Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/492

Rh 472 TOTEMISM fixed for him independently of his will at birth. Thus among the tribes of the isthmus of Tehuantepec, when a woman was about to be confined, the relations assembled in the hut and drew on the floor figures of different animals, rubbing each one out as soon as it was finished. This went on till the child was born, and the figure that then remained sketched on the ground was the child s tona or totem. When he grew older the child procured his totem animal and took care of it, believing that his life was bound up with the animal s, and that when it died he too must die. 1 Similarly in Samoa, at child-birth the help of several gods &quot; was invoked in succession, and the one who happened to be addressed at the moment of the birth was the infant s totem. These &quot; gods &quot; were dogs, eels, sharks, lizards, &c. A Samoan had no objection to eat another man s &quot;god&quot; ; but to eat his own would have been death or injury to him. 2 Sometimes the okkis or mauitoos acquired by dreams are not totems but fetiches, being not classes of objects but individual objects, such as a particular tree, rock, knife, pipe, &c. 3 Besides the clan totem, sex totem, and individual totem, there are (as has been indicated) some other kinds or varieties of totems ; but the consideration of them had better be deferred till after the consideration of the social organization based on totemism. Blood Social Aspect of Totemism, or the relation of the men of feud. a totem to each other and to men of other totems. (1) All the members of a totem clan regard each other as kins men or brothers and sisters, and are bound to help and protect each other. The totem bond is stronger than the bond of blood or family in the modern sense. This is ex pressly stated of the clans of western Australia and of north-western America, 4 and is probably true of all societies where totemism exists in full force. Hence in totem tribes every local group, being necessarily composed (owing to exogamy) of members of at least two totem clans, is liable to be dissolved at any moment into its totem elements by the outbreak of a blood feud, in which husband and wife must always (if the feud is between their clans) be arrayed on opposite sides, and in which the children will be arrayed against either their father or their mother, according as de scent is traced through the mother or through the father. 5 In blood feud the whole clan of the aggressor is responsible for his deed, and the whole clan of the aggrieved is entitled to satisfaction. 6 Nowhere perhaps is this solidarity carried farther than among the Goajiros in Colombia, South Ame rica. The Goajiros are divided into some twenty to thirty totem clans, with descent in the female line ; and amongst them, if a man happens to cut himself with his own knife, to fall off his horse, or to injure himself in any way, his family on the mother s side immediately demand payment as blood-money from him. &quot; Being of their blood, he is not allowed to spill it without paying for it.&quot; His father s family also demands compensation, but not so much. 7 Exo- (2) Exogamy. Persons of the same totem may not gamy, marry or have sexual intercourse with each other. The Navajos believe that if they married within the clan &quot; their bones would dry up and they would die.&quot; 8 But the penalty for infringing this fundamental law is not merely natural; the clan steps in and punishes the offenders. In Australia the regular penalty for sexual intercourse with a person of a forbidden clan is death. It matters not whether the woman be of the same local group or has been captured in war from another tribe ; a man of the wrong 1 Bancroft, i. 661. 2 Turner, Samoa, 17. 3 Lafitau, Mceursdes Sauvages Ameriquains, i. 370 sq.; Charlevoix, Hist, de la Nouv. Fr., vi. 68 ; Kohl, Kitchi Garni, i. 85 sq. 4 Grey, Jour., ii. 231 ; Report of the Smithsonian Inst. for 1866, p. 315; Petroff, Rep. on Alaska, p. 165. Other authorities speak to the superiority of the totem bond over the tribal bond (Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 82; Mayne, Brit. Columb., p. 257; American Antiquarian, ii. p. 109). 5 Grey, Journals, ii. 230, 238 sq.; Smithsonian Rep., loc. cit. 6 Fison and Howitt, 156 sq., 216 sq. Sometimes the two clans meet and settle it by single combat between picked champions (Jour, and Proc. R. Soc. &. S. Wales, 1882, p. 226). 