Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/372

 35 2 The Origin of Totem Names and Beliefs.

makes the totem name, from the beginning, a group name, which I conceive to have been the actual state of affairs.

The Word " Totem."

As to the precise original meaning and form of the -word usually written " totem," whether it should be '• totam," or ■' todaim," or '' dodaim," or " ododam," or " ote/' philolo- gists may dispute.^ They may question whether the word means " mark," or " family, or tribe," or clay for painting the family mark.- When we here use the word "totem" we mean, at all events, the object which gives its name to a group of savage kindred, who may not marry within this hereditary name. In place of " totem " we might use the equivalent murdn of the Dieri, or ga lira of the Kunundaburi.^

The Totem " Cult."

The " cult," if it deserves to be called a " cult," of the totem, among savages, is not confined to abstention from marriage within the name. Each kin usually abstains from killing, eating, or in any way using its totems (except in occasional ceremonies, religious or magical), is apt to claim descent from or kindred with it, or alternations of metamor- phosis into or out of it, and sometimes uses its effigy on memorial pillars, on posts carved into a kind of genealogical tree, or tattoos or paints or scarifies it on the skin, in different cases and places.

To what extent the blood-feud is taken up by all members of the slain man's totem, I am not fully aware ; it varies in different regions. The eating or slaying of the totem by a person of the totem name is, in places, believed to be punished by disease or death ; a point which the late Mr. J. J. Atkinson observed among the natives of New Cale- donia {yiS. penes me). Mr. Atkinson happened to be con- versing with some natives on questions of anthropology,

' Frazer, Tote mis in p. i.

- Major Powell, Man, 1901, No. 75.


 * Howilt,/. .-/. /., xx., pp. 40-41, 1S91.