Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/491

Rh 471 down in a grave and is covered up lightly with earth ; but at the mention of his totem name he starts up to life. 1 New Sometimes it is believed that the youth himself is killed birth, by a being called Thuremlui, who cuts him up, restores him to life, and knocks out a tooth. 2 Here the idea seems to be that of a second birth, or the beginning of a new life for the novice ; hence he receives a new name at the time when he is circumcised, or the tooth knocked out, or the blood of the kin poured on him. 3 Amongst the Indians of Virginia and the Quojas in Africa, the youths after initiation pretended to forget the whole of their former lives (parents, language, customs, &c.). and had to learn everything over again like new-born babes. 4 A Wolf clan in Texas used to dress up in wolf skins and run about on all fours, howling and mimicking wolves; at last they scratched up a living clansman, who had been buried on purpose, and, putting a bow and arrows in his hands, bade him do as the wolves do rob, kill, and murder. 5 This may have been an initiatory ceremony, revealing to the novice in pantomime the double origin of the clan from wolves and from the ground. For it is a common belief with totem clans that they issued originally from the ground. Piacular Connected with this mimic death and revival of a clans- sacrifice man appear to be the real death and supposed revival of f totem. ^ totem itself. We have seen that some Calif ornian Indians killed the buzzard, and then buried and mourned over it like a clansman. But it was believed that, as often as the bird was killed, it was made alive again. Much the same idea appears in a Zuni ceremony described by an eyewitness, Mr Gushing. He tells how a procession of fifty men set off for the spirit-land, or (as the Zunis call it) &quot; the home of our others,&quot; and returned after four days, each man bearing a basket full of living, squirming turtles. One turtle was brought to the house where Mr Gushing was staying, and it was welcomed with divine honours. It was addressed as, &quot; Ah ! my poor dear lost child or parent, my sister or brother to have been ! Who knows which ? May be my own great great grandfather or mother ? &quot; Nevertheless, next day it was killed and its flesh and bones deposited in the river, that it might &quot; return once more to eternal life among its comrades in the dark waters of the lake of the dead.&quot; The idea that the turtle was dead was repudiated with passionate sorrow; it had only, they said, &quot; changed houses and gone to live for ever in the home of our lost others. &quot; 6 The mean ing of such ceremonies is not clear. Perhaps, as has been suggested, 7 they are piacular sacrifices, in which the god dies for his people. This is borne out by the curses with which the Egyptians loaded the head of the slain bull. 8 Sex Sex Totems. In Australia (but, so far as is known at totems. p res ent, nowhere else) each of the sexes has, at least in some tribes, its special sacred animal, whose name each individual of the sex bears, regarding the animal as his or her brother or sister respectively, not killing it nor suffer ing the opposite sex to kill it. These sacred animals therefore answer strictly to the definition of totems. Thus amoiigst the Kurnai all the men were called Yeerung (Emu-Wren) and all the women Djeetgun (Superb &quot;Warbler). The birds called Yeerung were the &quot;brothers&quot; of the men, and the birds called Djeetgun were the women s &quot;sisters.&quot; If the men killed an emu-wren they were attacked by the women, if the women killed a superb warbler they were assailed by the men. Yeerung and Djeetgun were the mythical ancestors of the Kurnai. 9 1 J. A. I., xiii. 453 sq. 2 76., xiv. 358. 3 Angas, i. 115 ; Brough Smyth, i. 75 n; J. A. L, xiv. 357, 359; Nat. Tr. of S. Austr., pp. 232, 269. 4 R. Beverley, History of Virginia (London, 1722), p. 177 sq. ; Dapper, Description de VAfrique, p. 268. 5 Schoolcraft, Ind. Tr., v. 683. 6 Mr Cashing in Century Magazine, May 1883. 7 See SACRIFICE, vol. xxi. p. 137. 8 Herod., ii. 39. 8 Fison and Howitt, 194, 201 sq., 215, 235. The Eulin tribe in Victoria, in addition to sixteen clan totems, has two pairs of sex totems : one pair (the emu-wren and superb warbler) is identical with the Kurnai pair ; the other pair is the bat (male totem) and the small night jar (female totem). The latter pair extends to the extreme north-western confines of Vic toria as the &quot;man s brother&quot; and the &quot;woman s sister.