7 Simons in Proc. R. Geogr. Soc., Dec. 1885, p. 789 sq. 8 Bourke, Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona, p. 279. clan who uses her as his wife is hunted down and killed by his clansmen, and so is the woman ; though in some cases, if they suc ceed in eluding capture for a certain time, the offence may be con doned. In the Ta-ta-thi tribe, New South Wales, m the rare cases which occur, the man is killed but the woman is only beaten or speared, or both, till she is nearly dead ; the reason given for not actually killing her being that she was probably coerced. Even in casual amours the clan prohibitions are strictly observed ; any violations of these prohibitions &quot;are regarded with the utmost abhorrence and are punished by death.&quot; 9 An important exception to these rules, if it is correctly reported, is that of the Port Lincoln tribe, which is divided into two clans, Mattiri and Karraru, and it is said that though persons of the same clan never marry, yet &quot; they do not seem to consider less virtuous connexions between parties of the same class [clan] incestuous.&quot; 10 Again, of the tribes on the lower Murray, lower Darling, &c., it is said that though the slight est blood relationship is with them a bar to marriage, yet in their sexual intercourse they are perfectly free, and incest of every grade continually occurs. 11 In America the Algonkins consider it highly criminal for a man to marry a woman of the same totem as himself, and they tell of cases where men, for breaking this rule, have been put to death by their nearest relations. 12 In some tribes the marriage prohibition only extends to Phratries. a man s own totem clan ; he may marry a woman of any totem but his own. This is the case with the Haidas of the Queen Charlotte Islands, 13 and, so far as appears, the Narrinyeri in South Australia, 14 and the western Aus tralian tribes described by Sir George Grey. 15 Oftener, however, the prohibition includes several clans, in none of which is a man allowed to marry. For such an exogamous group of clans within the tribe it is convenient to have a name ; we shall therefore call it a phratry (L. H. Morgan), defining it as an exogamous division intermediate between the tribe and the clan. The evidence goes to show that in many cases it was originally a totem clan which has undergone subdivision. The Choctaws, for example, were divided into two phratries, American each of which included four clans; marriage was prohibited be- phratries. tween members of the same phratry, but members of either phratry could marry into any clan of the other. 16 The Seneca tribe of the Iroquois was divided into two phratries, each including four clans, the Bear, Wolf, Beaver, and Turtle clans forming one phratry, and the Deer, Snipe, Heron, and Hawk clans forming the other. Originally, as among the Choctaws, marriage was prohibited within the phratry but was permitted with any of the clans of the other phratry ; the prohibition, however, has now broken down, and a Seneca may marry a woman of any clan but his own. Hence phratries, in our sense, no longer exist among the Scnecas, though the organization survives for certain religious and social purposes. 17 The phratries of the Thlinkets and the Jlohegans deserve especial attention, because each phratry bears a name which is also the name of one of the clans included in it. The Thlinkets are divided as follows : Raven phratry, with clans Haven, Frog, Goose, Sea- Lion, Owl, Salmon ; Wolf phratry, with clans Wolf, Bear, Eagle, Whale, Shark, Auk. Members of the Raven phratry must marry members of the Wolf phratry, and vice versa. iS Considering the prominent parts played in Thlinket mythology by the ancestors of the two phratries, and considering that the names of the phratries are also names of clans, it seems probable that the Raven and Wolf were the two original clans of the Thlinkets, which afterwards by subdivision became phratries. This was the opinion of the Russian missionary Veniaminoff, the best early authority on the tribe. 19 Still more clearly do the Mohegan phratries appear to have been formed by subdivision from clans. They are as follows : 20 Wolf phratry, with clans Wolf, Bear, Dog, Opossum; Turtle 9 Howitt in Rep. of Smithsonian Inst. for 1883, p. 804 ; Fison and Howitt, pp. 64-67, 289, 344 sq.; J. A. I., xiv. p. 351 sq. 10 Nat. Tr. of S. Australia, p. 222. 11 Jour, and Proc. R. Soc. N. S. Wales, 1883, p. 24; Transactions of the Royal Society of Victoria, vi. p. 16. 12 James in Tanner s Narr., p. 313. 13 Geol. Sur. of Canada, Rep. for 1878-79, p. 134s. 14 Nat. Tr. of S. Austr., p. 12; J. A. /., xii. p. 46. 15 Grey, Jour., ii. p. 226. 16 Arch&ologia Americana, Trans, and Collect. Americ. Antiq. Soc., vol. ii. p. 109; Morgan, A. S., pp. 99, 162. 17 Morgan, op. cit., pp. 90, 94 sq. 18 A. Krause, Die Tlinkit-Indianer, 112, 220; Holmberg, op. cit., 293, 313; Pinart in Bull. Soc. Anthrop. Paris, 7th Nov. 1872, p. 792 sq. ; PetrofF, Rep. on Alaska, p. 165 sq. 19 Petroff, op. cit., p. 166. 20 Morgan, p. 174.