field. This is thought to keep the birds from the crops. 13 If worms infest the corn the Reptile clan of the Omahas catch some of them and pound them up with some grains of corn which have been heated. They make a soup of the mixture and eat it, believing that the corn will not be infested again, at least for that year. 14 During a fog the men of the Turtle subclan of the Omahas used to draw 1 Revue cV Ethnographic, iii. p. 396. 2 Varro in Priscian, x. 32, vol. i. p. 524, ed. Keil. For the snake descent of the clan, see Strabo, xiii. 1, 14; Julian, N. A., xii. 39. 3 Varro, loc. cit.; Pliny, N. H., vii. 14. Pliny has got it wrong end on. He says that if the snakes did not leave the children they were bastards. We may safely correct his statement by Varro s. 4 Revue d Ethnographie, iii. p. 397. 5 Livingstone, South Africa, p. 255. 6 Strabo, xiii. 1, 14. 7 James, Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, i. p. 247. 8 Revue d Ethnographie, iii. p. 396. 9 Pliny, JT. H., xxviii. 30. 10 J. A. I., xiii. 195 n, xvi. 46. 1 Turner, Samoa, 21, 24, 60. M Ibid., 25 sq. 13 Third Report, p. 238 sq. The idea perhaps is that the birds eat in the persons of their clansmen, and give tangible evidence that they have eaten their fill. &quot; Third Rep., 248. the figure of a turtle on the ground with its face to the south. On the head, tail, middle of the back, and on each leg were placed small pieces of a red breech-cloth with some tobacco. This was thought to make the fog disappear. 15 In order, apparently, to put himself more fully under Man the protection of the totem, the clansman is in the habit assimi - of assimilating himself to the totem by dressing in the skin j^g elf or other part of the totem animal, arranging his hair and to totem. mutilating his body so as to resemble the totem, and repre senting it on his body by cicatrices, tattooing, or paint. Among the Thlinkets on solemn occasions, such as dances, memorial festivals, and burials, individuals often appear disguised in the full form of their totem animals ; and, as a rule, each clans man carries at least an easily recognizable part of his totem with him. 16 Amongst the Omahas, the smaller boys of the Black Shoulder (Buffalo) clan wear two locks of hair in imitation of horns. 17 The Small Bird clan of the Omahas &quot; leave a little hair in front, over the forehead, for a bill, and some at the back of the head, for the bird s tail, with much over each ear for the wings.&quot; w The Turtle subclan of the Omahas &quot; cut off all the hair from a boy s head, except six locks ; two are left on each side, one over the forehead, and one hanging down the back in imitation of the legs, head, and tail of a turtle. &quot; 19 The practice of knocking out the upper front teeth at puberty, which prevails in Australia and elsewhere, is, or was once, probably an imitation of the totem. The Batoka in Africa who adopt this practice say that they do so in order to be like oxen, while those who retain their teeth are like zebras. 20 The Haidas of Queen Charlotte Islands are universally tattooed, Tattoo- the design being in all cases the totem, executed in a conventional ing. style. When several families of different totems live together in the same large house, a Haida chief will have all their totems tattooed on his person. 21 Tribes in South America are especially distinguished by their tattoo marks, but whether these are totem marks is not said. 22 The Australians do not tattoo but raise cicatrices ; in some tribes these cicatrices are arranged in patterns which serve as the tribal badges, consisting of lines, dots, circles, semicircles, &c. 23 According to one authority, these Australian tribal badges are sometimes representations of the totem. 24 Again, the totem is sometimes painted on the person of the clans man. This, as we have seen (p. 468), is sometimes done by the Indians of British Columbia. Among the Hurons (Wyandots) each clan has a distinctive mode of painting the face ; and, at least in the case of the chiefs at installation, this painting represents the totem. 25 Among the Moquis the representatives of the clans at foot-races, dances, &c. , have each a conventional representation of his totem blazoned on breast or back. 26 The clansman also affixes his totem mark as a signature to treaties and other documents, 27 and paints or carves it on his weapons, hut, canoe, &c. The identification of a man with his totem appears further to have been the object of various ceremonies observed at birth, marriage, death, and on other occasions. Birth Ceremonies. On the fifth day after birth a child Birth of the Deer-Head clan of the Omahas is painted with red cere : spots on its back, in imitation of a fawn, and red stripes mi are painted on the child s arms and chest. All the Deer- Head men present at the ceremony make red spots on their chests. 28 When a South Slavonian woman has given birth to a child, an old woman runs out of the house and calls out, &quot; A she-wolf has littered a he- wolf,&quot; and the child is drawn through a wolfskin, as if to simulate actual birth from a wolf. Further, a piece of the eye and heart of a 5 Third Report, 240. 16 Holmberg in Acta Soc. Scient. Fennicae, iv. 293 sq., 328 ; Petroff, Report on Population, Industries, and Resources of Alaska, p. 166. 17 Third Rep., 229. 18 Ibid., 238. 19 Ibid., 240. 20 Livingstone, South Africa, p. 532. 21 Geolog. Surv. of Canada, Rep. for 1878-79, pp. 108s, 135s ; Smithsonian Contrib. to Knowl., vol. xxi. No. 267, p. 3 sq. ; Nature, 20th January 1887, p. 285 ; Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1886, p. 67 sq. 22 Martius, Zur Ethnographie America s, zumal Brasiliens, p. 55. 23 Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. p. xli. sq., 295, ii. 313 ; Eyre, Jour., ii. 333, 335; Ridley, Kamilaroi, p. 140; Jour, and Proc. R. Soc. N. S. Wales, 1882, p. 201. 24 Mr Chatfield, in Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 66 n. On tattooing in connexion with totemism, see Haberlandt in Mittheil. der anthrop. Gesell. in Wien, xv. (1885) p. [58] sq. 25 First Rep., pp. 62, 64. M Bourke, Snake Dance, p. 229. 27 Heckewelder, Indian Nations, p. 247. 28 Third Rep., p. 245 sq.