&quot; 10 The Ta-ta-thi group of tribes in New South Wales, in addition to regu lar clan totems, has a pair of sex totems, the bat for men and a small owl for women ; men and women address each other as Owls and Bats ; and there is a fight if a woman kills a bat or a man kills a small owl. 11 Of some Victorian tribes it is said that &quot; the common bat belongs to the men, who protect it against injury, even to the half killing of their wives for its sake. The fern owl, or large goat sucker, belongs to the women, and, although a bird of evil omen, creating terror at night by its cry, it is jealously protected by them. If a man kills one, they are as much enraged as if it was one of their children, and will strike him with their long poles.&quot; 12 The sex totem seems to be still more sacred than the clan totem ; for men who do not object to other people killing their clan totem will fiercely defend their sex totem against any attempt of the opposite sex to injure it. 13 Individual Totems. 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. The evidence for the existence of indi vidual totems in Australia, though conclusive, is very scanty. In North America it is abundant. In Australia we hear of a medicine-man whose clan totem through his mother was kangaroo, but whose &quot;secret&quot; (i.e., individual) totem was the tiger-snake. Snakes of that species, therefore, would not hurt him. 14 An Australian seems usually to get his individual totem by dreaming that he has been transformed into an animal of the species. Thus a man dreamed three times he was a kangaroo ; hence he became one of the kangaroo kindred, and might not eat any part of a kangaroo on which there was blood ; he might not even carry home one on which there was blood. He might eat cooked kangaroo ; but, if he were to eat the meat with the blood on it, the spirits would no longer take him up aloft 15 In America the individual totem is usually the first animal of which a youth dreams during the long and generally solitary fasts which American Indians observe at puberty. He kills the animal or bird of which he dreams, and henceforward wears its skin or feathers, or some part of them, as an amulet, especially on the war-path and in hunting. 16 A man may even (though this seems exceptional) acquire several totems in this way ; thus an Ottawa medicine-man had for his individual totems the tortoise, swan, woodpecker, and crow, because he had dreamed of them all in his fast at puberty. The respect paid to the individual totem varies in different tribes. Among the Slave, Hare, and Dogrib Indians a man may not eat, skin, nor if possible kill his individual totem, which, in these tribes is said to be always a carnivorous animal. Each man carries with him a picture of his totem (bought of a trader) ; when he is unsuccessful in the chase, he pulls out the picture, smokes to it, and makes it a speech. 17 The Indians of Canada changed their okki or manitoo (indivi dual totem) if they had reason to be dissatisfied with it ; their women had also their okkis or manitoos, but did not pay so much heed to them as did the men. They tattooed their individual totems on their persons. 18 Amongst the Indians of San Juan Capistrano, a figure of the individual totem, which was acquired as usual by fasting, was moulded in a paste made of crushed herbs on the right arm of the novice. Fire was then set to it, and thus the figure of the totem was burned into the flesh. 19 Sometimes the individual totem is not acquired by the individual himself at puberty, but is 10 J. A. L, xv. p. 416 ; cf. xii. p. 507. 11 Ibid., xiv. 350. ^ Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 52. 13 J. A. L, xiv. p. 350. 14 Ibid., xvi. p. 50. 15 Ibid., 45. 16 Catlin, JV. Amer. Indians, i. p. 36 sq. ; Schoolcraft, Ind. Tr., v. p. 196 ; Id., Amer. Ind., p. 213 ; Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, p. 173 sq. ; Bancroft, i. 283 sq. ; Id., iii. 156; Mayne, Brit. Columb., p. 302; P. Jones, Hist. Ojebway Ind., p. 87 sq., &c. 17 Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1866, p. 307. 18 Charlevoix, Hist, de la Nouv. Fr., vi. 67 sq. The word okki is Huron ; manitoo is Algonkin (ibid. ; Sagard, Le grand Voyage du pays des Hurons, p. 231). 19 Boscana in A. Eobinson s Life in California, pp. 270 sq., 273; Bancroft, i. 414, iii. 167 sq.